The Federation of Materials Societies (FMS) is an umbrella organization whose member societies and affiliates represent the professional societies, universities and National Research Council organizations which are involved with materials science, engineering and technology. FMS constituent societies have more than 700,000 individual members.

An affiliate of FMS, The University Materials Council represents most of the major university materials departments. FMS also has liaison representatives from the Solid State Sciences Committee, the National Materials Advisory Board, and the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering advisory groups to the National Research Council covering the field of materials. Several corporations with strong materials interests also support FMS as Corporate Affiliates.

What is the purpose of FMS?

The purpose of FMS is to aid the materials community in obtaining information from and exchanging information with the policy community. An important FMS goal is to help the materials community to arrive at consensus materials policy and to assist it in informing policy makers of materials concerns.

In addition, FMS serves as a clearinghouse between materials professionals and among its diverse constituent societies concerning their current activities, best practices, and the opportunities and problems cutting across specific materials and materials societies. The Federation of Materials Societies helps facilitate communication across the materials community.

How does FMS fulfill materials needs?

FMS sponsors periodic workshops and a biennial meeting on matters of materials policy. These meetings provide a forum where policy makers and materials people can meet to discuss issues, develop policy and recommend actions.

The results of these meetings are summarized in meeting reports, white papers and recommendations for actions. FMS sponsors briefings for policy makers based on these meetings. Briefings are initiated both by FMS, federal agencies, the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and other key government organizations.

FMS sponsors quarterly meetings of its Trustees, who represent its individual constituent societies and associated groups. Information exchange between societies about current activities and problems, policy alerts from the Washington community, discussion of FMS positions on issues, and the planning of future FMS activities are all the focus of these meetings. They are traditionally followed by a luncheon open to all Trustees and other interested parties where a speaker is usually a Member of Congress, a Congressional staff representative, an OSTP representative, or an agency official. The speakers for these meetings are chosen to highlight current materials policy issues and opportunities.

Historical Interest of FMS in Policy Issues . . .

FMS was founded more than 20 years ago and it has been a leader in developing policies on subjects ranging from:

• Materials and resource conservation
• Materials processing and synthesis
• The role of materials in competitiveness
• The importance of cooperative activities between government, industry, academia, and professional societies, and how to catalyze cooperation and organize cooperative programs
• Delineating the unique features of materials science and engineering as:
  • - an interdisciplinary activity
  • - an enabling technology whose products are frequently imbedded at the systems level
  • - an activity requiring unique management, policy and evaluation