The Hilton Hotel, Chicago, was the beautiful, distinguished and convenient venue for the 2014 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium. The Symposium was organized and led by the General Chair, Dr. Jafar Saniie, Illinois Institute of Technology. As the preeminent meeting in ultrasonics, IUS provides a unique forum in which to present the latest advances in many areas, including medical ultrasound, non-destructive evaluation, industrial ultrasonics, physical acoustics, microacoustics, transducers and new materials.

Short Courses Under the very effective leadership of Prof. Mario Kupnik, Cottbus, a set of twelve popular short courses was offered on Wednesday, September 3rd, with the conference running from Thursday to Saturday, September 4th to 6th. Following submission of 1,214 abstracts, the Technical Program Committee (TPC), chaired by Prof. Jan D’hooge, KU Leuven, narrowed this down to 938 for oral or poster presentations, representing an overall acceptance rate of 77%. The total number of conference attendees exceeded 1,300, an all-time record, including 432 students and 380 registrations for the short courses. Overall, 48 countries were represented, giving the conference a truly international profile.

Short Course: Ultrasound Imaging Systems: from Principles to Implementation	Committee Meeting: UltraCom, chaired by Dr Jafar Saniie

Associated Committees and Meetings As usual, IUS attendance was linked with a full program of associated committee and other meetings, including the UltraCom meeting held on Tuesday, September 2nd, and the UFFC-S AdCom meeting on Wednesday, September 3rd. An innovation this year was the organization of formal, individual TPC Group meetings, also on September 3rd. As recognition of the importance of specific groups, a President’s Student Breakfast took place on Friday, September 4th, along with a Women in Engineering (WIE) Luncheon, arranged by Dr. Lori Bridal the same day with over 120 attendees.

On Saturday, September 5th, there was an Exhibitors’ Breakfast arranged by Dr. Larry Kessler from Sonoscan, Exhibits Chair, for the 24 companies in attendance, and several meetings for hard-working TPC committee members including Group Chairs: Georg Schmitz, Ruhr–Universitaet, Germany; David Greve, Carnegie Mellon University, USA; Vincent Laude, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France; Karl Wagner, TDK Corporation, Germany; and Sandy Cochran, University of Dundee, UK. The Proceedings Chair, Steven Freear, expedited the editorial work of the conference proceedings, and a total of 652 papers are available online for the conference attendees.

Plenary Session and Awards The symposium began with a plenary session that was opened with a welcome address from Dr. Saniie, followed by the presentation of awards.

The first award, the 2014 Ultrasonics Young Investigator, went to Sunil Ashok Bhave, for work on novel devices combining MEMS, solid-state electronics and photonics for timing and frequency applications. Gaining his PhD in 2004 from the University of California, Berkeley, Dr Bhave is now Associate Professor at Cornell University. F. Levent Degertekin, from Georgia Tech, was presented with the Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonic Achievement Award for contributions to micromachined ultrasonic and opto-mechanical transducers, and high speed Atomic Force Microscopy. The final Ultrasonics Society award was the Rayleigh Award, which was given in 2014 for outstanding accomplishment in the development of image guided ultrasound therapeutics and, in particular, for pioneering focused ultrasound as a means of noninvasively ablating brain tissue and reversibly opening the blood brain barrier, work carried out by Kullervo Hynynen, of Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto.

(left) Dr Bhave celebrates his Ultrasonics Young Investigator award with IUS colleagues, while Dr Degertekin (top right) and Dr Hynynen (bottom right) address the audience after their awards.

IUS 2014 was also the opportunity to present four UFFC-S awards. Dr John M. Reid was given the 2014 UFFC-S Achievement Award for his pioneering contributions to the understanding of ultrasound-tissue interaction, the development of ultrasound medical imaging equipment, and Doppler ultrasound systems. The 2014 UFFC-S Distinguished Service Award was presented to Dr Clemens C. W. Ruppel for more than twenty years of commitment and dedicated service in numerous positions in the IEEE including elected member of AdCom, Symposia Chair and administration, Vice-President of Ultrasonics and Symposia, and UFFC-S liaison to IEEE MTT-S.

The 2013 UFFC-S Outstanding Paper Award was given to Archita Hati, Craig W. Nelson, Corey Barnes, Danielle Lirette, Tara Fortier, Franklyn Quinlan, Jason A. DeSalvo, Andrew Ludlow, Scott A. Diddams, and David A. Howe for reporting their work on “State-of-the-Art RF Signal Generation From Optical Frequency Division” in Transactions on UFFC Volume 60. Finally, the 2015 UFFC-S Distinguished Lecturer is to be Roman G. Maev, whose lecture is entitled “Innovation Drives Quality: New Generation of High Resolution Ultrasonic Imaging Technology for Material Characterization and NDT in Advanced Automotive Manufacturing”.

John Reid (top left), recipient of the UFFC-S Achievement Award; Roman Maev (top right, 2nd from left), the 2015 UFFC-S Distinguished Lecturer; Clemens Ruppell (bottom right) who received the UFFC-S Distinguished Service Award; and the team of winners (bottom left) of the 2013 UFFC-S Outstanding Paper Award.

The plenary presentation was given by Dr. Matthew O’Donnell, Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington. With his most recent work involving elasticity imaging, optoacoustic arrays, photoacoustic contrast agents, thermal strain imaging, and catheter-based devices, Dr. O’Donnell gave a fascinating account of research into molecular theranostics, linking this with contemporary hot topics such as personalized medicine.

Plenary Session: conference delegates are addressed by Dr Matthew O’Donnell.

Technical Program and Social Events The conference’s technical program was, as usual, very exciting, with three clinical speakers and nineteen other invited speakers gracing an excellent oral program that, for the first time, spanned seven parallel sessions. As always, a large number of poster presentations perfectly complemented the oral sessions. With the posters put up first thing in the morning and taken down in the evening, there was plenty of time for lively discussion with the presenters and other members of the ultrasonics community.

The Local Chair, Dr. Erdal Oruklu, arranged two major social events at the conference, the Welcome Reception on Thursday, September 4th, and the Conference Banquet on Friday, September 5th. Both of these events allowed delegates to mix and talk, perhaps about ultrasound, with musical accompaniment from the Chicago Jazz Quartet at the Reception and the Blooze Brothers at the Banquet.

Plenary Session: conference delegates are addressed by Dr Matthew O’Donnell.	Entertainment: The Blooze Brothers prepare to entertain the guests.

Student Paper Competition Awards The Banquet also provided the opportunity to present the Student Paper Competition Awards. Narrowed down from a wide field to just 20 presentations at the conference, the six winners were Hajin Choi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Keith Johnston, University of Dundee; Toby Xu, Georgia Institute of Technology; Shiying Wang, University of Virginia; Charlie Demene, Institut Langevin, ESPCI ParisTech; and Jason Hoople, Cornell University. The winners were particularly excited to receive signed copies of the seminal book, Diagnostic Ultrasound Imaging: Inside Out, from Dr. Tom Szabo, the author, with thanks to the publisher, Elsevier Science, whose generosity made the book gifts possible. This will be an excellent reference work for those we hope will be the future leaders of our field.

IUS 2015, Taipei, Taiwan Leaving IUS 2014, Chicago, on Saturday, September 6th, many delegates may have already been looking forward to the next meeting, under its esteemed General Chair, Prof. Pai-Chi Li, National Taiwan University. It will be held at Taipei International Convention Centre, Taipei, Taiwan, from October 21st to 24th, 2015. More information is available at http://ewh.ieee.org/conf/ius/ius_2015/.

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