PAMA Objectives & Governance

The Executive Advisory Board and Working Committees will vote upon and select their respective chair every two years by way of a simple majority vote. It is the responsibility of the current Chair to collect nominations and oversee the vote through a transparent and orderly process. New Chairs will begin their two-year term on January 1st of even calendar years (e.g. 01/01/2022; 01/01/2024, etc).

New PAMA topical Working Committees can be proposed by any PAMA member so long as the proposal is sponsored and put forward for a vote by a member of the Executive Advisory Board. A statement clearly outlining the committees proposed domain, objectives, activities, and envisioned actions should be provided as part of the package for consideration. Furthermore, the proposal should include an explanation of how the newly formed committee would not overlap with an existing committee’s domain or explain in what way the new committee would supplement an existing committee in a clearly differentiated manner.

From time to time, it is envisioned that a Working Committee may need to be dissolved owing to inactivity or by technological irrelevance as PAM progresses. The dissolution of any committee can be proposed by any Executive Advisory Board member who would be responsible for outlining how one of these two reasons for dissolution has been met. The dissolution of a committee should be a rare event and is ideally a motion proposed by, or with the consent of, the current Chair of the Working Committee in question.

Regardless of your organizations status and/or relation to PAMA, we welcome the volunteer effort of scientists and engineers to participate in Working Committees so long as they are active stakeholders in PAM. Nominations for new Working Committee members will be made by a PAMA Executive Advisory Board member (or by a Working Committee chair, by virtue of their Ex-Officio status on the Executive Advisory Board). Once an Executive Board Member nominates a candidate to a Working Committee, it is the responsibility of the Working Committee’s current Chair to hold a vote upon the nomination.

Once nominated and elected, working committee members are expected to be active and contribute in meaningful ways to the committees’ stated goals. If, at any time, a Working Committee Chair feels that a member is not participating in the committee, the Chair can initiate a vote to remove the member by a simple majority. The vote to remove of a Working Committee member should be a rare event; it is ideally envisioned that the Chair of the Working Committee would have a conversation with the  member about their engagement prior to any vote and/or that the inactive member submit their resignation willingly if they are unable to actively contribute to the Working Committee’s objectives.

It is envisioned that time to time, Working Committees may wish to collaborate on an effort of mutual interest owing to the complex and coupled nature of PAM. For example, a member of the Government Partnerships & Regulations committee might have a program manager within their division looking for guidance on a specific topic, such as PAM Material Characterization. It is expected that Intra-Committee Collaborations be manged by the respective Chairs of the committee or by way of their proxy as assigned for a specific collaborative project. In the above example, it is expected that the member of the Government Partnership committee approach their Chair, the Chair initiates contact with the Chair of the Material Characterization committee, and the two Chairs assign points of contact for the joint collaborative effort (either themselves or a proxy designate).