Technically, this year the conference is known as the APS Global Physics Summit rather than the March Meeting, but I'm keeping my blog post titles consistent with previous years. Over 14,000 physicists have descended upon Anaheim, and there are parallel events in more than a dozen countries around the world as well.
Late this afternoon I attended an APS town hall session about "Protecting Science". There were brief remarks by APS President John Doyle, APS CEO Jonathan Bagger, and APS External Affairs Officer Francis "Slake" Slakey, followed by an audience Q&A. It was a solid event attended by about 300 people in person and more online, as the society tries to thread its way through some very challenging times for science and scholarship in the US. Main take-aways from the intro remarks:
- The mission and values of the APS have not changed.
- Paraphrasing: We must explain to the public and officials the wonder of science and the economic impact of what we do. Discovery and application reinforce each other, and this dynamic is what drives progress. We need the public to hear this. We need Congress to hear this. We need the executive branch and its advisors to hear this. APS needs to promote physics, and physicists need to tell the truth, even when uncomfortable. The truth is our currency with the public. It is our superpower. APS is not a blue or red state organization; it's an organization that champions physics.
- Slake thanked and asked the audience to stand and thank the many federal science agency employees who are feeling dispirited and unsupported. "You are part of this community and no federal disruption is going to change that."
- Slake also mentioned that the critical short-term issue is the upcoming budget. The White House will announce its version in April, and the APS is pursuing a 50-state coordinated approach to have people speak to their congressional delegations in their states and districts, to explain what the harm and true costs are if the science agency budgets are slashed. They are targeting certain key states in particular (Alaska, Kansas, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Maine, South Dakota were mentioned).
- APS is continuing its support for bridge and mentorship programs, as well as the STEP-UP program; see here. These programs are open to all.
6 comments:
How do you like the combined March/April meeting vs the old format? Do you know why they made the change?
Because bigger is better? It's America baby!
No, their argument was something like cross fertilization between March and April meetings. But this is not happening with the April meetings in the Marriott and March in the convention center...
If there's one complaint I've heard before about the March meeting, it's that it's getting too big. And now they made it 40% bigger even ..
This is the 125th anniversary of the society, and it's the international year of quantum, so I think that was the proximal cause. I agree that the meeting is in general too big and unwieldy - that was certainly a concern 6 years ago when I was a DCMP member-at-large. The fact that all future meetings seem to be joint now was a surprise to me. Any of my readers have any insights on this?
My understanding is that they'll evaluate after this meeting, but that up to 2028 is set to be joint (planning/booking is of course far ahead).
Do give feedback/your opinion to the APS (soon after this week).
My students and I chose not to attend this year because it was going to be too big. They've now seen both smallish workshopy conferences (100-500 people) and the March Meeting and strongly prefer the smaller ones. There's definitely value in attending the March Meeting and I don't want to abandon it, but I think APS is making a huge mistake by going even bigger.
I guess the point of mixing March and April is to encourage cross-fertilization and discussion between various subfields of physics. But as a commenter pointed out, having all the March talks in one section and all the April talks in another kind of defeats that purpose. If you are going to segregate the communities anyways, might as well keep the meetings separate.
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