Rebecca was an excellent manager in the field of R&D, who was able to adapt, seamlessly, to new areas. She came to us from Optics and in a few months managed to get familiar with Artificial Olfaction. She has done it by focusing her bright mind on the new subject, distilling the essentials and making sure that she will keep them in mind no matter how disturbing and confusing the information we throw at her was. She could bring order and discipline even to eclectic gatherings of scientists. She knew how to listen to you and was then able to, concisely and precisely, tell you what you meant. She could keep her coolness in very stressing situations, being able to fine tune a project application until the last minutes before the deadline. Rebecca was also a very successful manager helping us to win a string of high profile projects; for the last one - in again a new field, Oxide Electronics - she practically worked until the very end.

We are sure that Rebecca enjoyed her work otherwise she would not have been able to put so much passion. We will miss her, personally and professionally, very badly.

Udo Weimar

"All the members of ISOCS are much indebted to Rebecca because she helped define it as a legal entity and thus its very creation. She was one of the founding directors of ISOCS and was its first treasurer. Through her efforts ISOCS was formed and its financial management systems put in place. So it is a sad loss to both ISOCS and the artifical olfaction community that she is no longer with us."

Julian Gardner, President of ISOCS

Message from the President

It is a great pleasure to bring to you the first electronic ISOCS Newsletter. The ISOCS management team feel that this is a much more cost effective way to reach out to you and also a “greener” way. I was elected as President in April 2009 and so this has been my first year as ISOCS President. It has been an enjoyable 12 months with a number of events to report. First of all we held a week long Summer School in Barcelona (Spain) in September 2009 on “Artificial Olfaction” and this was followed by a Winter School in Val Gardena (Italy) in February 2010 on the topic of “Smart Circuits, Systems and Micro-technologies for Chemical and Biological Sensing. This was followed by the first Spring School (in Rimini Italy) in May on the topic of “MOX gas sensor technology”. In addition to these Schools we have sponsored four workshops on related topics and helped promote the activities of our members.