Dear Colleagues:

March Meeting Focus Sessions are a great way to bring an emerging new topic to the attention of a broad audience. Focus Sessions consist of one invited talk and several contributed talks. We strive for a good balance of invited speakers, including established and well known scientists, promising younger speakers, women, and minorities.

At this time, we would like to remind you of the upcoming deadline for Focus Session proposals for the 2010 March Meeting in Portland, OR, which has been extended to June 19, 2009.

Submitting a proposal is not difficult. You will need to decide on a topic, contact and secure participation of your invited speaker and write a brief summary of the topic and your speaker's contributions. Remember that invited speakers from last year’s meeting are not eligible. Also, APS and GSNP cannot cover travel or attendance costs.

If you would like to propose a Focus Session, please provide the following information, by e-mail or as a text or pdf document:

A. Focus Session Title: Please remember that we would like to attract a large audience to each Session and that we compete with many parallel events. If your title is too technical or specialized it may not attract a large audience. Focus Sessions should be in areas of enough current interest to attract sufficient numbers of contributed talks.

B. Organizer:

Name:
Affiliation:
Phone:
Email:

C. Description of Focus Session (one paragraph to at most one page):

This description is the basis upon which the program committee will select proposals. Please describe the Focus Session in non-technical terms so that committee members with a diverse background can understand its relevance. Briefly describe what the invited speaker will present (you do not need a final title or abstract at this time, but a preliminary indication of subject is needed) and please explain why you believe that a Focus Session on this topic will attract a substantial number of contributed talks.

D. For the invited speaker:

Name:
Affiliation:
Phone:
Email:

At this point, we are not yet asking for final confirmation from your speakers. Please bear in mind that cancellations cause undue difficulties, and we will be requiring a confirmation from the invited speaker well before the Sorters Meeting in October 2009. By that time, you should also have identified a session chair (you, for example).

Please e-mail your proposals to the GSNP Program Chair Thomas Halsey thomas.c.halsey at exxonmobil.com. Thomas is also available to answer any questions related to program planning for the March 2010 meeting.

Please cc to:

Beate Schmittmann schmittm at vt.edu.
Corey O'Hern corey.ohern at yale.edu
Arshad Kudrolli akudrolli at clarku.edu

Thank you very much for your help.

Thomas Halsey Chair-Elect and Program Chair, GSNP