April Meeting Flies South

This year's April Meeting will take place at the Savannah International Convention Center in Savannah, Georgia from April 5 through 8. The annual meeting is expected to attract about 1,200 attendees and feature 72 invited sessions, more than 115 contributed sessions, three plenary sessions, poster sessions and a public lecture. The recipients of many prestigious APS prizes and awards will be honored at a special ceremonial session on Sunday evening.

Saturday's Fred Kavli Keynote Plenary Session, "The Mysteries of Mass," will feature 2013 Nobel laureates François Englert and Peter Higgs speaking about the Higgs field. Rafael Lang of Purdue will review efforts to discover dark matter.

The meeting highlights the latest research from the APS Divisions of Particles and Fields, Astrophysics, Nuclear Physics, and Beam Physics, as well as the Topical Group in Gravitation. In addition, the Forums on Education, Graduate Student Affairs, History of Physics, International Physics, and Physics and Society will be participating, along with the Topical Groups on Energy Research and Applications, Few-Body Systems, Hadronic Physics, and Precision Measurements & Fundamental Constants.

For the first time at the April Meeting, APS will host pre-meeting workshops. Members can register to attend the Friday courses free of cost. Carolyn Sealfon from Princeton University is organizing a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) education workshop for participants to learn some of the latest interactive classroom teaching techniques. Also on Friday, researchers from Duke University will host a course on photonuclear reactions at the High Intensity Gamma-ray Source.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, will open Monday's plenary session. Also speaking are Naoko Kurahashi Neilson from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, talking about the discovery of neutrinos at the IceCube detector at the South Pole, and Suzanne Staggs, who will share her research into the polarization of the cosmic microwave background.

Tuesday's plenary will feature talks centered on the 100th anniversary of the discovery that the beta-decay spectrum is continuous. Hamish Robertson from the University of Washington will review a history of beta decay in subatomic physics. Wick Haxton from the University of California, Berkeley will give an update on the search for neutrinoless double-beta decay. Looking ahead, Sheldon Stone of Syracuse University will offer some insights into ways weak decays can provide a window into new physics.

Stefan Gillessen of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics will deliver a Saturday evening public lecture about the black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The meeting will host a number of events aimed especially at students. New for the April Meeting is Saturday's graduate school fair. Undergraduates will have a chance to meet with recruiters from about a dozen schools at a reception that afternoon. Also on Saturday, as part of the Future of Physics Days events, a panel of graduate students will answer undergraduates' questions about continuing their education. Undergraduate students will present their research at one of two Saturday oral sessions or the afternoon's poster session, and there will a special award brunch on Sunday for the top undergraduate presenters. Undergraduates are invited to apply for travel grants for up to $1000 to attend the meeting.

On Sunday the Forum on Graduate Student Affairs will sponsor a career panel aimed at graduate students who are thinking about non-academic careers, featuring speakers from both industry and finance. Graduate students can also get some one-on-one time with researchers at Sunday's Lunch with the Experts.

Exhibitors, including publishers and other vendors, will have booths set up around the hotel to display their products.

Meeting attendees will be able to stop by the APS Contact Congress booth to send letters to their elected officials about the importance of continued Congressional support for scientific research.