Edited by S.N. Coppersmith

In This Issue

• Important Deadlines and Dates
• Note from the DCMP Chair
• March Meeting Invited Symposia nominations
• Vote for DCMP Executive Committee members
• APS Fellowship Nominations
• Lobbying effort at 2006 March Meeting
• 2005 March Meeting in Los Angeles

Important Deadlines and Dates

Nominate invited speakers for 2006 March Meeting Link: http://dcmp.bc.edu	Deadline: September 12, 2005
Vote for DCMP officers Link: http://dcmp.bc.edu/	Deadline: September 12, 2005
2006 March Meeting abstract submission	Deadline: November 30, 2005
Nomination deadline for DCMP Fellows Nomination info at http://apsweb.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/index.cfm	January 2006 (exact date to be announced later)
2006 March Meeting	March 13-17, 2006, in Baltimore, Maryland
Join the lobbying effort at the 2006 March meeting in Baltimore	More info to follow

Note from the DCMP Chair

In the current difficult funding climate for condensed matter physics, as Ben Franklin said, "We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately," DCMP aims to be an organization that helps the condensed matter community to hang together, both in communicating the importance and beauty of our field to the public and to other areas of physics and other scientific and engineering disciplines. The March meeting is an important activity that enhances communication among diverse community of researchers, and the DCMP Executive Committee is using the 2006 March Meeting in Baltimore as a base for expanding lobbying efforts by our community.

March Meeting Invited Symposia nominations

The deadline for Invited Symposia nominations is Monday, September 12, 2005. To nominate an Invited Symposium or an Invited Speaker for the 2006 March meeting, follow the instructions at http://dcmp.bc.edu/.

The Division of Condensed Matter Physics organizes about 38 symposia during the meeting. The selection is done by a meeting of the entire Executive Committee shortly after the nomination deadline. The Executive Committee cannot substitute speakers of its own choosing.

Our Division's rules and practice for invited speakers are as follows. (1) We only select speakers from among proposals nominated by DCMP members. (2) No person may receive an invitation to speak at the meeting two years in a row (unless the person is a winner of a Prize in the second year). (3) A single symposium is not permitted to have two speakers from the same institution (i.e., same university or laboratory).

Ten steps towards creating a successful proposal.

1. Propose a Symposium on a timely idea, with strong speakers. In general, the DCMP favors symposia, and uses single speakers sparingly, if at all.
2. Moreover, we wish to make full use of the time available. Proposals that contain only 2, 3, or 4 talks, as opposed to the 5 that the meeting schedule permits, are less likely to be reviewed well.
3. Choose a good Symposium Title. This and the Symposium Justification gives the review committee an overview of the Symposium.
4. Select titles of individual talks carefully and provide informative abstracts to underpin the idea of the Symposium. (The speaker can modify the title later.)
5. Do the work required to support a recommendation. Tell what the suggested speaker did, and describe how it fits into its field as well as its significance in advancing that field.
6. Invited papers should be partly tutorial in order to afford those not working in that particular area the opportunity to learn about new developments. Recommend good speakers.
7. Provide recent references to work published in refereed journals. References should include key research in the area as well as the contributions of the proposed speakers. These references are helpful to the Committee to make sure that the topic is topical.
8. If possible, suggest an alternate speaker in the abstract, to provide a substitute if the first choice is unavailable. (See Rule (1), above.)
9. Find a person who can serve as chair of the symposium and obtain that person's agreement to serve as chair if the proposal is approved.
10. Multiple submissions of a proposal are ineffective and counterproductive. If you and several others wish to nominate the same symposium, it is better if one submits, listing co-sponsors in the Symposium Justification.

Use only one of the following sorting categories, to ensure that the right subcommittee examines the proposal.

