Steve Mott, vice president of Components Express, has been named the new chairperson of the AIA board of directors. He was elected at the AIA business conference in Orlando, Florida on 23 January.
‘I am honoured to be named chair of the board and eager to continue AIA’s momentum,’ said Mott. ‘Our goal is to expand AIA’s outreach globally, along with increasing vision education opportunities through growth of the Certified Vision Professional programme. AIA will continue to build on its reputation as a world-class organisation that supports marketplace growth for emerging and established vision markets.’
The selected board members were: George Chamberlain, president, Pleora Technologies; Marc Marini, director, National Instruments; John Merva, US sales and marketing manager, Gardasoft Vision; and Steve Wardell, interim director of imaging at ATS Imaging. All have been elected for two-year terms.
It was also announced that the president of Allied Vision Technologies, Michael Cyros, is retiring from the board after more than a decade of dedicated service to AIA. He was also presented with the 2014 AIA Achievement Award during a ceremony held at the conference.
Cyros is being honoured for his long history of outstanding contributions to the vision and imaging industry at Allied Vision Technologies, Euresys, and Datacube, as well as helping build AIA.
The annual award, sponsored by the AIA, has been given since 1991 and honours one industry leader for outstanding contributions in promoting market acceptance of industrial or scientific imaging.
In accepting the award, Cyros said: ‘Winning the AIA Achievement Award came as a total shock to me, something I never expected. I am deeply honoured to be recognised, as the award states, for leadership and outstanding contributions in promoting market acceptance and growth of our industry. I am further humbled to join those who have won the award in previous years, and see this as a challenge to drive even further in the coming years those attributes recognised by such a prestigious award.’
‘In addition to helping the companies [Cyros] worked for, grow into industry leaders, he devoted time to helping the vision industry as a whole by volunteering to his industry association,’ said Jeff Burnstein, president of AIA. ‘In fact, not only did he serve for a decade on the AIA Board, including a term as Chair, he also is now completing his term as Chair of AIA’s parent group, the Association for Advancing Automation (A3).’
Dean Elkins, senior general manager at Yaskawa Motoman, was announced as the new chairperson of the board of A3, succeeding Cyros.
‘It is truly an honour to be named as Chair of A3,’ said Elkins. ‘The chance to help proliferate automation alongside extremely talented industry advocates representing robotics, vision, and motion control is an exciting opportunity. I look forward to furthering the A3 mission of demonstrating a very strong business case of why it is imperative to automate processes across a wide variety of industries in order to remain globally competitive. Supporting RIA, AIA, and MCA in spreading their respective messages of how to automate will be a very satisfying opportunity.’
The other 2014 members of the board include Greg Hollows, director, Machine Vision Solutions, Edmund Optics and past chair of the AIA board; Jeff Burnstein, AIA president; John Jennings, chief commercial officer, Basler; Andy Long, CEO, Cyth Systems; Todd Miller, general manager, JAI; Rusty Ponce de Leon, president, Phase 1 Technology; Keith Reuben, president, Teledyne Dalsa Asia-Pacific; and Edward Roney, national accounts manager, Fanuc America Corporation.
