Meeting of Member Society Presidents

On 2 October 2015, Christophe Rossel welcomed Presidents and representatives from 23 EPS Member societies to discuss and elaborate EPS actions on a European level in the coming years. In order to provide background and context, three introductory talks were provided.
T. Karapiperis, Head of Unit, EPRS | European Parliamentary Research Service, Scientific Foresight Unit (STOA), European Parliament presented Technology Assessment and Scientific Foresight in the European Parliament: STOA’s mission, structure and activities. The talk focused on the role of the STOA (Science and Technology Options Assessment), which is an interface between science and policy making. The STOA is an official body of the EU Parliament launched in 1987. It studies the medium to long term impact of science and technology on society. It is in the agenda setting phase of the science policy cycle.

EPS Executive Committee meeting in Brussels

The EPS Executive Committee met in Brussels on 17-20 October 2015. The meeting was chaired by the EPS President, C. Rossel. The Members of the Executive Committee present were: A. Bracco, L. Di Ciaccio, A. Friberg, Z. Fulop, C. Hidalgo, G. Leuchs, E. Rachlew, M. Reiffers and F. Saunders. Excused were J. Dudley, T. Müller, and S. Sotiriou. Invited were E. van Groningen, C. Latimer, D. Lee, and V. Velasco.

New chair for the EPS Physics for Development Group

The group has a new chairman, Ernst van Groningen. He is the director of the physics program at the International Science Program [ISP] located in Uppsala, Sweden. He is a renowned scientist and an expert in the scientific cooperation with developing countries.
The group needs to better define its positioning and to think and design new action types by particularly promoting the application of new methods or/and new technologies to create a better situation for physics in developing countries.

EPS Young Minds Session at EuNPC

In the early stage of their training, young researchers need to learn a lot of skills for their future career. In order to assist with these challenges, the EPS Young Mind Project organised a special session at the European Nuclear Physics Conference, which took place in September in Groningen (NL). In this session invited speakers gave overview talks to train young scientists for their professional knowledge as well as in promoting science.
An introduction of the Young Minds Project was given by Ulrike Ritzmann highlighting the fast growth of the project in the last five years and the variety of different actions of the self-organised sections. More than 30 self-organised sections in Europe engage in outreach activities, seminars and workshops to promote science and to broaden the knowledge in science and beyond train their professional skills.

AIP Women in Physics Lecture Tour: call for nominations 2016

The Australian Institute of Physics Women in Physics Lecture Tour celebrates the contribution of women to advances in physics. Under this scheme, a woman who has made a significant contribution in a field of physics will be selected to present lectures in venues arranged by each participating branch of the AIP.  Nominations are currently sought for the AIP WIP Lecturer for 2016.

Cosmic Light: primordial & eternal

IYL 2015 public lecture series at the Academy of Athens

On the occasion of UNESCO’s inauguration of 2015 as the International Year of Light, the Research Center for Astronomy and Applied Mathematics [RCAAM] of the Academy of Athens hosted a series of public lectures aiming to raise public awareness of the defining role of light and cosmic light sources to the human perception of the universe and the advancement of science and space exploration.

Special issue of EPN on IYL 2015

Special issue of EPN on IYL 2015.

Foreword on the special issue on the science of light
Guiding light
Light for bio-imaging
Light for brevity
Controlling light at the nanoscale
Extreme light
Quantum light
Letter: about light, cosmic messages from the past
Physics in daily life: dipping bird
Crossing borders: physics and politics: a happy marriage?

PiA – Physics in Advent

With “PiA – Physics in advent”, we created a special and unique kind of advent calendar: a physics advent calendar. We introduce young scientists, and everyone who has fun with it, to 24 simple and yet ingenious experiments and physics puzzles. They aim to arouse interest in doing experiments by yourself and ignite excitement within any observer.

From 1st to 24th December 2015, we present a little experiment in a video clip every day. You can do the experiment yourself at home and answer the question on our web page throughout the day before seeing the solution video the next day.

The Fermi Prize 2015 in the International Year of Light

The 2015 Enrico Fermi Prize of the Italian Physical Society [SIF] has been awarded to Toshiki Tajima and Diederik Wiersma with the following citation:

“For their innovative and high-impact contributions to the study of phenomena dealing with the interaction of light with matter and particles“.

In particular:

– to Toshiki Tajima, University of California at Irvine, Irvine, CA, USA, “for the invention of the laser-wakefield-acceleration technique which led to a large number of fundamental and interdisciplinary applications ranging from accelerator science to plasma physics and astrophysics“;

– to Diederik Wiersma, University of Florence, Italy, and National Institute of Optics of the Italian National Research Council [INO-CNR] and European Laboratory for Non-Linear Spectroscopy[LENS], “for the first observation of Anderson localisation and of anomalous transport phenomena described by Lévy statistics in the framework of his highly original research on light propagation in disordered media“.

ESIPAP 2016 registration

Registration for the third edition of the European School in Instrumentation for Particle and Astroparticle Physics [ESIPAP] is now open.

ESIPAP was founded by the laboratory of excellence ENIGMASS and offers advanced and intensive modular courses in  instrumentation for students (Master and Ph.D.) and for  professionals.

Peerage of Science

There is a broad consensus that Peer review is the cornerstone of academic publishing. However, there is also a widespread perception that it currenntly has severe problems. Peerage of Science [PoS] is a free service that proposes to solve the issues of peer review with a radically reworked reviewing process [www.peerageofscience.org]. In the service, the author submits the manuscript to a single peer review process and the reviewed and revised manuscript is offered by PoS for concurrent consideration by any respected journal within the field. PoS features Open Engagement – any qualified, vetted scientists with user account can freely engage to review what they want.

EPS Executive & Staff activity for October 2015

The EPS works to support its members. Find below the list of activities of the EPS Executive Committee and staff for October 2015:

2 October 2015: Lucia Di Ciaccio, honorary secretary of the EPS Executive Committee, presented on behalf of  the EPS President the Emmy Noether certificate to Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [EPFL] in Lausanne (CH).

2 October 2015: Christophe Rossel, EPS president, chaired the meeting of the representatives of the EPS Member Societies [MS] at the EPS office in Belgium (rue du Trône 62, Brussels) focusing on the relations between EPS and its MS and on the way to interact with the EU institutions (Commission, Government, ERC, etc.) David Lee, EPS Secretary General, and Ophélia Fornari, EPS conference assistant, attended the meeting.