Nominations are now open for the EPS Early Career Prize. The EPS has two Early Career prizes to be awarded each year – one each for achievements of a mainly theoretical or experimental nature. Those eligible for these awards should have made a substantial contribution to the development or reputation of physics in Europe. "Early Career" is defined as those individuals in the first 12 years of their career in physics following their first degree or equivalent, with allowance for any career breaks.

More information on what is needed to make a nomination can be found here.

The deadline to submit a nomination is 15th February 2022.

Author: Swiss Physical Society

The Swiss Physical Society (SPS) at its last General Assembly in September 2021 elected Johan Chang (University of  Zürich, johan.chang@physik.uzh.ch) as its new President and Hans Peter Beck  (University of Bern, Hans.Peter.Beck@cern.ch) as its new Vice-President. The Secretary Lukas Gallmann (ETH Zürich, gallmann@phys.ethz.ch) is continuing his office.

The full board composition can be found here: https://www.sps.ch/en/sps/executive-committee.

Author: Anna Christoforidou

After one and half years of not being in the university the students of the National Kapodistrian University of Athens felt cut off from their friends and were uncomfortable with the university setting.

Luckily, our section found the perfect solution! A web-radio that not only would keep them company with relaxing music while studying, but also once a week have a live podcast (with professors or other students as guests).

Having done 3 live Podcasts already, we are more than happy to see that students participate by asking live questions, sending ideas for future podcasts and asking us to come watch the podcast live while we create it.

The Podcast idea has brought more than 20 new members to our Young Minds Section, but most importantly has given the courage to many students to get in contact with Professors of the Physics department in order to discuss and actualize their dreamed projects.

For any Greek speaker out there you can listen in the link below our Podcast with our Advisor Professor Kosmas Tsakmakidis, concerning his  research.    Is a Harry Potter invisibility cloak possible to make? How can one trap the rainbow?

(please be patient as we work on making some podcasts in english)

Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/2MI7M3SN0uRXvYAz3gjQJR?fbclid=IwAR0r4UAiXU2HD3DLHmIw7hhoRoRRsfYp9gVc43Ln6G4E8y-rezjBJKFLf3s

Our Website Link: https://youngmindsnkua.com/

On November 12th, 2021 in the course of the Laura Bassi Forum, an event held to commemorate Bologna's famous 18th century female physicist, EPS Vice-President Petra Rudolf presented the EPS Gero Thomas Medal 2021 to Luisa Cifarelli. The medal is awarded to her "for ground breaking research in particle physics and for her lifelong and very impactful commitment to European collaboration in physics and to EPS."

Luisa Cifarelli has been Full Professor of Experimental Physics in Italian Universities since 1991. She is presently based at the University of Bologna. In the last twenty years she has been strongly involved in the design, construction and running of the very large size time-of-flight detector of ALICE (A Large Ion Collider Experiment) at CERN LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which is primarily devoted to study proton-proton, nucleus-nucleus (Pb-Pb) and proton-nucleus collisions at extreme energies. She currently participates also in the EEE experiment to search for extended air showers with an unprecedented network of muon tracking telescopes installed in high schools across the whole Italian territory and in the DarkSide project to search for dark matter at LNGS. The results of her work are documented in more than 900 scientific papers she co-authored throughout her career so far.

10 years ago Prof. Cifarelli was elected the first female president of EPS and among the many important initiatives she started in that role the EPS Historic Sites programme, where the 65 places of great importance for physics have been distinguished so far, is probably the best known. She also placed great emphasis on promoting diversity, and drove the creation of the Emmy Noether Distinction for Women in Physics. Moreover, she enhanced the communications tool of EPS by redesigning the website, and personally editing the regular electronic newsletter e-EPS, forged new links with international partner societies, increased the EPS’s membership with emphasis on Associate Members, significantly expanded the Young Minds programme and commissioned the first quantitative analysis on the Importance of Physics to the Economies of Europe. Luisa Cifarelli has had also a crucial role in scientific editing, where she has acted not only as member of editorial boards of various journals but also as Chief-Editor of La Rivista del Nuovo Cimento and EPJ Plus and served on the Board of Directors of EPL. 

Luisa Cifarelli - image credit: L. Cifarelli

Author: Christophe Rossel

The EPS Technology and Innovation Group (TIG) organized a visit to ITER on the 23 November 2021. Eighteen physicists registered for the visit in Saint Paul-lez-Durance, a location close to Cadarache in southern France, with a large representation of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS). The visitors were welcomed by Alain Bécoulet, Head of Engineering Domain, replacing in the last-minute Bernard Bigot, the Director General of ITER. With a comprehensive presentation of this most ambitious energy project, the present construction status of the world’s largest tokamak was explained to the audience. ITER is an international collaboration of 35 countries and designed to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion at a large scale, with a reactor device, whose plasma is capable of producing a positive net energy for longer periods of time. The main challenges with regards to the physical process, the material science and the integrated technologies are enormous and require an impressive logistic for the construction of the buildings, the infrastructure, and the experimental device itself. After the outstanding presentation and an active QA discussion, the participants were invited to tour the whole worksite, visiting the Poloidal Magnetic Field Coils facility, the Assembly Hall, and the Tokamak itself. Useless to say that the construction site and the large scale of the components of the tokamak highly impressed the visitors, who could ask all their questions to a very competent guiding team.

At the end of the visit the participants were driven back by bus to Aix-en-Provence, where most of them spent the night before.

If you are interested in more information on ITER, please visit the website https://www.iter.org/.
An excellent focus issue on nuclear energy generation, including the ITER fusion project, is also available in English on the website of the SPS: https://www.sps.ch/en/artikel/sps-focus/sps-focus-1

Official welcome at the main building by Mr. Alain Bécoulet (4th from left, picture ITER)

The whole visiting group in the Assembly Hall. In the back one of the 18 superconducting toroidal field coils under construction,
17 m high, 360 tons each  (picture ITER)

ITER Platform drone..jpg: general view of the construction site (picture ITER)

Arrival in front of the ITER headquarters building (picture Antoine Pochelon)

Manufacturing Hall for the superconducting poloidal field coils (picture Antoine Pochelon)

The Tokamak under construction (picture Antoine Pochelon)