1. Metals
2. Semiconductors
3. Insulators and Dielectrics
4. Polymeric and Organic Materials
5. Superconductivity
6. Magnetism (Experiment, Theory, Applications)
7. Complex Structured Materials
8. Fluids and Soft Matter
9. Phase Transitions and Strongly Correlated Systems
10. Biological Physics
11. Chemical Physics
12. Statistical and Nonlinear Physics
13. Artificially Structured Materials
14. Surface, Interfaces and Thin Films
15. Instrumentation and Measurements
16. Applications
17. General Theory (Theoretical Methods)
18. General
19. High Pressure Physics
20. Quantum Fluids and Solids
21. Atomic, Molecular & Optical (AMO) Physics
22. Physics Education
23. Quantum Information, Concepts and Computation

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Vote for DCMP Executive Committee members

To vote for new members of the DCMP Executive committee, go to the DCMP website: http://dcmp.bc.edu/

The DCMP Executive Committee performs several functions. Among its most important responsibilities is to be in charge of organizing the APS March Meeting. It is the body that chooses the Invited Symposia from those nominated by the DCMP membership. Keeping a proper balance on the Committee is thus essential for producing a well-run meeting. It helps to lobby Congress on science policy issues. Also, the DCMP Members-at- Large select those names to be forwarded for consideration by the APS Fellowship Committee and Council.

The current (2005-2006) membership of the DCMP Executive Committee is: (date following name indicates end of service on Committee, though title may change.)

Chair Susan N. Coppersmith (3/07) Department of Physics University of Wisconsin 1150 University Ave Madison, WI 53706 snc@physics.wisc.edu Tel: (608) 262-8358 Fax: (608) 262-2334	Chair Elect David B. Tanner (3/08) Physics Department University of Florida 2372 New Phys. Bldg. Gainesville, FL 32611-8440 tanner@phys.ufl.edu Tel: (352) 392-4718 Fax: (352) 392-3591
Vice-Chair Julia M. Phillips (3/09) Sandia National Lab PO Box 5800 Albuquerque, NM 87185-1427 jmphill@sandia.gov Tel: (505) 844-1071 Fax: (505) 844-9781	Secretary-Treasurer Joseph W. Serene (3/09) Department of Physics Georgetown University Washington, DC 20057-0995 serene@physics.georgetown.edu Tel: (202) 687-5985 Fax: (202) 687-2087
Past Chair Sidney Nagel (3/06) James Franck Institute University of Chicago 5640 S. Ellis Ave Chicago, IL 60637 s-nagel@uchicago.edu Tel: (773) 702-7190 Fax: (773) 702-5863	Councillor Moses H. W. Chan (12/07) Dept. of Physics Pennsylvania State University 104 Davey Lab University Park, PA 16802 chan@phys.psu.edu Tel: (814) 863-2622 Fax: (814) 865-3604
Members-at-Large
James P. Eisenstein (3/08) Condensed Matter Physics Caltech Pasadena, CA 91125 jpe@caltech.edu Tel: (626) 395-4649 Fax: (626) 683-9060	Matthew P. A. Fisher (3/07) Inst. for Theoretical Physics Kohn Hall UCSB Santa Barbara, CA 93106 mpaf@itp.ucsb.edu Tel: (805) 893-4111 Fax: (805) 893-2431
Lia Krusin-Elbaum (3/08) IBM, T.J. Watson Research Center PO Box 218, Rte 134 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598 krusin@us.ibm.com Tel: (914) 945-2548 Fax: (914) 945-2141	Andrea J. Liu (3/06) Dept. of Physics & Astronomy University of Pennsylvania 209 S. 33rd St. Philadelphia, PA 19104 ajliu@physics.upenn.edu Tel: (215) 573-7374 Fax: (215) 898-2010
Paul L. McEuen (3/06) Dept. of Physics LASSP Cornell University 510 Clark Hall Ithaca, NY 14853 mceuen@ccmr.cornell.edu Tel: (607) 255-5193 Fax: (607) 255-6428	Arthur P. Ramirez (3/06) Bell Laboratories 600 Mountain Ave Murray Hill, NJ 07974 apr@lucent.com Tel: (908) 582-4742 Fax: (908) 582-3260
Caroline A. Ross (3/07) Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering MIT 77 Massachusetts Ave 13-4005 Cambridge, MA 02139 caross@mit.edu Tel: (617) 258-0223 Fax: (617) 252-1020	Mark Stiles (3/08) NIST 100 Bureau Dr Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8412 mark.stiles@nist.gov Tel: (301) 975-3745 Fax: (301) 926-2746
Clare C. Yu (3/07) Dept. of Physics and Astronomy UCI Irvine, CA 92697-4575 CYU@UCI.EDU Tel: (949) 824-6216 Fax: (949) 824-2174

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APS Fellowship Nominations

Being selected an APS Fellow is restricted to 1/2 percent of the membership in any year. For those nominated through DCMP, that means ~25 per year. Actual approval is by the APS Council upon the recommendation of APS Fellowship Committee.

