The EPS Council in front of the Fundação Dr. António Cupertino de Miranda, Porto

The Council of the European Physical Society (EPS) took place in Porto this year. In the beautiful premises of the Fundação Dr. António Cupertino de Miranda, representatives of EPS Member Societies, Individual Members, Associate Members, chairs of Divisions, Groups and Committees gathered to exchange ideas on the Society's activities.

The first day was dedicated to reports from the EPS president, the treasurer and various work groups. Discussions were launched around changes in the EPS constitution and participants had the opportunity to discover the candidates for several elections.  The day concluded with a dinner in the impressive contemporary building of Casa da Musica in the centre of Porto. A tribute to David Lee, former EPS Secretary General, was presented by the current EPS President Luc Bergé and several of his predecessors: Luisa Cifarelli, Maciej Kolwas, Ove Poulsen, Christophe Rossel, Petra Rudolf and Rüdiger Voss.

The second day revealed the results of elections for a renewed EPS Executive Committee. Mairi Sakellariaou, is the EPS President-Elect. A professor of Theoretical Physics at King’s College London, former co-editor at the EPL journal and current chair of the EPS Gravitational Physics Division, Mairi will succeed Luc Bergé as EPS President in 2024. Presentations of the activities of ISBSSD (International Year of Basic Science for Sustainable Development) and the congress of the French Physical Society, celebrating its 150th anniversary this year were also on the agenda. The Society's Awards were attributed as follows:

• EPS Gero Thomas Medal to Christophe Rossel
• EPS Fellows to José Maria De Teresa and Nicola Bianchi
• EPS Honorary Member to Karl Heinz Langanke
• EPS Early Career Awards to Adolfo Grushin and Jose Lado
• EPS Edison Volta Prize 2020 awarded to Klaus Ensslin, Jurgen Smet and Dieter Weiss. Profs Ensslin and Weiss each presented their work prior to the award of the prize. 

Details of all 2023 EPS Awards can be found here: https://www.eps.org/?page=distinctions

The Council ended with an online meeting with our colleagues from the Ukraine Physical Society (UPS):  Prof. Maksym Strikha Taras Shevchenko, Kyiv National University Ukraine, UPS Board Member, UPS President (2013-2016) and Prof. Mikhail Belogolovskii Comenius University, Bratislava, UPS Vice President. Both described the harsh living conditions and the losses among the scientific community who stayed in the country and carried on their work despite the war. They thanked the EPS for its support and encouraged the assembly to work on further common actions.

The 2020 Council meeting of the European Physical Society [EPS] took place on 29 May 2020. The EPS Secretariat organised the meeting on-line, allowing more than 70 people to participate in the meeting. The EPS President, Petra Rudolf, summarised the activity of the EPS and its Committees, Divisions and Groups. The accounts for 2019 were presented by the EPS Honorary Treasurer, Frances Saunders.

The two candidates for President-Elect, Luc Bergé (FR) and Zsolt Fülöp (HU), also presented their programmes to the EPS Council delegates. The EPS is pleased to announce that Luc Bergé has been elected as the next EPS President-elect. He will take up office as the President of EPS in April 2021, when the term of the current President, Petra Rudolf, comes to an end. The EPS warmly thanked Zsolt Fülöp, for standing as a candidate.

Luc Bergé graduated in mathematics and physics from the Universities of Toulouse and Paris-Sud, Orsay, France. In 1989, he received his PhD in theoretical physics, devoted to the strong Langmuir turbulence in laser-driven fusion plasmas. In 1990, he was employed as research scientist at CEA (French Commission for Atomic Energy and Alternative Energies). Working first on parametric instabilities in plasmas, he then turned to nonlinear optics in 1995. In 1997, he passed his Habilitation thesis on wave collapse in physics. He next devoted his research to the filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in transparent media and related properties such as supercontinuum generation and pulse self-compression, which he pioneered in the early 2000. More recently, Luc Bergé focused his scientific activities on terahertz pulse generation induced by femtosecond pulses in gases. With his team he is exploring new ways to produce energetic THz waves by using ultra-intense laser pulses. Also involved in experimental efforts on innovative detection methods, Luc Bergé coordinates the French ANR project ALTESSE, which is devoted to ultrabroadband terahertz spectroscopy of molecules.

Luc Bergé’s research activities have been expressed in about 150 articles, six book chapters and 170 conferences (100 invited). He was elected Fellow of The Optical Society (OSA) in 2009, EPS Fellow in 2016, Fellow of the European Optical Society (EOS) in 2018 and Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) in 2019. He received the DGA-Young Researcher Prize in 1997, the second Bull-Fourier Prize in 2012 and the 2018 Gentner Kastler Prize jointly attributed by the German and French Physical Societies. He is Director of Research at CEA Direction Ile de France, where he is heading a laboratory dedicated to radiation-matter interaction. Luc Bergé served as Chair of the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the EPS until 2017. He was General coordinating Chair of the conference CLEO/Europe-EQEC 2015. Elected a member of the Executive Committee of the EPS, he was in charge of its Associate Membership policy and of the Equal Opportunities Committee. He co-created the Letokhov Medal awarding exceptional achievements in laser-matter interaction in partnership between the EPS and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Luc Bergé

The European Physical Society [EPS] is pleased to announce that Rüdiger Voss has been elected as the next EPS President-elect. He will take up office as the President of EPS in April 2017, when the term of the current President, Christophe Rossel comes to an end.

R. Voss was elected during the Extraordinary Council meeting of the EPS held on 14 October 2016 at the EPS Secretariat in Mulhouse. It is noteworthy that Council delegates could participate either in person, or on-line through the video conferencing system. The EPS welcomed 25 delegates in person and a further 23 attended over the internet.

The Council delegates listened to three inspiring presentations from the three candidates. The EPS would like to express its heartfelt thanks to Zsolt Fülöp (HU) and Sydney Galès (FR) who also stood as candidates for President-elect. Their contributions to the EPS and their vision were impressive as well.

R. Voss has recently served as Head of International Relations at CERN. In addition to a successful scientific career at CERN, R. Voss was instrumental in setting up the SCOAP3 Open Access consortium.