The Big Easy Hosts 2008 March Meeting

The 2008 APS March Meeting will be held March 10-14 in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is the largest annual gathering of professional physicists in the country. The scientific program will feature more than 90 invited sessions and 550 contributed sessions, at which approximately 7000 papers will be presented, covering the latest research in areas represented by the APS divisions of condensed matter physics, materials physics, polymer physics, chemical physics, biological physics, fluid dynamics, laser science, computational physics, and atomic, molecular and optical physics.

Also taking part will be the APS topical groups on Instrument and Measurement Science, Magnetism and its Applications, Shock Compression of Condensed Matter, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics, and Quantum Information, as well as the forums on Industrial and Applied Physics, Physics and Society, History of Physics, International Physics, Education, and Graduate Student Affairs.

Special scheduled events include the annual prize and award presentation, a one-day workshop on energy research for graduate students and postdocs, a panel discussion with APS journal editors, a students lunch with the experts, a physics sing-along, and a High School Teachers’ Day on Tuesday, March 11, which will be held at LIGO-Livingston.

In addition to the regular technical program, there will be eight half-day tutorials offered on Sunday, March 9.The tutorial topics are: Basics of Density Functional Theory, Static and Time-Dependent; Spintronics; Fundamentals of Quantum Entanglement; Neutron and Synchrotron Scattering in Novel Materials; Will Carbon Replace Silicon? The Future of Graphitic Electronics; Nanomagnetism: Manufacture, Physics, Devices, and Modeling; Quantum Noise, Quantum Limited Measurements, and Conditional Quantum Evolution; and Ethics Education.

The 5th APS Workshop on Opportunities in Biological Physics, organized by the Division of Biological Physics, will be held on Sunday, March 9.

On Saturday, March 8 and Sunday, March 9, the Division of Polymer Physics will host a special short course: High-throughput Approaches to Polymer Physics and Materials Science.

New Orleans is an exciting city, and has achieved significant recovery from hurricane Katrina. The French Quarter is thriving and the many fine restaurants and shops are within walking distance of most of the conference hotels. The headquarters hotel is the New Orleans Marriott on Canal Street, just steps away from the French Quarter. A guide to attractions in New Orleans, compiled for APS by Jim McGuire, chair of the physics department at Tulane University, is available online at the meeting website.  

This year small child care grants of $200 will be available to assist meeting attendees bringing small children. The application form is available on the meeting website. A parent-child quiet room will also be available.

Find more info about the meeting: www.aps.org/meetings/march/index.cfm.