Competitive nominations require some care. Full details can be found by clicking Fellowship link on main APS webpage, at http://apsweb.aps.org/programs/honors/fellowships/index.cfm.

Tips for Successful Nominations

The selection process is very competitive; when preparing nominations, sponsors should ensure that the achievements of their candidates are genuinely reflected by the material submitted. In general, the guidelines for the Fellowship Committee are to look for sustained contributions to the field over a period of time and successful nominees generally have over 10 years of professional experience beyond the Ph.D. Inclusion of a complete list of publications, and lists of invited talks, awards, committee service, and organization of conferences is highly recommended. A detailed statement by the sponsors and supporting letters which evaluate the candidate's work and discuss which of the candidate's achievements are "exceptional" aid the committee considerably.

Reprints of papers are generally not useful.

Lobbying effort at 2006 March Meeting

Put Capitol Hill on your 2006 March Meeting itinerary!
By Steve Pierson, Head of Government Relations, APS Office of Public Affairs

The APS Office of Public Affairs (OPA) has begun the planning for the congressional visits during the 2006 APS March Meeting in Baltimore. The objective is to have March Meeting attendees from as many districts and states as possible travel down to Washington, DC to educate Congress on the importance of science research funding.

Carrying the message to individual offices remains one of the best means of influencing a Member of Congress.

OPA will assist the participants in all aspects of a congressional visit. We will brief APS members on the common message, offer advice on how to conduct an effective meeting, and cover the logistics of a congressional visit. We will also provide materials to be left with each office that will have state specific information.

The timing of these visits is excellent since Congress will have just started its considerations of the appropriations for the next fiscal year.

To broaden the message and to take advantage of this opportunity, we would also like to host an event aimed at media that would include the congressional visits participants, Members of Congress and Nobel Laureates.

In addition to influencing Congress, we hope that participants see first-hand the importance of informing their elected officials about what physicists do. While you our members are getting more active in this regard and more APS meeting attendees write letters at the Contact Congress computers, there is much more to do.

We would like you and all APS members to view Congressional visits as part of developing a relationship with an office rather than a one-time event. We would hope that you would follow up with the Congressional office at opportune times, make visits to the home offices, and perhaps invite staff or Members of Congress to visits their labs. You may also become resources for a Member's office.

In addition to the congressional visits, Contact Congress will be back at the 2006 March Meeting. We hope that we can best the fantastic turnout in Los Angeles that yielded 4,250 letters (or three letters each from more than 1400 of the 6500 attendees.) Thanks to the help of DCMP, the 2005 March Meeting marked the third consecutive increase in the number of letters (from 1760 in 2002, 2200 in 2003, and 3550 in 2004.)

OPA will begin its publicity and recruitment of the Congressional visits in the fall and looks forward to working closely with DCMP to make the most of this opportunity. If you have ideas for how to broaden our impact, please contact the APS OPA.

Please plan to make the Congressional visits part of your schedule for Baltimore. If your Senators and Congresspersons don't hear it from you, they won't hear it from anybody!

2005 March Meeting in Los Angeles

The 2006 March Meeting in Los Angeles had the most attendees ever (6645, up from 6331 in 2004), of which 2017 were DCMP members. There were 736 invited talks, 5002 contributed talks, and 593 posters. As in past years, DCMP sponsored a session on the Unity of Physics as well as twelve tables of "Lunch with the Experts," and DCMP played a key role in organizing the campaign of writing letters to Congress.

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The articles and opinion pieces found in this issue of the APS Division of Condensed Matter Physics Newsletter are not peer refereed and represent solely the views of the authors and not necessarily the views of the APS.