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school and 39 attendees, of whom 23 were
students. The students came from Japan,
North America and Europe. Two fellowships
were awarded.
The 5
th
IUVSTA School was on Photovoltaic
Materials and Devices and was held from
29 September to 3 October 2003 at
Huatulco, Oaxaca, Mexico. Here were
about 50 attendees with the majority being
students. There were attendees from
Mexico, Colombia, Cuba, Peru, Spain,
Russia and Slovakia.
Following these successful early events, the
number of Schools rapidly increased and a
total of 15 IUVSTA Schools have currently
(August 2016) been held, as shown in
Table XI. Moreover, the partnership for
running the schools has been extended to
various organisations, including member
societies.
In her Inaugural Address, the 2001-2004
President, M-G. Barthés-Labrousse (F),
emphasized the importance of the IUVSTA’s
Education Program. In particular, she
highlighted the need for IUVSTA to support
National Vacuum Societies in developing
countries in the organisation of local
technical training courses, as a new way of
increasing the Union’s activities in the field
of education. The Education Committee,
chaired by J. E. Greene (USA), took up this
initiative with a decision that the IUVSTA
would sponsor Technical Training Courses
(TTC), and in so doing would balance
the prevailing emphasis on supporting
scientifically oriented courses. N. Rad
i
(CRO) undertook to bring this activity to
fruition as the first Director of the TTC
program.
The intention was that where national
vacuum societies, which are members
of IUVSTA, were prepared to organise
technical training courses locally, in
the local language for the principal
benefit of technicians, production
engineers and students, IUVSTA
would help with the endorsement and
with a small subsidy for attendees.
It was envisaged that the emphasis
would be directed to technologically
developing countries were the cost of
attendance might otherwise exclude
some deserving students. The IUVSTA
grants are primarily intended to be
used for travelling/accommodation
subsidies within their own national
borders for participants and lecturers
at theTechnicalTraining Courses.
Two Technical Training Courses were
proposed in 2003 by the Pakistan
Vacuum Society (TTC#1, see Table XII
for numbering) and the Chinese Vacuum
Society (TTC#2) respectively. However
TTC#1 was delayed until 2006 and the first
TTC to be held was TTC#2. It was titled
the Basics of Vacuum Technology and was
held on 6-12 December 2003 at Tsinghua
University, Beijing, P. R. China. The course
was presented in Chinese to 93 attendees.
The IUVSTA grant was 3,600 CHF. An
examination was conducted at the end of
the course with certificates being presented
to successful attendees.
The TTC Program proved to be successful
and the number of applications rapidly
increased. 19 Technical Training Courses
have currently (2016) been approved (see
Table XII), although one had to be cancelled.