Report from 2026 Global Physics Summit and DPF Business Meeting
We were happy to see around 600 DPF members in attendance at the APS GPS26 conference (https://summit.aps.org/) in Denver. During the meeting, DPF sponsored 14 invited sessions, 13 minisymposia, and 26 contributed sessions. The meeting featured awards ceremonies for our prize winners, and talks on their impactful work. APS-level awards went to Francis Halzen (APS medal) and our DPF Vice Chair Hitoshi Murayama (Lilienfeld award). DPF-level awards went to Elena Pinetti (Henry Primakoff Award for Early-Career Particle Physics), John F. Donoghue (J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics), Jie Wei (Robert R. Wilson Prize for Achievement in the Physics of Particle Accelerators), Joel Butler (W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics), Kevin Lannon (Meenakshi Narain Mentoring Award), Zhiquan Sun (J. J. and Noriko Sakurai Dissertation Award in Theoretical Particle Physics), and Christina Wang (Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award in Experimental Particle Physics).
The conference featured our first ever “lunch with an expert” event, hosted by DPF Vice Chair Hitoshi Murayama and former DPF Executive Committee student member Olivia Bitter and was sold out. Participants indicated that they very much appreciated the rare “April” meeting contribution to this APS program. We are considering hosting more next year, constrained by our budget. This year our research focus was on neutrinos, but based upon participant feedback, we encourage suggestions for potential speakers from across our field going forward. Please contact GPS26 DPF program committee chair Kate Scholberg.
Our annual business meeting was held on Wednesday evening (https://indico.global/event/17360/) with a full room, perhaps due to the snacks, or perhaps due to the talk by DOE-HEP Energy Frontier Program Manager Abid Patwa on the recent news of the merger of DOE Nuclear and High Energy Physics in DOE’s Office of Science. Abid indicated that the two programs are complementary and have close synergies across several initiatives undertaken by each program office. He also indicated there are no plans for reduction in staff following this merger and that people should continue to interact with the same points of contact that they have been working with. It was also noted that the budgets would remain distinct between the two HEP and NP programs for FY26 and FY27, and that the P5 plan would still guide priorities for initiatives undertaken for HEP. Abid was also inducted as a APS Fellow of the Forum for International Physics during GPS26.
APS’s Jane Hopkins Gould gave a presentation emphasizing the work APS has been doing to fight for our budgets and introducing two new journals, including one focused on AI with no publishing fee in the short term (sure to be of interest in these days of the Genesis Mission).
Secretary/Treasurer Ken Bloom presented the budget and presented the benefits of increasing enrollment and a plan to improve our membership. Fellowship certificates were presented to the new DPF APS Fellows (Anadi Canepa, Florencia Canelli, Bertrand Echenard, Fernando Febres Cordero, Stefania Gori,Thomas Hartman, Gray Rybka, Misao Sasaki, Matthew Toups). We were very happy that five of our new fellows were able to attend and receive their certificate in person. As a reminder: the number of DPF Fellowships that can be awarded is proportional to the number of DPF members. Joining DPF and encouraging your colleagues to do so can help us honor a larger number of our members.
The 2027 March/April GPS meeting will be held 11-16 April in Atlanta Georgia. Please contact DPF program committee chair DPF chair-elect Kate Scholberg for ideas on how to make this an even more productive event. Hope to see you there!
Top