in focus

In line with controlling costs while continuing to provide value services, a new student activity was initiated this year by the Non-Ferrous Pyrometallurgy Section: regular monthly lunch time seminars (pizza included) by local experts of the metals and materials industry. This initiative, under the leadership of Professor Mansoor Barati, has resulted in the revival of the METSOC Student Chapter at the University of Toronto (not to mention the renewed interest in extractive metallurgy by undergraduate students in the Toronto area!). Inviting guest speakers at Student Chapter meetings is not a novelty in itself and Student Chapters have done this over the years. However, considering the current restrictions on travel imposed on many industries, this model that takes advantage of local speakers can be reproduced in other universities across Canada. All it takes is identifying and lining up local experts (local travel means lower time and financial burden) who would be interested to meet students for an hour long talk and discussion session. Topics can be about anything METSOC is about, i.e. light, base or precious metals, mineral processing, hydrometallurgy or pyrometallurgy, ferrous or non-ferrous metals, material science, integrity or design!

If you are passionate about your work and enjoy talking with enthusiastic metals and materials students, this is your chance to do both! Please do voice your interest to Brigitte Farah (bfarah@cim.org) and we will put you in contact with the Student Chapter of your local university. In addition to enriching the learning of our young members you might even be triggering the revival and thriving of a new METSOC Student Chapter in your region! What a great way to give back to your community and Society!

Another success of our Society this year is the signing by our President Mahesh Chaturvedi of an MOU of collaboration with TMS, the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society in the USA. The importance of this event can be measured by the efforts TMS put into organizing the official signing ceremony as depicted by the photograph in this editorial. Our two societies have been collaborating for decades on specific events, such as the Copper Conferences, the Hydrometallurgy meetings, the Ni-Co series or more recently the Pb-Zn agreement. Each time, a specific MOU was signed for the event and expired after the event had occurred. This new MOU is distinct in the sense that it is not specific but encompasses a general collaboration with emphasis on better serving our student membership. A group of representatives of METSOC and TMS will meet on a regular basis to map the road of this future long term collaboration.

I wish I could be in a position to share with you some major steps forward with our Foundation within the CIM Foundation. This will have to wait as the METSOC contribution to the Foundation is still a work in progress with CIM. However, I am delighted to report that a significant portion of the surplus generated by COM2007-Cu2007 has been allocated for student program expenditures for up to $25,000 per year for the next 4 years including 2009. Spending of those funds will be controlled by our Treasurer and BOD for well defined programs and activities that will be developed by our Student Affairs and Membership team with the goal of retaining our newly recruited student members.

One of the key roles of our society has always been to provide its members with a forum to share knowledge, experience or expertise within the network that professional Societies offer. At times of harsh reality where doing better with less is the norm, access to the wealth of knowledge available in technical proceedings and magazines is sure to be a major source of inspiration on how to move forward and consider proven technical solutions that have been tested and implemented by others in the industry. Doing better does not always mean developing something new; it can also be adapting to our needs something done successfully by some other companies, sometimes through technology licensing if the novelty is patent protected. I am amongst those professionals that cherish their personal library of technical books, magazines and proceedings as their source of inspiration for answers and solutions to the challenges put forth to me. In my library, the technical publications from METSOC rank high up in terms of quality and relevance, thanks to our dedicated members that have taken the time out of their busy schedule to solicit, review and edit manuscripts for our Society's proceedings and magazines.

At this very time, many of you are actively involved with assembling the technical program for this year's annual Conference of Metallurgists COM 2009 which is hosting Ni-Co' 09 jointly organized with the Extraction & Processing Division of TMS (EPD). The success of our annual meeting is in a large part in your hands and depends on how successful you are at soliciting and editing quality papers for the conference, which will ultimately translate into how many delegates your technical program will attract to the event. Thanks to you for your hard work! If you are an author of one of the papers of COM 2009, we are also very appreciative of your efforts in preparing your manuscript. Without your dedication, there would not be a technical program!

I truly look forward to meeting you in you all in Sudbury for COM 2009 hosting Ni-Co' 09! The technical program will no doubt be outstanding and who wants to miss the chance to attend a Plenary Lecture by Stephen Lewis!!! Visit the COM 2009 web site for all the details (http://www.metsoc.org/com2009/index.asp).

Joel Kapusta
President and Editor
Air Liquide jkapusta@cim.org