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International Union of Pure and Applied Physics International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Newsletter DECEMBER President: Michel Spiro • Editor-in-Chief: Kok Khoo Phua • Editors: Maitri Bobba; Judy Yeo 2020 IUPAP Office hosted & supported by: NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY, SINGAPORE PRESIDENTS' NOTE We are coming to the end of a very unusual year. In spite of the Newsletter has been designed by World Scientific Publishing numerous difficulties that we have faced this year, we have made in Singapore as well. The agreement ends at the end of 2020. progress on several issues. We would like to use this opportunity to change the model. We are looking for different, hopefully, permanent locations Remote Council and Commission Chairs meeting for the Office, the bank account and legal entity, the website We held our annual IUPAP Council and Commission Chairs meeting host as well as the organization in charge of the Newsletter. in October 2020. The meeting was remote and spanned four days The changes should occur during the year 2021, while we over two consecutive weeks. This allowed us the ability to define time are hosted temporarily by a different institution in Singapore. windows of no more than three hours, which could accommodate the This would make IUPAP more stable and in a better position time differences between regions and to allow participants to digest to organize matters and stay global if the different locations the outcome of each session before entering into a new one. The are well-distributed. format was found to be adequate and fruitful; while attendance was a success (more than 40). We had observers from Physics Societies We now have good contacts with a company in India to host representing different regions, with the idea of implementing joint the website. Given the advantages of having the financial activities (i.e. teaching Physics in Africa, America, Asia and Europe). office in a major international financial centre, it is likely The International Association of Physics Students was represented that the financial office will move to Geneva or remain in and could soon become an Affiliated Commission of IUPAP. Singapore. We are currently seeking a new institution to host the administrative office. Publication matters may still remain in Singapore. The matters relating to conferences Headquarters will be handled by South Africa. It is the tradition that IUPAP rotates its headquarters (bank account, office, website, newsletter) from one continent to another. In the last six years, the administrative office and the website have been hosted Strategic Plan at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, the bank We circulated a first draft of the strategic plan with which account has been associated with a company in Singapore and the we expect to enter a new century of existence. The draft was welcome and perceived to be timely. It received many IUPAP Newsletter | DECEMBER 2020 comments from the Council, Commission Chairs and Members in 2022. This project received the support of about (Liaison officers). A group of three people (President, President 30 International Unions and Organizations, 40 Designate and Vice President at Large for the Centenary) was Academies, 25 Nobel Laureates, the World Science assigned the task to integrate all these comments and come Forum and The Inter Parliamentary Union recently. The back with a new version in the hope that it will be accepted by proclamation by the UN General Assembly has been the next General Assembly. We should try to use this consultation recommended unanimously by UNESCO in its General procedure as a template for issuing position statements. Conference in November 2019. However, we did not succeed yet to bring the Resolution on the Proclamation Member matters to the Present UN General Assembly, due to its very We note and appreciate the excellent progress in IUPAP restricted agenda caused by the Covid-19 Pandemics. membership in the past twelve months and in the past ten years. We very much hope that we will succeed next year in We will try to get more involvement from our members in IUPAP getting the Proclamation. Due to the exceptional affairs (strategic plan, joint activities) and listen to their wishes. circumstances, the start of the International Year of Basic Maybe a yearly remote meeting in between General Assemblies Sciences for Sustainable Development, initially planned for could be useful to this end. We will explore the possibility of January 2022 may shift by 6 months or one year, depending expanding the different types of membership including the on the timing of the Proclamation. possible creation of new categories for companies, regional • Preparation of our Centenary: IUPAP will celebrate its Physical Societies and Academies and individuals. In this way, centenary in 2022. Our Vice President at Large in charge of we are seeking to widen our connection to the global physics the IUPAP centenary, Monica Pepe-Altarelli gave her report. community. Special attention will be paid to strengthening the The centennial IUPAP symposium will be held