A Message from the Chair
Greetings! I am sure that everyone is looking forward to attending the upcoming March Meeting in Denver. As you’ll see below, DMP has organized an exciting program that covers a comprehensive range of topics of contemporary interest for our members. DMP has a significant presence at the March Meeting through Focus Topic sessions, some of which run through the entire week. Each DMP Focus Topic provides a structure to gather contributed and invited talks together in a series of coordinated sessions that foster increased discussion on a specific area. Please join me in thanking our Chair-Elect, Toni Taylor, and her team of Focus Topic organizers who worked very hard to assemble an excellent series of talks in these sessions. You will find more details about the Focus Topic sessions later in this Newsletter. Additionally, this is the time to propose new Focus Topics for next year’s March meeting. Please do so by contacting either Rachel Goldman who will be the DMP Program Chair for the 2021 March Meeting or DMP Secretary/Treasurer Charles Ahn using the instructions provided later in this Newsletter. Please consider suggesting invited speakers to these Focus Topics when the selections and organizers are announced.
Our Vice-Chair, Rachel Goldman, our Past-Chair, Amanda Petford-Long, and Toni have also organized three invited symposia. These are:
- The DMP Past Chair’s Symposium (D36) on Monday afternoon, featuring Margaret Murnane, Joseph Stroscio, Eli Rotenberg, and Chunhui Du.
- The DMP Prize Symposium (J19) on Tuesday afternoon, featuring the recipients of the APS Medal (Miriam Sarachik), the McGroddy Prize for new Materials (Michael Eremets), the Adler Lectureship (Chang-Beom Eom), the Edward Bouchet Award (Nadya Mason), and the IUPAP C-10 Young Scientist Prize (Andrea Young).
- The "Physics for Everyone" symposium (U36) on Thursday afternoon which is centered on physics in popular culture and features James Kakalios, Patrick Johnson, David A Weitz, Anissa Ramirez, and Diandra Leslie-Pelecky.
Do make sure to put these invited symposia and our Focus Topic sessions on your meeting calendar!
Our award winners and new APS fellows nominated through DMP will be recognized on Tuesday evening, March 3, from 5:30-7:30 in FGH Centennial at the Hyatt. This ceremony will also recognize the achievements of junior scientists through the Ovshinsky Travel Awards, the IUPAP C-10 Young Scientist Prize, and the Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award in Materials and Condensed Matter Physics. The annual DMP business meeting follows immediately after in the Convention Center in Room 102. Topics to be discussed in that meeting include the Focus Topics for the 2020 March meeting, including any new proposals for Focus Topics. Please do attend: this is your chance to provide direct input into the agenda for the 2021 March meeting.
DMP also plays a really important role in recognizing the stellar scientific achievements of our members through awards and election to APS Fellow. The two major awards are the David Adler Lectureship Award and the James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials; nomination packages for these are due 6/1/2020. APS Fellow nominations are due by Friday 5/1/2020. Complete information on the nomination process is available online. I urge you to help us by nominating an excellent and diverse slate of colleagues who have advanced scientific frontiers in materials physics.
As you might imagine, it takes many volunteers to keep all these DMP activities going. My contributions to the DMP Chair-line would have been impossibly difficult without the wisdom, advice, and helpful guidance of the more experienced members of the executive committee, particularly Amanda Petford-Long (Past-Chair), Charles Ahn (Secretary-Treasurer), and Sam Bader (APS Councilor). Amanda and Charles will be leaving the DMP Executive Committee in March and Sam will leave the APS Council in December. Please join me in giving them a huge round of applause for their leadership! And, once again, many thanks to Toni Taylor, DMP Chair Elect, for organizing the 2020 March Meeting! Thanks also go to DMP Executive Committee Members at Large who are completing their terms, Zeke Scott-Halperin and Ni Ni: they both helped enormously with the Focus Topic organization over the past 3 years. Finally, I would like to extend a warm welcome to the newly-elected members of the DMP Executive Committee: Vice-Chair-elect, Vivien Zapf, Secretary-Treasurer-elect, Steven May, and Members at Large elect, Anand Bhattacharya and Peter Fischer.
I’ve been honored to serve as DMP Chair this past year, and I thank all of you for the opportunity to contribute to the Division.
Finally, I am deeply distressed about the serious impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on our colleagues who live in China, as well as on everyone with friends, family, and collaborators in China. We realize that there will likely be many speakers from China scheduled for presentations who will unfortunately be unable to attend the March Meeting due to travel restrictions. At this stage, we can only wait to see whether the situation might change for the better. In the meantime, APS staff are trying to set up contingency plans to the extent possible. You will hear about these through emails as more information becomes available. APS has posted an advisory statement about COVID-19.
Please join me in sending best wishes and thoughts of support to all those who have been adversely affected by the health emergency. I hope that the challenge will be resolved soon.
Nitin Samarth, DMP Chair