Report from the Fall 2020 Meeting hosted by the Ohio State University on October 16 – 17 (Virtual)
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the OSAPS fall 2020 meeting at the Ohio State University was moved online. The meeting was free to attendees and held using the Zoom platform. With theme “Heavy ion collisions and Astrophysics”, contributed talks from various aspect of physics were given. The meeting was held alongside with SPS Zone 7 (https://sites.google.com/view/spszone7/events/2020-fall-zone-7-meeting).
The conference began on Friday 16 October at 1 p.m. with a welcome address by Professor Michael Poirier, the Ohio State University Physics Department Chair. This was followed by the first plenary presentation in high energy nuclear physics given by Professor Helen Caines of Yale University, STAR Collaboration Spokesperson. Subsequently, Professor Roy Lacey of Stony Brook University talked about the phase diagram of quantum chromodynamics. Contributed parallel talks continued in the afternoon with three categories: ultrahigh energy nuclear physics – experiment; physics education, lasers, and condensed matter physics; and new direction. Poster session was held at 6 pm with each presenter having a Zoom breakout room where participants could visit.
From Left to Right: Prof. Helen Caines; Prof. Roy Lacey; Prof. Amy Connolly; Dr. Tuguldur Sukhbold; Prof. Thirumalai Venkatesan
The meeting continued on Saturday 17 October with plenary session in astrophysics. Poster awards for graduate and undergraduate category were given at the beginning of the session. Kristyn Brandenburg of Ohio University and member of OSAPS executive committee was presented with the graduate poster award for her poster entitled, "The Design, Validation, and Future Plans for a New Neutron Detector at Ohio University" and Skyler Wright of Miami University was the undergraduate poster recipient for his poster entitled, "Fast Quantum Control of Bose-Einstein Condensates for Inertial Sensing Applications". Each student received a prize award of $100.
Professor Amy Connolly of Ohio State University gave the first talk of the plenary in astrophysics. Dr. Tuguldur Sukhbold of Ohio State University followed. The meeting continued with three parallel sessions until the afternoon. The meeting was slated to conclude at 2 p.m. with the final plenary presentation by APS 2020 Distinguished Lectureship award Prize winner Professor Thirumalai Venkatesan of National University of Singapore. Unfortunately, Professor Thirumalai was unable to attend the meeting.
During the OSAPS meeting, Zone 7 SPS held their conference on Friday 16 October at 3 p.m. alongside. They continued with virtual board games in the evening and virtual scavenger hunt on Saturday afternoon.
Total number of registrants at the fall virtual meeting was 115. There was a total of five plenary talks, 39 oral presentations, and 16 posters. Unlike previous years, the total number of posters were lower while the total number of oral presentations increased.

The fall meeting was organized by Professor Michael Lisa, with support from the Department of Physics at the Ohio State University.