The pace at the American Physical Society's annual March meeting should be every bit as stimulating as the host city's favorite beverage--coffee. Some 5000 papers are crammed into the program and a roughly equal number of physicists will pack the halls of the Washington State Convention Center when the society meets there from 12-16 March. During some hours, the program lists as many as 38 parallel sessions. Attendees will have to choose among sessions on high-temperature superconductors, quantum computing, nanometer structures, nonlinear dynamics, and magnetic materials, to mention only a few. Some divisions of APS have organized sessions to focus attention on particular fields. This year's topics include wide-bandgap semiconductors, bioinformatics, polymeric nanostructures, optical chaos and laser instabilities, materials theory and computation for industrial problems, spectroscopy in high magnetic fields, and advanced solid-state electronic cooling and power generation.
Of particular interest will be a special session on "Nanotechnology: the National Initiative," to be held on Wednesday evening from 7:30 to 9:00 pm at the Westin Seattle, the headquarters hotel. Speakers at the symposium will describe the outlook, focus, and future funding for nanoscience and nanotechnology in the three major agencies for federal funding of the initiative: the Department of Energy (DOE), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Defense (DOD). DOE will be represented by Mildred Dresselhaus, the director of its office of science; NSF, by Lance Haworth, executive officer of the division of materials research; and DOD, by James Murday, chemistry division superintendent at the Naval Research Laboratory, who leads DOD's nanotechnology initiative.
Another session of particularly broad interest will be the Nobel session, featuring at least four of the prize winners in chemistry and physics for the year 2000. The session is scheduled for Tuesday at 2:30 pm in the convention center.
The meeting kicks off at 8 am on Monday, 12 March. At a plenary session at 5:15 that afternoon, APS will bestow prizes and awards on 17 physicists for outstanding research and service. At the same session, the American Institute of Physics will honor Dresselhaus with its Karl T. Compton Award. (See the awards stories on page 73 of this issue). A welcome reception will follow from 6:15 to 7:30 pm in the ballroom of the convention center. On Wednesday, the "Students Lunch with the Experts" program, initiated last year, will be back by popular demand. The lunch, at which students dine free with experts in various fields, will be held from 1:00-2:30 pm.
On the social side, many universities will sponsor alumni reunions at the Westin from 6-8 pm, on Tuesday, March 13. And for recreation, APS has organized its 4th annual 5K Run for Health, to be held this year in Myrtle Edwards Park from 6:30-7:30 am on Monday.
An important adjunct to the full program of talks is the APS Exhibit Show, which offers meeting-goers an opportunity to look over the equipment and services of many vendors. On display will be such products as vacuum systems, test and measurement equipment, optical components, scientific software, detectors, cryogenic equipment, as well as books and periodical publications. The show will be open from 10 am to 5 pm on Monday and Tuesday and from 10 am to 4 pm on Wednesday.
APS will sponsor an employment center, which will be organized by the American Institute of Physics. The center will be located in the exhibit hall and will be open from 10 am to 5 pm on Monday and Tuesday, 12-13 March, and from 10 am to 4 pm on Wednesday.
There will be an opportunity to learn about certain topics in depth at the short courses and tutorials offered before the start of the meeting. On Saturday and Sunday, 10-11 March, from 8 am to 5 pm, the division of polymer physics will offer a short course on recent advances in polymer simulations. On Sunday, APS has planned seven half-day tutorials and one full-day tutorial. The topics for the half-day tutorials are electronic polymers and oligomers, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), sensitive measurements, spintronics, single-molecule imaging in condensed matter and biology, putting nanotubes to work, and applications of physics in optical fiber telecommunications. The full-day tutorial will be devoted to Mathematica™ programming fundamentals.
The units of APS participating in the meeting are: the divisions of condensed matter physics, materials physics, polymer physics, chemical physics, biological physics, fluid dynamics, laser science, and computational physics; the topical groups on instrument and measurement science, magnetism and its applications, shock compression of condensed matter, and statistical and nonlinear physics; and the forums on industrial and applied physics, physics and society, history of physics, international physics, and education.
CSWP/FIAP: Roles for Female Scientists at Start-Ups. Foulon, Dhar, Smoliar, Lackritz, Tian.
DCMP: Macroscopic Quantum Coherence in Superconducting Devices. Leggett, Friedman, van der Wal, Nakamura.
DCMP/DMP: Oliver E. Buckley Prize, James C. McGroddy Prize, David Adler Lectureship Award, and Davisson-Germer Prize Session. Emery, Luther, Gossard, Williams, Eigler.
GSNP: Synchronization and Low-Dimensional Chaos. Kurths, Pecora.
DCOMP: New Perspectives and Methods for Complex Simulations and Optimization Problems. Straub, Berne, Hartmann, Boettcher.
DCMP: RVB Physics on the Triangular Lattice, followed by Nature of the Insulating State. Sondhi, Coldea, Singh, Resta, Ortiz.
DMP: Surfaces I: Adsorption and Adsorbates. Stampfl.
DMP: Surface Nanostructures III: Epitaxial Nanowires and Atomic Manipulation. Baski.
DCP: Dynamics at Surfaces: Excited Species. Ceyer, Kummel, Jackson.
DCP: Nanoscale Spectroscopy and Imaging: Near-Field and Wide-Field Microscopy. Vanden Bout, Adams, Dunn, Dickson.
DCMP: Crystallization and Self-Assembly in Colloidal Systems. Gasser, Fraden, Lin, Bechinger.
DCMP: Novel Effects in 1D Structures. de Picciotto, Tersoff, Yacoby, Girvin, Mele.
DCMP: Novel Ferromagnetism in Divalent Semimetallic Hexaborides followed by Metallic States, Quantum Phase Transitions, and Dissipation in 2D. Ott, Aronson, Pickett, Mason, Shahar.
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