Author: Antigone Marino

The Italian Physical Society (SIF) 106th National Congress was held from 14 to 18 September 2020. Due to the worldwide covid-19 emergency it was run for the first time in the SIF history electronically.

The big challenge was to organize a Congress with its scientific characteristics as much as possible in line with tradition, but with new elements possible thanks to IT tools.

The scheme of the Program followed the usual general lines. For the scientific part three levels of talks were given: General Reports were given in plenary sessions; Invited Reports were given in parallel, in seven virtual rooms, each one corresponding to the SIF topical sessions; Communications were uploaded on the conference website as recorded presentation. For General and Invited Reports all the speakers spoke live with the possibility of intervention with comments and questions from the participants. Activities related to the SIF management were also conducted online, such as the Annual Report of the President Angela Bracco, the SIF awards ceremony, and the General Assembly of Members.

The Congress numbers confirm the large and exciting participation by the community of Italian physicists. More than 1400 registrations, compared with the 500 made in the past non-virtual editions. A number that was the success of the free registration, and the possibility of participating from anywhere in the world or Italy. The set of 10 General Reports, more than 220 Invited talks in parallel sections and 600 Communications, provided more than 135 hours of streaming, and more than 500 questions.

During the Congress there was the traditional Youth Session devoted to the new generations of physicists, organized in collaboration with the Italian Association of Physics Students (AISF), national branch of the International Association of Physics Students (IAPS).

Also this year the SIF Equal Opportunities Committee (CPO) presented an original and effective initiative for the Congress. The seven virtual rooms were dedicated to seven female scientists, to give them the visibility that they often did not have throughout history. To further highlight the peculiarity of a congress taking place in a non-place, each virtual lecture hall was represented by a nice photo of a historic lecture hall of an Italian universities or research centers.

SIF is proud of how the emergency was faced, by proposing and implementing solutions aimed at carrying out our traditional and backbone activities, such as our annual Congress. Anyway, we hope that the next one can be held live.

For more information, visit the event website: http://congresso2020.sif.it/