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The ninth International Symposium on Non-linear Electromagnetic Systems took place from 10 through 12 May 1999 at the University of Pavia, Italy. The historical lecture rooms and courtyards of the University of Pavia have been the impressive venue of the Symposium, which followed the previous one held in Braunschweig, Germany in 1997 and has confirmed its international reputation as a prestigious forum for the international community of researchers who are involved in applied electromagnetics and materials.
The Symposium has covered a wide range of topics of interdisciplinary character from materials to systems, from microdevices to large equipment, with special emphasis on emerging topics and particular attention to advanced computational methods in order to model both devices and systems.
About 230 papers by authors from over 20 countries of different continents have been presented during oral and poster sessions. According to the tradition of the Symposium, there have been no parallel sessions on the same topic in order to let specialists of a specific field be acquainted with specialists of other fields. During ISEM-Pavia, however, for the first time - in addition to oral and poster sessions - organized sessions took place, focusing on future trends in some advanced areas covered by the Symposium. Topics of these organized sessions included Electromagnetic actuator dynamics, Advanced computing techniques, Non-linear direct and inverse scattering, Superconducting engineering, Electromagnetic NDE and material degradation, Electromagnetic inverse problems.
The scientific programme has been complemented by a number of social events for participants and accompanying persons that have made the Symposium atmosphere particularly enjoyable. During the opening of the Symposium, prof. K. Miya has been awarded the prestigious Volta golden medal for his remarkable contribution to the progress of science in the field of applied electromagnetics in materials. Also the banquet and the concert in the ancient building of St Thomas should be mentioned; on that occasion, official awards have been conferred to the organizers of previous ISEM editions; on the same occasion, Volta silver medals have been delivered to the chairmen of organized sessions. The talk by prof. F. Bevilacqua on Volta's biography and achievements and the visit to the museum of the University of Pavia were greatly appreciated too.
The organization of the Symposium has been possible also thanks to the sponsorship received by a few institutions, both public and private, namely: Banca Regionale Europea, Buitoni, Citta di Pavia, Comitato Regionale per le Celebrazioni Voltiane, Japan Society of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics, University of Pavia. This way it has been possible to support, partly or totally, the participation of young researchers as well as of scholars coming from developing countries, especially from Eastern Europe.
The Symposium has been chaired by prof. A. Savini, helped by an organizing committee headed by prof. P. Di Barba; both of them are from the Department of Electrical Engineering of University of Pavia, one of the most ancient in Europe, where Alessandro Volta long was professor and rector.
Actually, the Symposium has been one of the events celebrating in 1999 the two-hundredth anniversary of the invention of the electric battery, which made it possible to perform scientific experiments using electric current, laid the groundwork for electric science in the first part of the nineteenth century and later on determined the huge development of electrical technology that is still in progress.