About the IEEE NSREC

Radiation effects in the IEEE commenced in the late 1950s, under the sponsorship of two subcommittees in the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (AIEE), one of the predecessor engineering organizations that merged with the Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) in 1963 to form the IEEE. From 1958 to 1961, radiation effects sessions were limited to technical symposia and round table discussions held at annual General Meetings of the AIEE.

Solicited technical papers were presented for the first time at the 1962 AIEE Summer General Meeting held in Denver, Colorado. An enlarged Nuclear Radiation Effects Program was included in the 1963 IEEE (AIEE/IRE) Summer General Meeting held in Toronto, Canada. The first independent Nuclear Radiation Effects Conference was held in July 1964 at the University of Washington, and has been held annually every July since then. Commencing in 1975, by tradition, the conference has been held at a western location for two-thirds of the time and an eastern location every third year.

Since 1980, a one-day tutorial Short Course has been conducted on the day immediately preceding the conference, and the NSREC Short Course Notebook is published each year. Each year’s topics are listed in the Short Course History.

Commencing in 1982, the Hardened Electronics and Radiation Technology (HEART) Conference, sponsored by DoD and DoE, was held at a site near the NSREC and immediately following it. The 1986 HEART Conference was the last to follow this practice.

An Industrial Exhibits program was added in 1991 to replace the hospitality suites that several vendors had been holding at prior NSRECs, growing from 18 exhibitors in 1991 to more than 50 in recent years. A Radiation Effects Data Workshop session was added in 1992; proceedings from this session are published in the IEEE Radiation Effects Data Workshop Record.

The conference has also travelled well beyond its original western-university roots: Vancouver in 2001 was the first meeting outside the United States, Paris in 2014 the first in Europe, and Quebec City and Ottawa have since hosted. The 2020 and 2021 conferences were held virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, the only interruptions to an unbroken run of in-person meetings since 1964.

Policy and general planning for the NSREC is developed by the IEEE Nuclear and Plasma Sciences Society (NPSS) Radiation Effects Committee, better known as the Radiation Effects Steering Group (RESG). The committee’s chair, executive vice-chair, and secretary are elected for three-year terms at the open meeting held annually at each conference; one member-at-large is elected each year for a three-year term. Ex-officio members include the past chair; past, present, and future conference chairs; a publicity chair; a publications chair; the editor of the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science; the RADECS conference liaison; and members of the NPSS Administrative Committee (AdCom).

The publications chair appoints an editor each year to serve a three-year term. In the third year the editor becomes the Guest Editor for the NSREC special December issue of TNS. This practice changed in 2007 when a Senior Editor was given the job of editing all radiation-effects papers for NSREC, RADECS, and contributed papers to TNS. The Senior Editor assigns Associate Editors, who serve for as long as they are willing; there are usually six.