Message from The Technical Program Committee Chair

On behalf of the Technical Program Committee, I cordially welcome you to APMC 2006 in Yokohama.

The 2006 APMC Technical Program Committee has organized a highly qualified and exciting program covering wide varieties of microwave technologies and related fields.

This year, a total of 694 papers from 42 countries were submitted to APMC 2006, which is the largest number in APMC's history held in Japan. Due to the high professional quality of these papers, it was an extremely difficult task for the Technical Program Committee to select the 498 papers (312 for oral presentations, 186 for open forums), the maximum allowable number in this location and this period, with 192 reviewers around the world participating in the paper review and selection processes.

The technical activities begin at 9:00 a.m., on Tuesday, December 12, with workshops and short courses, which have been selected from the most exciting topics in our fields.

This year there are 12 workshops and 4 short courses. APMC regular sessions commence at 8:50 a.m., on Wednesday, December 13, with 6 sessions proceeding simultaneously. A total of 66 oral presentation sessions and 3 open MESSAGE FROM THE TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE CHAIR forum sessions are scheduled for paper presentations. The plenary session is scheduled at 10:40 a.m. on Wednesday, December 13, where Mr. Toshio Miki, NTT DoCoMo Inc. will present Keynote Address entitled "Mobile Communication Evolution". And Prof. Tatsuo Itoh, UCLA will present “New Avenues of Microwave Component Design” as well. This year we have also invited 18 outstanding speakers who are very active in their field.

The Technical Program Committee has worked hard to make APMC 2006 successful and memorable. I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the members and reviewers of the Technical Program Committee for their dedication in organizing the technical program. We are looking forward to meeting you at the conference.

Kiyomichi Araki Technical Program Committee Chair