In this News Bulletin, you will find updates on the following:
- 2024 CAP Congress Highlights
- 2024 CAP Annual General Meeting
- Science Policy and Advocacy Update
- 2025 Undergraduate Lecture Tour
- Other Updates
- Call for Volunteers – Student Affairs
- Important Upcoming Dates and Events
2024 CAP Congress Highlights
Thank you for joining us in London! It was great to see everybody again. We had a successful congress with 585 registrants, and 499 oral or poster contributions. The local organizing committee, led by Giovanni Fanchini and Lyudmila Goncharova, did a wonderful job on local logistics! Thanks also to the program committee for a wonderful program and thanks to Ellen Molloy and Francine Ford in the CAP Office for their efforts and support.
Check out below for Congress highlights:
Herzberg Memorial Public Lecture
Dr. John E. Moores, Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency and faculty member at York University, presented a lecture on what we can learn from planetary exploration. Click here to access the recording of Dr. Moores’ Herzberg lecture on the CAP’s YouTube channel.
NSERC Community Update
Catherine Harrision, Program Officer, Research Grants, at the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council, presented the results of the recent grant competition.
Special Guest
Young-Kee Kim, President of the American Physical Society, came to the 2024 Congress to make a brief update on APS activities, including discussing programs of mutual interest, such as the Canadian-Cuban-American-Mexican Graduate Student Physics Conference (C2AM). During her visit, CAP President, Bill Whelan,presented Dr. Kim with a card from the CAP Board commemorating the 125th anniversary of the American Physical Society.
Photo: Young-Kee Kim, President of the APS (left) is presented with the commemorative card by Bill Whelan, President of the CAP (right). Photo credit: Gordon Drake.
CAP Recognitions
The CAP Congress provides us with the opportunity to recognize members of our community. The CAP Medallists for 2024 were invited to present a talk at Congress and, for those able to attend, medals were awarded at the Congress Recognition Dinner. We were also able to officially recognize Fellows selected in 2022, 2023 and 2024 at the Recognition Dinner, presenting each attending recipient with a Fellows pin and a commemorative plaque as seen in the photo below.
Photo: Fellows attending the Recognition Dinner (front row – left to right), Giovanni Fanchini, Gordon Drake, Charles Gale, Corina Andreoiu, Gwen Grinyer, Rituparna Kanungo, Donna Strickland, Melanie Campbell, Karen Kavanagh, Xiaoyi Bao, Christine Kraus, Richard MacKenzie; (back row – left to right), Cecile Fradin, Manu Paranjape, Eric Hessels, Mark Sutton, Mike Morrow, Rob Mann, Wendy Taylor, Graeme Luke. 2024 CRM Prize recipient, Bianca Dittrich, is to the right of Cecile Fradin and 2024 Vogt Medal recipient, Douglas Bryman, is to the right of Eric Hessels. Fellows who were unable to attend the 2024 Congress include: Robert Brandenberger, Marie D’Iorio, Gabor Kunstatter, Art McDonald, Robert Myers, Richard Peltier, Ken Ragan, Federico Rosei, Michael Thewalt. Our 2024 medallists who were unable to attend include: Marcel Franz (Brockhouse), Nikolas Provatas (Teaching), Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo (Herzberg). Photo credit: Ellen Molloy.
Best Student Presentation Competition
The Best Student Presentation Competition was very busy with 185 competitors and a total of 40 prizes awarded by the CAP and its Divisions to this year’s winners, posters and oral. Congratulations to all and thanks to our volunteer judges.
Photo: CAP President Bill Whelan (far left) and Vice-President-Elect Pierre Bénard (far right), with this year’s BSPC poster competition finalists (from left to right): Casee Griffith, Irfan Javed, Sydney Wilson, Jennika McIntosh. Missing from photo: Audren Dorval and Abo-bakr Emara. Photo credit: Gordon Drake
Photo: CAP President Bill Whelan (far left) and Vice-President-Elect Pierre Bénard (far right), with this year’s BSPC oral competition finalists (from left to right): Zhihua Han, Evan Vienneau, Robin Coleman, Farah Kamar, Juliette Letelier-Bao, Lauren Dutcher, Nathan Drouillard, Dean Eaton. Photo credit: Gordon Drake
2024 CAP Annual General Meeting
The 2024 CAP AGM was held on Zoom on June 13, 2024. Thank you to all those who attended. Below we try to capture a few highlights.
