16th EPS Young Minds Action Committee meeting
The 16th EPS Young Minds Action Committee meeting took place at CERN, close to Geneva (Switzerland) on 10th of November 2017.
Surrounded by a fabulous landscape and immersed in the heart of the world of Particle Physics, the meeting started by welcoming two new Action Committee members: Imran Khan and Giorgio Nocerino.
All of the other committee members were present (Eva Salvador, Enrique Sanchez, Roberta Caruso and Jonas Berzins) along with the President of the EPS, Rüdiger Voss, the EPS Project leader for YM activities, Ophélia Fornari, the EPS Secretary General, David Lee, and Sylvie Jacquemot, member from the Executive Committee and the EPS Plasma Physics Division.
Jonas Berzins, who has been a member of the Action Committee since 2015, announced his resignation from the committee from January 2018. We sincerely thank Jonas for his time and commitment in the Young Minds project, which has largely benefited from his advice and support.
We agreed to have more defined roles within the young members committee, e.g. secretary, treasurer, and communication manager. The final resolution of this decision will be communicated to all the Young Minds sections in due time.
We also discussed the photo contest for the EPS 50 Anniversary; for more information visit http://www.epsnews.eu/2017/10/eps-50th-anniversary-photo-contest.
The place and date of the next Leadership Meeting was among the points discussed in this meeting. At the end of the 6th Leadership Meeting in Naples, last May, we again invited all the Young Minds sections to apply to host the next Meeting. After a challenging task evaluating the applications, we are proud to announce that the next Leadership Meeting will take place in Prague at the beginning of May this year.
The meeting opened with a presentation of the activities of the Konstanz YM-jDPG section by Karl-Philipp. The continuous growing of the number of Young Minds Sections around Europe was highlighted. This year, after the incorporation of Prague (Czech-Republic), Tenerife (Spain), the project now has 35 Sections. This growing success is possible thanks to the work of the committee as well as the support of the EPS governance. Extra funds were made available in 2015, due to the International Year of Light, allowing the running of more activities. Another success of that year was the 4th Leadership Meeting which took place at ICFO (Castelldefels, Spain). Also in that year, several members of the committee promoted Young Minds in different international conferences such as the EuNPC conference that took place in August in the Netherlands and the IONS conference that took place in Valencia (Spain) at the end of September.
Although 2015 was successful for the Young Minds project, sustained effort is needed to continue growing. In the following months a friendlier webpage with more information about sections will be designed. The 7th Young Minds Leadership Meeting will be organised. Moreover, grants criteria will be slightly modified to ensure high participation and impact of the accepted projects. Finally, Young Minds will contact other EPS Groups and Committee with some activities such as the Physics for Development Group or the Equal Opportunity Committee [EOC].
Keep an eye on our new adventures Young Minds!
For further information about the EPS Young Minds project visit the EPS Young Minds website or the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/EPSYM/
