Editorial – Pulling together after Brexit
Like many physicists in the UK, I spent the final Friday of June in shock. Voters in Britain had just opted by a margin of 52% to 48% to leave the European Union (EU) – and suddenly nothing in the world seemed to make sense any more. I’d never really thought a majority would want a British exit (Brexit) from the EU. As with the referendum over Scottish independence from the UK in 2014, I’d assumed voters would come to their senses at the last minute.
Portrait of Barbara Capone: when dreams come true
Barbara Capone is at present an APART (Austrian Programme for Advanced Research and Technology) Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, at the Physics Department of the Vienna University. She is a young theoretical soft matter physicist, working on developing coarse graining models for soft matter systems to allow the design and simulation of novel materials in the nanoscale. Her work focuses primarily, but not only, on polymer science.
Below is an interview between Barbara [BC] and Lucia Di Ciaccio [LDC], Chair of the Equal Opportunity Committee of EPS.
What’s new for 2016 from the EPS Conference Department?
The European Physical Society has established 3 different formulas of conference managing for its Divisions and Groups, as follow:
- Basic Option which includes the announcements of your conference through our network tools and the 1st step of abstract submission;
- Improved Option which includes publicity/communication + management of the abstract submission
Solar Power to the People
The Council of the European Physical Society, held in Mulhouse on 1-2 April 2016, welcomed a round-table on the theme “Physics for Development”. Several associations and organisations were invited to present their projects: Sunshine4Palestine and Liter of Light, as well as the Basic Science Programme at UNESCO, the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics [ICTP] and the International Astronomical Union [IAU].
Lucie Baron, business developer at the French branch of Liter of Light, was one of the invited speakers.
3D Printing for development an initiative of the EPS Physics for Development Group
The latest initiative of the Physics for Development group was to launch a program on 3D printing for science with the Cameroon Physical Society in cooperation with Paul Woafo (head of the physics department at Yaoundé 1 University), the founder of the Cameroon Physical Society and its first president. The main goal of this project was to improve the availability of laboratory equipment for use in university, especially for optics accessories. Nowadays taking advantage of the open source availability of 3D design of laboratory equipment it is possible to improve the situation in many universities in which workshops are scarce or not available at all. Through a close cooperation with the Scientific Fab Lab of ICTP (Trieste) a physicist of Yaoundé University Mr Nana Bonaventure was trained for three months and two 3D printer kits with spare parts were sent to him. He was able to build the two 3D printers and to print different objects.
NANOMETA 2017 – the abstract submission is now open
NANOMETA 2017, 6th International Topical Meeting on Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, will take place from 4-7 January 2017 in Seefeld (Tirol), Austria.
NANOMETA 2017 aims to bring together the international Nanotechnology, Photonics and Materials research communities where most recent and challenging results and plans are discussed in the informal setting on a glorious mountaineering resort.
SESAME: Pre-announcement of call for proposals
SESAME expects to put out a call for proposals to carry out experiments at the first two SESAME beamlines (X-ray Absorption Fine Structure/X-ray Fluorescence and Infra-Red Spectro-microscopy) in the coming month.
Nominations for Editor-in-Chief of EPL are open
Nominations are now open for the Editor-in-Chief of EPL, a leading global letters journal owned and published by a consortium of 17 national physical societies in Europe. The Editor-in-Chief [EiC] needs to be a recognised authority and leading researcher in a field of physics, and have a broad knowledge and interest in physics and its frontiers. The EiC will need to demonstrate strong commitment and leadership to further develop EPL as a top-ranking journal. Experience with the editorial process for a physics journal is also desirable.
EPS Executive & Staff activity for July 2016
The EPS works to support its members. Find below the list of activities of the EPS Executive Committee and staff last month:
1st Biology for Physics Conference: Is there new Physics in Living Matter?
The workshop entitled ¨Biology for Physics: is there new physics in living matter?¨iwill take place in Barcelona, Spain, from 15-18 January 2017. The workshop is organised under the auspices of the Division of Physics for Life Sciences from the European Physical Society [EPS], and will be held at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park [PRBB].
2nd International Conference on the History of Physics
The 2nd International Conference on the History of Physics is organised in Pöllau, Austria, from 5-7 september 2016.
The Steering Committee welcomes you warmly to this second conference in a series that is organised on a worldwide basis. By bringing together historians of science, physicists, science museum staff, lecturers and teachers, as well as others interested in any aspect of the history of physics, it aims to raise the profile of the subject to its rightful place in physics education and research.
NANOMETA 2017
NANOMETA 2017, The 6th International Topical Meeting on Nanophotonics and Metamaterials, will take place from 4 to 7 January 2017 in Seefeld (Tirol), Austria.
