Plenary Speech

Kang-Wook Lee, PH. D. 

Kang-Wook Lee

Bio sketch: TBA

NRC History (Reflection on 30 years)

History of The KSEA Northeast Regional Conference (NRC)

1. The Beginning 

In the 1970s and 1980s when KSEA local chapters were inaugurated and young, their major activities included social meetings and picnics with regular and student members and their families and friends.  Then they started organizing invited talks and symposiums.  In the late 1980s, KSEA HQ and local leaders promoted a regional conference in which a large number of members in a region could participate and more papers could be presented. The Lehigh Valley, New Jersey (NJ), and Philadelphia (Phila) chapters held the Northeast Regional Conferences (NRCs) in 1988 and 1991 while the New York Metropolitan (NY Metro) chapter organized its own technical and career symposiums in 1989, 1990, and 1991.  Each of these conferences made good use of the geodemography of her region, especially in the metropolitan NY region, with a strong relationship with sponsoring Korean companies, and in the other regions with emphasis more on the technical aspect. During NRC1991, the leaders on both sides discussed on how to create the best breed of the two regional strengths. Consequently, the four chapters agreed to organize a joint conference from 1992 and the subsequently held NRC1992 was named “the third Northeast Regional Conference.”  Its Bylaws were amended in 1995, and the abbreviation “NRC” has also been used since 1995.