A great day for Boston University Physics! Two current and one former physics professors have won awards from APS!
Congratulations to Ed Kearns, Sidney Redner (now at Santa Fe Institute), and Anders Sandvik (my PhD advisor)!
Category Archives: aps
Call for nominations: APS Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS) Executive Committee
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The Forum for Early Career Scientists (FECS) is an APS forum dedicated to addressing the unique challenges of early career scientists, which include postdocs, recent PhDs in industry, junior faculty, research associates and so on. FECS is one of the newest and fastest-growing APS fora and we’re looking for nominations of new people to join our executive board. Nominations are due Monday 8/31.
We are seeking nominations from people in all career stages, but since this is a group dedicated to early career scientists, we need early career scientists on our executive board. More information on how to get involved after the break.
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APS Signal Boost: lots of updates
I always look forward to the APS Office of Government Affairs’ monthly Signal Boost video. This month’s update was full of great stuff!
Write your congressperson to support science during COVID-19
APS President Phil Bucksbaum recently wrote a letter with recommendations for how congress can protect science during COVID-19 and ensure a quick recovery afterwards. “The letter’s recommendations include: providing grantees full or partial cost extensions, ensuring the supplemental funding necessary to restart labs and experiments is provided, and substantially increasing REU funding for Summer 2021.”
APS is also organizing a letter-writing campaign to call Congress’s attention to this issue. They’re provided a easy-to-use tool where you can plug in your voting address, sign your letter (and add some of your own thoughts) and they will send it off to your congressperson and senators. It takes less than five minutes and it makes a huge difference. On narrow issues like this, you letter might be the only one your elected official receives!
My March Meeting talk is online
After much delay, my March Meeting talk is finally online in all the right places! You can watch my talk on Virtual March Meeting or by following the link from the APS Bulletin, but I’ll also embed the video and post the slides here (PDF of slides).
The (Virtual) March Meeting
As you’ve probably heard, the 2020 APS March Meeting was cancelled due to concerns over coronavirus. It was cancelled only 36 hours before it was scheduled to begin. Myself and many other scientists were already in Denver when we heard.
CVD success: Rep. Himes co-sponsors the Keep STEM Talent Act!
For the APS Congressional Visit Day last month, my team visited the DC office of Representative Jim Himes (D-CT-04) to advocate for a number of issues important to science (see previous post). One of our asks was for Rep. Himes to cosponsor the Keep STEM Talent Act. I just heard that Rep. Himes is now a cosponsor! Thanks so much to my CVD team, to Rep. Himes and to the staffer we met with, Jessica Hagens-Jordan!
Continue readingJoin the new APS Forum on Diversity and Inclusion!
APS has a new forum dedicated to diversity and inclusion (announcement). This has been in the works for a while, but it’s finally approved and ready to join (for free for APS members). Join now to get in on the ground floor! Below I am copying the email I received with more details and signup instructions (sorry if the formatting is weird).
Continue readingAPS Congressional Visit Day 2020
APS Congressional Visit Day 2020
This week, I am in Washington DC for the APS Congressional Visit Day and Annual Leadership Meeting. We started on Wednesday with the Congressional Visit. APS broke us up into teams by region. I’m a Massachusetts voter, so I joined a team of people from Massachusetts and Connecticut. We had six meetings with the offices of Massachusetts Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Connecticut Senators Chris Murphy and Richard Blumenthal along with House Representatives James Himes and Rosa DeLauro.
Continue readingWomen are no better or worse than men at doing physics, but they are, however, more persistent.
Myriam P. Sarachik, 2020
Today I attended an awards dinner for several APS awards. Myriam P. Sarachik received the APS Medal for Exceptional Achievement in Research and gave a truly insightful acceptance speech and I just had to share this specific quote. She told a number of stories of the obstacles she faced to building a scientific career and how she overcame them through luck, talent and persistence. A great lesson for us all!
Adam Iaizzi, PhD （易亞丹） 