Author: Kees van der Beek

Following the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic in March, the EPS Condensed Matter Division, the Condensed Matter Group GEFES of the Spanish Royal Physical Society RSEF and the organising committee took the unprecedented decision to hold the biyearly CMD general conference wholly online.

Thus, it was in an entirely remote form that CMD28 took place from August 31^st till September 4^th, under the name “CMD2020GEFES ONLINE”. The conference attracted 2000 registered participants, and nearly 1000 contributed and invited papers. It involved up to 17 parallel oral morning sessions, followed by afternoon plenary- and semi-plenary talks, and a host of afternoon special- and poster sessions. These included events organised by EPS Young Minds, as well as a very well attended session on Diversity and Inclusiveness in Physics Research (50 participants). All in all, a genuine conference atmosphere was recreated, with participation remaining strong during the entire week.

The plenary talks were scheduled in the first half of the afternoon (CEST), allowing the participation of delegates from the Americas and Asia. Thus, the opening session and the first plenary talk by Prof. Pablo Jarillo-Herrero of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was attended by more than 600 people. Gratuitous registration allowed the participation of physicists of all ages, and from all continents. Indeed, this edition of CMD has seen the largest number of participants bar the editions organized together with the German Physical Society DPG, it has also seen an unprecedented participation of 86 delegates from Latin America, 173 from Asia and the Middle East, and 29 from Africa.

CMD2020GEFES ONLINE hosted three Prize Award sessions. The Europhysics prize was awarded to Prof Jörg Wrachtrup of Stuttgart University on September 2, “for his pioneering studies on quantum coherence in solid-state systems, and their applications for sensing, and, in particular, for major breakthroughs in the study of the optical and spin properties of nitrogen vacancy centers in diamond”; the Olli V. Lounasmaa memorial prize for low temperature physics was awarded to Prof J.C. Seamus Davis of the University College Cork and Oxford University for his pioneering investigations and applications of exquisite scanning probe techniques for visualization of electronic quantum matter at the atomic scale on September 4^th, and the Spanish GEFES prizes for young scientists were awarded on September 3^rd.

In the weeks to come, the EPS Condensed Matter Division is planning to report on its experience with this novel conference format, its opportunities, its caveats, and lessons learned.

Figure Caption : Screenshot of the online CMD Europhysics Prize Award session during the CMD2020GEFES ONLINE  conference on Wednesday, September 2, 2020. (Top row) From left to right:  Prof. Dr; Jörg Wrachtrup, 2020 CMD Europhysics Prize laureate ; Kees van der Beek, chair of the EPS Condensed Matter Division; Petra Rudolf, EPS president ; Bart van Tiggelen, Editor-in-chief of EPL. (Bottom row) From left to right: Hermann Suderow, chair of the local organising committee; Serghei Klimin (delegate).