Report on the EPS Council 2017
The EPS Council 2017 took place from 31st March to 1st April in Erlangen, Germany.
Hosted in the splendid building of the Max-Planck Institute for the Science of Light [MPI], the meeting gathered together more than 60 members, representatives of the main European Physical Societies, as well as numerous Associate Members of the Society.
The first day was dedicated to presentations of the budget, the EPS divisions’ and groups’ activities and priorities for the coming years:
- the new “Gravitational Physics” division, presented by its chair Mairi Sakellariadou
- the EPS activities in Brussels, described by Walter van Doninck and Luc van Dyck
- the projects on new associate members by Luc Bergé, member of the EPS Executive Committee
- the presentation of the report on “Nuclear Physics for Cultural Heritage” by Faiçal Azaiez, chair of the EPS Nuclear Physics division
- the EPS Special Activity Fund, by EPS President Christophe Rossel
The EPS Council 2017 rewarded Antigone Marino, former chair of the EPS Young Minds, with the EPS Achievement award “for her outstanding leadership skills and her active promotion and development of the EPS Young Minds Project “.
Jo L.F. Hermans was awarded the Gero Thomas medal “for his role as Science Editor of Europhysics News and his numerous contributions to education and public understanding of physics.”
Eugenio Coccia, Luis Miguel de Oliveira e Silva and Victor N. Zadkov were distinguished as EPS Fellows.
The meeting was closed with a talk by Philip Russell, one of the MPI directors.
The second day started with a panel discussion chaired by Frances Saunders, representative of the Institute of Physics, on the role of science and scientists in addressing social, political and societal issues in an ethical manner. There were contributions from Pere Puigdomènech, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (ES). Christian Hauser, from the University of Zurich (CH), and Paul Hardaker from the IOP (UK).
Lastly, Christophe Rossel passed the baton to Rüdiger Voss, former head of International Relations at CERN and EPS president from 2017 to 2019.
More information, as well as the Activity Report 2016, can be obtained under www.eps.org or requested from the EPS Secretariat secretariat [at] eps [dot] org in Mulhouse.
