The Standing Committee of the Ultrasonics Group ("UltraCom") met on May 24 in Chicago, Illinois. There were six voting members present; nine non-voting attendees also attended.

The first agenda topic was the upcoming International Ultrasonics Symposium (IUS) in September 2014. There is an increase in abstract submissions of 20% with respect to 2013; Group 1 constitutes 58% of the total abstracts submitted; this is a new record. The IUS will have seven parallel sessions to accommodate the large number of talks.

Ultrasonics awards were discussed. This is the first year that the IEEE Ultrasonics Young Investigator Award and IEEE Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonics Achievements Award will be given. Nominees were confirmed by a vote of the UltraCom. The long standing Rayleigh Award was also discussed.

Planning for the 2015 IUS in Taipei, Taiwan is ongoing, and for the 2016 IUS in Tours, France.

UltraCom discussed the IEEE requirement that all technical publications be screened for plagiarism by 2016. This discussion moved to the option of replacing the abstract with a two or four page paper submission available by the start of the Symposium. No firm decisions were made, in this regard.

Gangbing Song, UFFC education chair, presented his plans to develop the first open online experiment for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). He highlighted the need for short webinars and a web portal to combine tutorials and educational content related to UFFC as well as the desirability of student design competitions at both the graduate and undergraduate levels during the UFFC-S conferences.

Summarized from the meeting minutes by M. Garvey

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