ver 50 PSMA members and guests attended the PSMA Annual Meeting, held at the Grand Hyatt Riverwalk in San Antonio, TX. The buffet breakfast before the start of the meeting provided attendees an opportunity for networking and reconnecting with colleagues. Chair Trifon Liakopoulos officially opened the meeting by welcoming all the attendees and asking each to briefly introduce themselves. Among those present were many of the recipients of the APEC Student Attendance Support provided by IAS, PELS and PSMA.

After the introductions outgoing Chair Trifon Liakopoulos gave a brief overview of his tenure as Chair before an historic handing of the gavel to Renee Yawger. Renee became the first woman to chair PSMA in our forty-one-year history.

After the handing of the gavel John Horzepa, Executive Director, announced that there were four seats on the Board of Directors open for elections plus a one-year term for the seat currently held by Alan Cooper who was named a replacement board member by Trifon. PSMA had received nominations for three of the existing board members to be re-elected (Stephanie Watts Butler, David Chen, and Deepak Veereddy) plus a nomination for Dhaval Dalal. Alan Cooper had also been nominated to fill the remainder of the term (until 2027). No voting was necessary as there were no other nominations. The four board members voted in to serve from 2026-2029 are:

Stephanie Watts Butler
David Chen
Dhaval Dalal
Deepak Veereddy

In addition, Alan Cooper will serve until 2027.

Ada Cheng, Co-Chair of the Industry Education Committee and PSMA Vice President, gave a report on the Industry Education Committee, highlighting the involvement of PSMA and students and young professionals. She discussed the importance of the Student Attendance Support program and the Mentorship program, both active activities of PSMA at APEC and discussed elsewhere in this newsletter. She also talked about the expansion of these programs – introducing mentorship at WiPDA and increasing the amount of support offered for students presenting papers at APEC. She said PSMA is now a co-sponsor of the Women in Engineering breakfast at APEC as well as the International Future Energy Challenge and that the committee is looking to introduce a student internship program.

Jin Wang, APEC General Chair, gave a presentation on the state of APEC 2026. It was expected that APEC 2026 would continue the string of strong APEC performances since the pandemic ended. Attendance was looking very strong and the exhibit hall had sold out once again.

Brian Narveson receiving the "Joe Horzepa Lifetime Service Award"

After Jin's report the Joe Horzepa Lifetime Service Award was presented. The award was introduced at the Annual Meeting during APEC 2024 and is intended to recognize members who have contributed to PSMA in a significant way for at least 10 years. The award was created to honor longtime PSMA Executive Director Joe Horzepa. John Horzepa said that there were many worthy recipients of the award and that the voting was very close. He said the Patrick LeFevre and Matt Wilkowski were finalists but that the winner this year was Brian Narveson, recognizing his many years of dedication to PSMA. Brian has been a very active member of the Packaging and Manufacturing Committee, leading several special studies. In addition, he has been heavily involved in the 3D-PEIM and IWIPP workshops. Brian was not attending APEC this year but indicated that he was honored to receive the award and thanked everyone at PSMA who helped him over the years. The award was shipped to him after APEC, and he sent this picture of himself holding the award.

Following the award presentation the committee chairs and/or their representatives gave a brief presentation on committee activities since APEC 2025.

After the committee reports Tim McDonald presented the Financial Report featuring the six-quarter forecast.

Tim said that we expect around $250K in surplus from APEC 2026, that money should arrive between January and March of 2027. He said that over the next six quarters net assets will range from $819K to $1.06M, PSMA currently has $924K in assets. The bottom line, he said, is that PSMA is in good financial shape with room to take on more special projects.

After the financial report the floor was opened to discussion among the PSMA members regarding the direction of PSMA. Many ideas were discussed and the Executive Committee agreed to follow up on the best ideas going forward.

Before adjourning, Chair Renee Yawger thanked all presenters and attendees for their participation and invited interested individuals to attend the March meeting of the PSMA Board of Directors, which immediately followed.

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