Bill Whelan (President 2023-2024) presented an engaging report on activities during his term:
One of the main purposes of the AGM is to elect a new Board of Directors. The slate of directors as presented was approved at the meeting. See all members of the Board of Directors for 2024-25.
Your Executive for 2024-25 is:
President
Martin Williams, University of Guelph
Vice-President
Pierre Bénard, Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières
Vice-President Elect
Wendy Taylor, York University
Past-President
Bill Whelan, University of Prince Edward Island
Secretary-Treasurer
Christine Kraus, SNOLAB
Executive Director
Francine Ford, Canadian Association of Physicists
Science Policy and Advocacy Update
The CAP was asked to provide input to plans for a new Tri-Agency capstone funding organization, as announced in the Federal Budget, and as proposed by the Advisory Panel on the Federal Research Support System. The Science Policy Committee, led by our new Director of Science Policy and Advocacy, James Fraser (Queen’s U), prepared and submitted a feedback document. Read more about the CAP’s brief submitted to the Tri-Councils.
The CAP also submitted recommendations to the Federal Government’s pre-budget consultation in advance of the 2025 Budget, an activity we aim to participate in every year. This year’s submission, endorsed by seven of our partner and sister organizations, focussed on two recommendations:
- Recommendation #1: That the government accelerate the timetable laid out in Budget 2024 for increased investment in the NSERC’s Discovery Grant program to ensure fair funding for all graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
- Recommendation #2: The government should adopt a more strategic approach to managing core national research facilities, such as TRIUMF, the Canadian Light Source (CLS), the MacDonald Institute and SNOLAB. By implementing a lifecycle approach, we can enhance the effectiveness of these facilities, recognizing their pivotal role as national assets. This strategy will not only support Canada’s scientific enterprise but also enable our scientists to expand their leadership on the global stage.
2025 Undergraduate Lecture Tour
In August 2023, the CAP Foundation received a $300k donation to create an endowment that would earn interest to cover the costs of both the CAP’s traditional lecture tour as well as the introduction of a new (yet-to-be-defined) high school/cégep lecture program. This endowment allowed the CAP/CAPF to begin the re-establishment of an in-person lecture tour series, organizing a 6-speaker 2024 lecture tour where four of the speakers were able to travel to host institutions in QC, ON, and SK.
The focus for 2025 is an in-person lecture tour program between January and March, with the intention of increasing the number of host institutions. The exact number of host locations and speakers that can be supported will be optimized as much as possible by our dedicated team of ‘lecture tour coordinators’. The call for potential speakers to be launched in September. Please help support our program by nominating a potential speaker. Click here for more information about the lecture tour program.
Other Updates
- Winners of the CAP/CAPF 2024 Graduate Scholarships have been chosen
- Two students have been selected to receive an Allan Carswell Physics Educator Scholarship – Ben Giers (Mount Royal University) and Dennis Thai (University of Alberta)
- The Stoicheff Graduate Scholarship has been awarded to Everett Patterson (University of Waterloo)
- The CAP sponsored the Canadian Undergraduate Medical Physics Conference, held August 22-23 2024
Call for Volunteers – Student Affairs
Ben Newling, the CAP’s Director of Student Affairs, is looking for volunteers to serve on the Student Affairs Operating Committee. He is looking for academic or private sector physicists excited about furthering student interests in the CAP. You will get to work on a variety of projects including student conferences and student activities at Congress, and will be able to help develop student resources. The committee meets virtually three to four times per year with email correspondence between meetings. If you are interested in volunteering, please contact bnewling@unb.ca.
Important Upcoming Dates and Events
- September 16 – Opening of the call for nominations for 2025 lecture tour speakers
- October 1 – Opening of the call for 2025 CAP medal and fellow nominations
- October 1 – Opening of the call for CAP/CAPF graduate student scholarship applications
- October 24 – 27 – The 2024 Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference will be held in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia
- January 15, 2025 – Opening of the call for abstracts for the 2025 CAP Congress
- January 30 – Feb. 2, 2025 – The 2025 conference for under-represented undergraduate physics students in Canada (CCUW*iP) will be held in Calgary, Alberta, hosted jointly by the University of Calgary and the University of Alberta
- January – March 2025 – The CAP 2025 Undergraduate Lecture Tour, with speakers presenting to undergraduate students across the country
- June 9 – 13 2025 – The 2025 CAP Congress will be held at the University of Saskatchewan
Bookmark the 2025 CAP Congress website!
https://cap.ca/congress-conference/2025-cap-congress/
See you next year in Saskatoon!