As announced in a July issue of MNM last year, the start of a new 2 year administrative cycle for the IFRF beginning in January 2008 made it necessary to elect new Office Holders for the Joint Committee.  From the ensuing nomination and voting process has emerged the new Executive Committee, which has been officially installed and will meet together for the first time in early April:

• Previous IFRF President Mikko Hupa, who stood down by rotation in December 2007, has handed the President’s baton to Dick Waibel of the John Zink Co., USA;
  
• Dick has been replaced as IFRF Vice President by Jacques Dugué of Total, France, thus fulfilling an important criterion of global balance in the Executive;
  
• The General Secretary remains Gennaro De Michele of Enel Ricerca, Italy;
  
• Our Superintendent of Research is again Hartmut Spliethoff of Munich University;
  
• The Joint Committee Representative is Susuma Mochida of Nippon Furnace, Japan.

Readers can find more information about these individuals either in the ABOUT US section of  the IFRF website (public domain) or (for Members only) by browsing the IFRF Services and management groups on the IFRF EXCHANGE. Start at http://www.ifrf.net/

In MNM 27  http://www.mnm.ifrf.net/mnm/articles.html?yw=200727, readers were introduced to the ‘A’ members of the Joint Committee whose membership had just been ratified at the first official meeting of the Joint Committee in Pisa.  This group comprises the Chairmen of each of the nine National Committees over which is spread most of the IFRF’s worldwide membership.

The IFRF statutes also call for up to five ‘B’ members of the Joint Committee “co-opted on the basis of competence recognised by the scientific community in the various areas of flame research, as an expression of the interdisciplinary nature of the Foundation.”  To the existing group of three have now been added Mikko Hupa and Jost Wendt whose portfolios will be discussed in a future issue of the Monday Night Mail.  The Joint Committee will meet on June 16th and 17th in Munich.

With its governing structure at fulll strength and a good foundation now established in the (no longer new) premises at Livorno, the IFRF is in an excellent position to meet new challenges.  This was exemplified over the last few weeks by a team effort which saw the successful submission to the EU of a proposal to fund the IFRF initiated EFRI project.  This project will receive more coverage in a future issue.