Triennial meeting of the Roland Eötvös Physical Society
The triennial meeting of the Physical Society of Hungary named after Roland Eötvös took place this August at the town of Szeged (HU). There were a total of 350 participants, mostly from research institutions of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, major universities, the ELI-ALPS and also many teachers attended. With a few exceptions, the conference language was Hungarian, therefore it was a pleasant surprise that a large number of participants arrived from EU countries. More than half of the participants presented their work in a session talk or on posters.
The meeting was organized primarily by the Roland Eötvös Physical Society, while local organizing was done by members of the Institute of Physics of the University of Szeged and the Research Centre for Biology, which hosted the event in its lecture rooms and lecture theater.
The event began with a visit to the beautiful Town Hall, where the representatives of the City Council and the University of Szeged greeted the participants and hosted a reception. The Hungarian pillar of the EU sponsored three ELI-ALPS facilities are currently being built within the boundaries of Szeged. Therefore the main theme of the meeting was the contribution of the physics community in Hungary to the science of the ELI-ALPS laser facility. An overview of the ELI-ALPS project was given during the plenary talk of prof. Dimitrios Charalambidis, the lead scientist of the project and several details were later discussed in many sessions during the conference. The Romanian pillar was introduced by the directror, prof. Victor Zamfir. Visits were organized to the ELI-ALPS building site, where participants could experience the synergy of scientific knowledge about vibration dampening and isolation and engineering finesse in the design and building process.
Other large EU projects, like the European Spallation Source were also present in the talks and made available their timeline and research plans. A short presentation introduced the European Physical Journals series.
Participating school teachers enjoyed not only scientific presentations, but had their own sessions dedicated to various aspects and problems in teaching physics. One of the most anticipated events of the conference was a panel discussion about the reintegration of (mostly young) researchers returning from abroad. The discussion was attended by Dr. Laszlo Palkovics, Secretary of State for Education and Dr. Jozsef Palinkas, head of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office, the most important financing organisation in basic research in Hungary. During the course of the discussion, Hungarian participation at the ILL, CERN and other large scale research facilities were discussed in detail. At the beginning of the meeting two elected honorary members of the Roland Eötvös Physical Society, Gaetana Laricchia (UC London) and Tibor Juhasz (UC Irvine) gave their induction speeches. Details about the conference, program and abstracts of the presentations (in Hungarian) can be found at the conference website: http://titan.physx.u-szeged.hu/fizikus_vandorgyules_2016/
