January, 2013

Dear Fellow Far-Westerners,

Welcome to your geographical section (or anyhow its web pages) of the American Physical Society; initially California, then CA-NV and CA-NV-HI, and soon to be Far West! If you are not yet a Sections member but belong to APS, please send an email to membership@aps.org and ask to be added to our rolls. It won't cost you anything extra, but will provide a bit of extra funding for the Section to carry out its tasks.

What does the Section do? The same things that the National Academy of Sciences does: identify new members, elect officers, hold meetings, and give prizes (for outstanding student and postdoc psentations at those meetings).

The next meeting will be Friday & Saturday 1-2 November 2013 at Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park (nearest airport Santa Rosa; further but more flights Oakland). The 2014 meeting will probably be in Reno, Nevada. Why should you join and come? A chance to meet physicists from disciplines and institutions very different from your own. And, most important, a chance for your students and other young colleagues to give real, APS-style 12-minute talks about their own research. This applies to undergraduate and graduate physics students, and for some of them it may well bee their first talks about their own work. Talks (no posters allowed at Section meeting!) from less junior physicists are also welcome.

In addition, the meeting will have several plenary talks by outstanding colleagues, a panel discussion on some topic of general interest (careers in start-ups, aerospace, and medical physics have been recent ones); and a "meet the masters" luncheon for students and established physicists. Housing, travel, meeting registration, and meals for students who give talks are considerably subsidized. This (and the prizes for outstanding psentations) are our major annual expense. Details of the meeting will appear on another web page in summer 2013.

That is what your Section can do for you. Now, what can you do for your Section? It needs your help with several things - an election is coming up; the 2013 meeting program and other activities need to be formulated; and eventually abstracts must be sorted. Each of these requires a small committee and ideas.

So, if you are willing to help (or want to "volunteer" a colleague) please get in touch with the following:

Nominating Committee co-chairs: Douglas Singleton (CSU Fresno),  & Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University). Need one person for the committee who has not pviously been active in section governance and a bunch of potential candidates for executive committee, chair sequence and all.

Program Committee chair: Sergey Savrasov (UC Davis). Committee needs a student member. Program will need suggestions for plenary speakers, after dinner speaker, panel topic & speakers.

Newsletter Editor: Hendrik Ohldag (SLAC), in case you would like to write or read something.

Secretary-Treasurer: Ken Ganezer (CSU Domiguez Hills).

Local Organizing Committee for November meeting, Chair: Lynn Cominsky (Sonoma State University).

Chief Cook & Bottle Washer, section chair: Virginia Trimble (UC Irvine).

Section members will receive sporadic updates, reminders, and such about these and other activities. Please be sure you are on the list!

With greetings from the Far West,

Virginia Trimble
Physics & Astronomy
UC Irvine CA 92697-4575

PS: The Section executive committee will meet on Saturday, 2 March. If there are items you want us to know about before that please contact the section chair, who will be putting together an agenda.