DAMOP 2006 Potpourri
Report on the Meeting
Joe Macek
The 2006 DAMOP meeting, held from 16-20 May 2006 at the Knoxville Convention Center in Knoxville, was a lively gathering of 945 AMO scientists. There were 68 invited talks, and 750 oral and poster presentations in the 3 1/2 day 
meeting. Of the 945 registrants, 375 were students. Participants came from nearly every one of the 50 states and 36 foreign countries.
In addition to the new physics presented in the regular program several special scientific events were featured. On the Tuesday before the conference the DAMOP organizers featured an Educators' day for high school teachers. The dean of the UT arts and sciences college provided support for and personally invited every high school teacher in the state of Tennessee to participate in a stimulating workshop organized by Steve Rolston of the University of Maryland featuring presentations by Tim Gay (University of Nebraska), Ed Lee (APS), William Phillips (NIST), Lou Bloomfield (University of Virginia) and David Taylor (American Association of Physics Teachers). The executive committee of the DAMOP and other members of the AMO community shared a lunch with high school science teachers and welcomed them to the workshop held at the Knoxville Convention Center.
Student tutorials were also featured for the Tuesday before the meeting. The workshop was organized by Predrag Krstic of Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the first part featured lectures at the University of Tennessee Nielsen Physics Bldg by Nick Biglow on “Ultracold Polar Molecule: From Cold Chemistry to Molecule Chips,” Jerry Gabrielse: “Setting a Trap for Antimatter” and Bill McCurdy: “Using Advanced Computation to Solve the Coulomb Breaking Problem.” The lectures were followed by a tour of the ORNL Spallation Neutron Source, the Center for Nanophase Materials and the ORNL Computing Center. The tours were open to all participants and 88 conferees took advantage of the opportunity to see the research facilities at ORNL.
The conference was opened by Phil Bredesen, the Governor of Tennessee, who emphasized the need to communicate the significance of AMO research to citizens of the State and Nation. Following the Governor's remarks the conference began with a plenary session honoring APS prize winners Lew Cocke (Kansas State University), Rainer Grobe (Illinois State University), Q. Charles Su (Illinois State University) and Paul Corkum (National Research Council of Canada).
During the conference there was a public lecture Wednesday evening by Professor Tim Gay of the University of Nebraska on “Football Physics” and on Thursday evening there was a Nobel symposium featuring popular talks by Nobel Laureates William Phillips and Eric Cornell. The lectures were followed by a reception open to the public.
The Friday evening banquet featured Patricia M. Dehmer, Associate Director, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy who spoke on “The Making of the American Competitiveness Initiative: How Societal Needs and Science Got Together and What it Means for You.” She emphasized the bipartisan support of science in the executive and congressional branches of the U. S. government. Tennessee legislators from both the Democratic and Republican parties supported this major new initiative.
The Friday evening banquet featured Patricia M. Dehmer, Associate Director, Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the U.S. Department of Energy who spoke on “The Making of the American Competitiveness Initiative: How Societal Needs and Science Got Together and What it Means for You.” She emphasized the bipartisan support of science in the executive and congressional branches of the U. S. government. Tennessee legislators from both the Democratic and Republican parties supported this major new initiative.
Undergraduate Research Session
DAMOP was pleased to continue the tradition of having a special session to highlight research performed by undergraduate students. This year's presentations were made by Sawyer Campbell (Illinois State University), Dimitri Dounas-Frazer (Colorado School of Mines), Jamie Kapplinger (Augustana College), Brian Neyenhuis (Brigham 
Young University), and Michael Wall (Auburn University). Thanks to the Education Committee, Don Griffin, Don Madison, and Allen Landers, for arranging this session. The students were given travel support to attend the meeting and were presented with a plaque. The future looks bright!
Thesis Prize
Also showing the great promise of the next generation of AMO scientists was the Thesis Prize session. The finalists were Yong-Il Shin (MIT), Brian Odom (Harvard), Thomas Pohl (ITAMP), and Oren Cohen (Technion, Israel institute of Technology). The Thesis Prize Committee, Steve Manson, Chris Monroe, Janine Shertzer, Aephraim Steinberg, and Barry Walker, worked hard to choose these finalists from the excellent nominations and equally hard to select the winner, Brian Odom. Each of the finalists is offered travel support to attend DAMOP and the winner receives a certificate and a $2500 honorarium. Congratulations to all of the finalists!
Student Support for Travel to DAMOP
One of the most satisfying parts of the success of the DAMOP meeting in Knoxville was the tremendous number of student registrations, 40 percent of the total. Student participation has been helped by generous support for the past several meetings by grants from NSF and from NIST. These valuable supplements to what academic advisors can provide assist students that might not otherwise be able to attend. This year these grants allowed DAMOP to support 46 students in the amount of $500 each. One hundred students applied for this support. Thanks to the NSF and NIST, and to the Education Committee (in particular, Allen Landers) for facilitating these grants.
Pat Dehmer's Keynote Presentation
A number of people have requested a copy of Pat's informative talk on the American Competitiveness Initiative and what it means for AMO scientists.
MS Powerpoint presentation (16.2 MB)
Physical Review Session for Authors and Referees
George Basbas for Gordon Drake, Lee Collins, and Frank Narducci
DAMOP 2006 also marked another first, a special session for referees and authors of manuscripts seeking publication in the Physical Review.
The session was well attended; the audience was estimated to be 80-100. There was crowding in the rear of the room, reflecting the usual reluctance of people to move forward to find seats and, perhaps, the location of refreshments. The questions asked of the panelists by the audience were good, reasonable, and the kind of queries an editor might hope for.
The session was lively and the response afterwards was enthusiastic. Several of the organizers received compliments on the session and were urged to repeat it at the next DAMOP meeting.
DAMOP/DAMP 2007 Announced
Rob Thompson, local chair of the upcoming joint meeting of DAMOP and DAMP, did a great job of “getting the word out” through presentations to the Executive Committee and at the Business Meeting, along with distribution of handy “DAMOP/DAMP 2007” cards. Please see http://phas.ucalgary.ca/DAMOP07/ , the conference website, for advanced information about the environs and the meeting, which is scheduled for June 5-9, 2007 in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
As was the case with the Knoxville meeting, the invited scientific sessions at the Calgary meeting will be determined solely by nominations submitted to the APS March Meeting website. The URL and opening date for this website are as yet undetermined, but it is likely that submissions will be accepted between approximately 1 August and the deadline of 29 September 2006. (Contributed talks for the Calgary meeting must be submitted later in the year on a different website.) Notification of the details will be sent to the membership when they become available. The web nomination procedure has the advantage that it largely opens up and democratizes the program process, and eliminates much of the “old-boy network” that was used in the past. The web system can only be effective, however, if people actually SUBMIT proposals. The working rule that the Program Committee has strictly abided by is that no person who has not been nominated either in the body of a full symposium proposal or as an individual speaker can be asked to speak, with the exception of prize (APS or Nobel!) winners. If you do not want to submit a full symposium proposal, but know a few great speakers, you may nominate them individually.
For Knoxville, the Program Committee received a large number of very good proposals. They received so many, in fact, that many had to be rejected, or similar proposals combined. The best way to ensure that a symposium proposal will be accepted in its entirety, without revision by the Program Committee, is to make a compelling case for the scientific coherence and importance of your speaker topic list, and to provide a full slate of speakers, preferably who have already expressed willingness to speak. (In contacting potential speakers, it is important to tell them that your inquiry does not constitute an official invitation to speak; only APS can do that.)