in Geneva and connections with young physicists. All this would give new will be live-streamed. We need a pool of communicators, impetus to IUPAP as it enters its second century of existence. using new communication tools, to help advertise the event. We need publicity material on IUPAP and the Centenary. Main decisions and discussions during the We need to organize satellite events elsewhere in the world (we could use IUPAP-sponsored conferences). We need to Council and Commission Chairs Meeting involve members (through liaison officers) and non-member • Conferences: Many IUPAP-sponsored conferences were countries (developing countries). We need to reconstruct held remotely in 2020. Some were deferred to 2021 and the IUPAP history (using our small archives) and use this others were cancelled. Applications for sponsoring new opportunity to connect it to the Quantum Century initiative 2021 conferences were also received. The Associate and more generally to the History of Physics. Secretary General Rudzani Nemtudi presented a plan for IUPAP conferences sponsoring in 2021. After intense Next General Assemblies and constructive discussions and iterations, a plan was The next IUPAP General Assembly (GA) is slated for Beijing, unanimously approved. Special attention was given to October 20th to 22nd, 2021, instead of October 2020 which getting reports after the conferences, to checking efforts should have been the normal cycle but was postponed due to related to gender balance, inclusiveness and worldwide the Covid-19 pandemic. Commission members have been given access to the conferences (visas, on-line access…). extensions for one year. We hope to vote on new statutes and bylaws for IUPAP (they are in preparation), especially allowing • Commission matters: Entering a new century, it is for remote electronic meetings (yearly in between GAs and when the right time to review the name and the mandate of needed) during the next GA. We would like to have the following IUPAP commissions and to explore the possibility of new General Assembly in 2023, in Paris or in Geneva, to celebrate commissions (Fluid Dynamics?) or affiliated commissions the centenary of the first General Assembly in 1923. This could (History of Physics jointly with the International Union on coincide or not with IYBSSD. Philosophy and History of Sciences and Technology and Physics students with the International Association of Physics Students). We would also like to establish a Young Nominations Interdisciplinary Prize with inputs from the community The nomination procedure for the next General Assembly will supported by more than one commission. be the same as before, except that Silvina Ponce Dawson is already acting as President Designate, Gillian Butcher is • Working groups: The focus this time was on terms of already acting as Vice President at Large and Gender reference and the composition of a new working group on Champion, Boris Sharkov (Deputy Director in JINR, Joint Physics and Industry. The reason for that was that linking Institute for Nuclear Research) has been designated as acting IUPAP with companies is a priority. We should explore designate Treasurer (new position that we will propose at the all avenues to achieve this goal: by looking at the IUPAC next GA), Laura Greene has been designated as acting Vice model, the use of commissions and working groups to gain President at Large for Outreach and Ethics, and Jens Vigen knowledge of their links with companies, using the links (CERN) as Acting Deputy Secretary General for matters between IUPAP conferences and companies, a call-out concerning the possible transfer of IUPAP Headquarters in for companies willing to sponsor Young Scientific Prizes, Geneva and that the Commission chairs have already been defining the status of Associate/Corporate member of IUPAP designated (so that they get used to this position). The for companies among others. commission chairs designated at the GA 2023 will take office at the end of 2024. • Projects: the continuation of projects like The Gender Gap (How to measure it, how to reduce it?), LAAAMP (Light Acknowledgements sources for Africa, the Americas, Asia, Middle East and The Council and Commission Chairs deeply and warmly Pacific) should be continued and amplified. Agreements thank Maitri Bobba and Sun Han, who ran the Office in between many Unions, could be a good approach for Singapore in a way which forced our admiration. We used to that. The help of the International Science Council for that call Maitri, our “Shadow President”! purpose would still be welcome. Michel Spiro, President of IUPAP • IYBSSD 2022: IUPAP is leading the project of an International Bruce McKellar, Past President Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development Silvina Ponce Dawson, Acting President Designate 2 In Memory of Prof Jorge Flores Valdés (1941-2020) Sekazi K. Mtingwa, (Chair, C13) IUPAP, friends and colleagues from around the world mourn most important science research centers in Mexico, and one of the recent passing of Professor Jorge Flores Valdés, who was the most relevant physics centers in Latin America.
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