Noemie Koller

It is midyear and time for a report on the overall activities that FIP has been engaged in. This was the year when the APS "April" Meeting was held in Washington again, but in February! However, the APS staff managed the logistics superbly and all planned events ran very smoothly, even though we missed the blooming of the cherry trees. The cherry blossoms were replaced by a major snowfall which impeded the travel plans of many attendees!

The FIP Newsletter

There has been a change in the newsletter editorship as Professor Laszlo Baksay, who has managed the FIP Newsletter effectively over many years, has assumed new responsibilities as US representative to the UNESCO Basic Sciences Scientific Board. The members of FIP are enormously grateful to Laszlo for his many years of service and his important contribution to the FIP.

Dr. Ernie Malamud, retired from Fermi Lab, and currently on the Adjunct Faculty at the University of Nevada (Reno), was elected by the FIP Executive Committee, to a 3-year term as FIP Newsletter editor.

I spoke with Ernie and asked him what he would like to accomplish as the FIP Newsletter Editor. This was his response:

"The Newsletter is a crucial means for communicating with our large membership of over 3000. This is especially true since only a small percentage is able to attend the FIP sessions at the APS March and April meetings.

As specified in the by-laws I will edit two newsletters per year, a fall issue and a spring issue. The first one I edit will be the Spring 2011 issue and my goal is to have it completed in time to have printed copies available at the APS March meeting March 21 - 25, 2011 in Dallas, Texas. Therefore, I’ve set the deadline for receipt of contributions for this issue as February 1, 2011. Members of the FIP are invited and encouraged to submit contributions. Send them to malamud@foothill.net.

Also as specified in the by-laws I am appointing a small Newsletter Committee to help me with author and topic suggestions.

For contributions I prefer "newsy" items of 500 – 1000 words in length but article length is certainly negotiable! Also I like photographs and other graphic items. Preferred format is MSword and JPG for the illustrations. I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Ernie"

Executive Committee Meeting in Washington, Dc, February 2010

The 2010 Executive Committee meeting was held during the "April" meeting in Washington. Next year's meeting will likely be held during the March meeting, in Dallas, March 21 - 25, 2011. The next April meeting will take place in Anaheim, April 30 - May 3, 2011.

The Committee welcomed the newly elected members-at-large of the Executive Committee, Alberto Santoro of the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Giulia Pancheri of the INFN Frascati National Laboratory, Rome, Italy, and the well known Past FIP Chair, Herman Winick, newly elected as APS/FIP councillor.

There were several guests attending the meeting and dinner: Luis Rodriguez, President of the Mexican Physical Society, Fernando Quevedo, the new Director of ICTP, and Ivelisse Cabrera, past International Students Affairs Officer and Sarah Caudill, Chair of the Forum of Graduate Students Affairs (FGSA).

Luis Rodriguez gave an overview of the activities of the Mexican Physical Society. Sarah Caudill gave an overview of the activities of FGSA and thanked FIP for reaching out to FGSA and recognizing the graduate student perspective.

Amy Flatten, the APS Director of the International Affairs Office discussed the importance of the international physics community to the APS and her remarks are summarized below.

General Thoughts for Future FIP Activities

The world is becoming more and more supportive of global collaborations. Traveling across oceans and continents is done as a matter of fact for experimental and theoretical work in spite of advanced communication systems. Our colleagues form an increasingly diverse group where the diversity is evidenced by the increased overlap of and interaction between fields and most important in the demographics, junior to senior scientists sharing the "work bench", senior professors sharing night shifts with students and postdocs, people with different nationalities and ethnic origins sharing in the joy of understanding our physical environment. At the same time national governments are recognizing these social trends and are increasingly supporting the demands that cross national boundaries. The American Physical Society Forum on International Physics is seeking input from its community in order to further ease the coordination of efforts and serve its constituents at home and abroad. We are thinking in terms of international meetings, easier travel, visa issues, support in the form of no longer equipment donations to developing countries schools and laboratories, increased membership,.... any idea can be helpful....call, write, be engaged.

Awards

At the November 2009 meeting of the APS Council eight FIP-sponsored Fellowship nominations were approved:

Farhad Ardalan, Sharif University of Technology,
Ching-Ray Chang, National Taiwan University,
Karsten V. Danzmann, Institut fur Gravitationsphysik,
Mamoru Fujiwara, Osaka University,
Xingao Gong, Fudan University,
Carlos R. Ordonez, University of Houston,
Kok-Khoo Phua, World Scientific Publishing Co.,
Jorg Zegenhagen, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

We welcome and congratulate the new Fellows and are proud of their achievements in both science and issues of international cooperation. Certificates were delivered to the recipients that could attend either the March or the April meetings.

The Marshak Lectureship Award to recognize distinguished physicists from developed and developing countries was awarded to Dr. Sowwan Mukhles, Al-Quds University for his important achievements in the development of scientific collaborations in the Middle East.

FIP Sessions at the General Meetings and Call for Contributions

As usual our most important activity at the meeting was to run several invited papers sessions at the two general meetings, the Washington, DC meeting on February 13 - 16, 2010 (4 sessions), and the Portland, OR meeting on March 15 - 19, 2010 (2 sessions).

Brief overviews of the talks are given in this newsletter.

A new sorting category "P4: International Programs, Collaborations and Exchanges" was added to the program of the General Meetings in March and April where contributed abstracts dealing with international issues would be welcome.

Noemie Koller, Chair of the APS Forum on International Physics, is a Professor in the Rutgers University Department of Physics and Astronomy. Koller’s specialty is Nuclear structure and Ion-Solid Interactions.

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Disclaimer - The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Forum on International Physics Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.