Meetings

Virtual Meetings

As you may know from DPOLY-member emails, DPOLY has organized virtual meetings this summer and fall, minisymposia, and webinars.

(A summary of some events is given below.)

If you want to organize another virtual event, please contact DPOLY chair, Amalie Frischknecht, for information. For example, Thomas Gartner (Princeton University), Emily Lin (University of Pennsylvania), Thomas O'Connor (Sandia National Laboratories), and Kevin Shen (University of California Santa Barbara) are organizing a series of meetings. If you have ideas and/or want to volunteer to organize a meeting, please fill out this Google Form. This idea was hatched during the Early Career Coffee Breaks.

Early career members can join the coffee break at this link:

https://spatial.chat/s/apsdpoly

Password: reptation

If you are not receiving DPOLY emails, please check your membership and also check your account settings to see if you are signed up to receive emails. If you have questions, please contact the division secretary, Steve Hudson. 

Biweekly Polymer Physics and Polymer Spectroscopy ("P3S") Webinar (ongoing)

For abstracts and the Zoom link see here:

http://www.physik.uni-halle.de/upcoming-p3s-webinars/

More information can be found on the main website:

http://www.physik.uni-halle.de/p3s-webinar/

Virtual Polymer Physics Symposium

Whitney Loo (UC Berkeley) and Konane Bay (Princeton) organized the Virtual Polymer Physics Symposium for graduate students and postdocs that took place over two days from July 28-29 on Zoom. The goal of the symposium was to bring together graduate students and postdocs studying polymer physics. 

On Day 1, they kicked off the symposium with a mentoring panel on “Becoming Interdisciplinary Leaders in Polymer Physics.” The mentors, Russell Composto (UPenn), Nathaniel Lynd (UT Austin), Debbie Audus (NIST), and Michelle Sing  (Braskem America), gave insightful answers to questions from attendees. Over 230 grad students and postdocs attended the panel. Over the two days,18 oral presentations from graduate students and postdocs were presented in four different sessions led by eight discussion leaders. An average of 160 graduate students and postdocs attended the talks over the two days. Additionally, on both days, an informal zoom networking break was held to allow attendees to make new connections within the polymer physics community.

On Day 2, the keynote event was the “Dispersity and Diversity” discussion hour organized by Melody Morris (MIT), Alexa Kuenstler (UMass Amherst), and Ben Yavitt (Stony Brook). The discussion hour was a platform for grad students, postdocs, and early career researchers (ECR) to discuss the necessary changes to increase diversity and inclusion in the field of polymer physics. Participants responded to the pre-readings and engaged in thoughtful discussions within small breakout room environments led by 19 discussion leaders. Each breakout session was tasked with identifying three key takeaways (interesting observations, helpful resources, or proposed changes) as actionable items were presented to all 77 participants at the conclusion of the session, and these takeaways are currently being compiled to be shared with the DPOLY executive committee. 

The symposium organizers would like to thank all of the panelists, speakers, discussion leaders, and the organizers of the Dispersity and Diversity Discussion Hour. We’d also like to acknowledge APS DPOLY and zmurl for the technical support.