12 January 2004 Message from the President Dear IRG Members and Sponsors, To every one of you I wish you a healthy and prosperous 2004! This is the first Issue of IRG News in Brief. This e-mail Newsletter will be sent to you on a regular basis. The IRG management is proud to be able to send you this new electronic communication and information tool. Each issue will be sponsored by one of our regular sponsoring organizations. This allows our sponsors to bring their organization in the spotlight during a certain period of time. It provides also for IRG to keep the finances healthy. We kindly invite interested sponsors to contact the IRG Secretariat for more specific information. Under the leadership of our Electronic Communication Committee chairman Prof. Dr. John Ruddick, a group of experts will be established. They will provide regular input for the various News Categories. However the ultimate success and quality of our IRG News in Brief will depend also on your input. So we kindly invite every IRG Member and Sponsor to forward any information of interest to our Membership to the IRG Secretariat. We are looking for articles, reports etc. on the regulatory, scientific and business platforms. This Newsletter will also be an excellent medium for our Scientific Communities to put student research, PhD research into the spotlight. A lot of interesting research is going on by students and PhD graduates, which is not yet reported to IRG. We hope that our scientific members will take advantage of this opportunity. Finally, we hope that you will feel free to contact the IRG Secretariat with your comments and suggestions for improvements. Together we can make this IRG News in Brief a formidable communication tool to quickly exchange worldwide information of interest to our membership. With kind regards, Alex Valcke President of IRG					Our Sponsors: