As I conclude my year as Chair of the American Filtration Society, I’d like to take the opportunity to commend our organization and our many volunteers, sponsors and staff who continued to support and promote the missions of AFS in the past year.
When I assumed the role of Chair one year ago, we were six months into the COVID-19 pandemic with little understanding of how the virus would expand and persist. In February of this year, we entered a second year of the pandemic, and continued to explore new ways to engage with our members and distribute technical knowledge and filtration education. In a time when filtration couldn’t be more important, we bolstered our commitment to providing the resources necessary to maintain the flow of information, the building of professional relationships and the mentoring of tomorrow’s filtration leaders.
In summary, the following are the highlights of what AFS has accomplished in the past year:
- Fall Virtual Conference: Two-day, two-track fully virtual conference featuring two keynote presentations and 18 technical presentations.
- Launch of the AFS Learning Center: This new platform provides on-demand filtration courses so that people can participate regardless of geographic location. Access to conference proceedings from 2017 to 2019 are also available as well as past issues of the Fluid Particle Separation Journal. AFS members enjoy a discount. One Minute Filtration articles are also available and are free for everyone.
- Multiple Virtual Chapter Meetings: As virtual meetings open to anyone, these attracted a larger audience of professionals.
- Virtual Courses: We honed our skills with presenting virtual courses. As we did pre-COVID, we continue to recruit the filtration industry’s leading experts to teach these courses.
- Hosted FiltCon 2021: Three-day virtual conference and expo. Two plenary presentations were featured as well as 40 technical presentations and three Q & A panels.
- Moved WFC 13 from September 2021 to October 2022 due to ongoing travel restrictions.
- Moved FiltCon 2022 to 2023 due to the WFC 13 move.
- Strategic planning update for the Society.
- Continued Committee Activity: Committees have been very active in the past year – Education, Membership, Marketing and Publications in particular.
- Negotiated agreement with Elsevier to provide subscription to Purification & Separation Technology Journal at a reduced cost for AFS members.
I have thoroughly enjoyed my service to AFS as Chair and look forward to continuing to support this exceptional filtration organization under the leadership of incoming chair Jeni Wong.
