EOSAM 2020 online conference a success
- On Friday, 02 october 2020
EOSAM 2020 held as online conference for the first time ever with great success!
The international flagship event of the European Optical Society (EOS), the EOSAM conference, was held in online form during 7-11 September 2020. The initial plan was to celebrate the international conference and industrial exhibition, EOSAM, under the warm sun of Porto, Portugal in 7-11 September 2020, organized together with the Portuguese Society for Optics and photonics, SPOF. However, due to the circumstances with the covid pandemic, we wanted to ensure the safety of our attendees and their families, and made the difficult decision to move the onsite event into online form, for the first time ever in the history of EOSAM.
During the conference week, 7-11 September, EOS offered live and on-demand presentations free of charge for attendees, with a chance to register and view the presentations also after the conference week, free of charge (sessions were open until 25 September).
The conference week included the School of Physics on Optical Metrology, four live plenary talks and over 120 invited and contributed presentations on all the 12 topical meetings, covering all topics of optics and photonics.
With 450 registered attendees, the sessions were viewed over 1000 times. It is evident that such an on-demand feature is a great asset for thoroughly inspecting the presentations, rewinding, pausing, and accessing the talks at any time, bringing flexibility to the viewing experience.
On Monday, the Physics School on Optical Metrology was held with three intriguing talks on the topic. The general assembly was held as an online meeting to all EOS members, where EOS goals and activities were presented to the members.
At the opening ceremony on Tuesday, we had the privilege to hear the plenary talk from Yuri Kivshar from the Nonlinear Physics Center at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, on Metaphotonics and metasurfaces.
On Tuesday, Hatice Altug from the Institute of Bioengineering, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland held her plenary talk on New Frontiers in NanoPhotonics: Next-Generation BioSensors. This was a special session as Prof. Altug also received the esteemed Emmy Noether distinction from the European Physical Society (EPS) after her talk.
Later in the week we heard the plenary talks from Luis Plaja, University of Salamanca, Spain on Boost in translation: Structuring high-frequency light using high-harmonic sources, and the plenary talk from José Luís Santos, Physics and Astronomy Department of Faculty of Sciences of University of Porto, Portugal on New Paths in Optical Sensing.
During the EOSAM conference week, the EOS also announced the newly elected EOS Board members, the winner of the EOS Prize 2020, and the new EOS Fellows.
The EOS Fellowships were announced for the cohort 2019/2020. EOS Fellowship is a distinguished, honorary membership status of the EOS. There were 8 nominations and three fellows were elected for the rank of fellowship:
- Graham Reed, Professor at the University of Southampton
- Guy Millot, Professor at the University of Bourgogne
- Laurent Vivien, Director of Research at the lnstitute Center of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, CNRS
EOS warmly congratulates the new EOS Fellows and thanks them for the contributions for the community and the society.
From now on, the fellowships will be announced annually, and the nominations will be opened at the end of 2020. The next Fellows will be celebrated at the EOSAM conference in Paris, 6 – 10 September 2021.
The EOS Prize is awarded for the best paper published in the open access online journal of the EOS (JEOS:RP) https://jeos.springeropen.com/. In 2020, the EOS Prize goes to the paper titled ,,Tapered Photonics Crystalfibers coated with ultra-thin films for highly sensitive bio-chemical sensing" by Vladimir P. Minkovitch from Guanajuato University, Mexico and Alexander B. Sotsky from Mogilev State University, Mogilev, Belarus. The winners will receive diplomas and honorarium included in this award. Warm congratulations for the winners!
The EOS Board Election was again held in 2020, with each member having a possibility to nominate a candidate, and finally voting for the listed candidates. The newly elected members of the EOS Board are:
- Roelene Botha (CH)
- Emiliano Descrovi (NO)
- María Teresa Flores (ES)
- Myriam Zerrad (FR)
EOS happily welcomes these new members, and thanks the members stepping down from the Board: Andreas Ettemeyer, Ivo Rendina, and Paul Urbach. The contributions of these people have been integral for the society, and hopefully the collaboration will continue also in the future.
All in all, the online EOSAM conference was a new experience not only for the EOS office staff but also many of our attendees. The year 2020 has certainly been challenging for all, but it was nice to see the community coming together online to present and view the latest research in the field. It was a great pleasure to provide a platform for presenting research in times when conferences in person cannot be held.
We wish to warmly thank all our attendees, speakers, chairs, program committee members, sponsors, the EOS Partner societies, the Portuguese Society for Optics and Photonics (SPOF), and the local support in Porto for creating the event under these special circumstances.
We hope to see you all in person in Paris, at the international EOSAM conference in 6-10 September 2021!
Best wishes for your autumn,
Elina Koistinen
EOS Executive Director
