March Meeting Proposals

The GSOFT program committee requests, by June 11, 2018, your proposals for Focus and Invited sessions for the 2019 March meeting. Focus sessions promote topics of particular interest to the soft matter community, and consist of 1-2 invited talks and up to 12 contributed talks. Invited sessions consist of 5 invited talks. We are committed to presenting a program that highlights the full scientific and cultural diversity of GSOFT, and we request your engagement in this process: your submissions will help ensure the best possible scientific program. We particularly encourage submissions from junior scientists, including graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty.

Instructions

To submit a Focus or Invited session please send an email to gsoftprogram@gmail.com with the subject line “2019 Session Proposal” and the following information as plain text in the email body.

1. The name and contact details (institution, email, and phone #) of all proposers of the session.
2. Type (Focus OR Invited) and Title of your session. A specific and descriptive title is valuable, particularly for Focus sessions. Successful Focus sessions will (later in the year) be populated with contributed talks, and those submitting talk abstracts will have the best idea of where to direct their submissions if your session title is as clear and specific as possible.
3. Justification for your session, including a statement of why you think it will be popular with the membership of GSOFT and related units (e.g. DBIO, DPOLY, GSNP). We welcome an estimate of likely attendance, where possible. You may wish to review the 2018 sessions organized by these units (search by “sponsor” here: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR18/SessionIndex2?SponsorID=GSOFT) and review 2018 submission statistics (http://abstracts.aps.org/reports/index.cfm?mtg=MAR18&t=13).
4. Names and contact details (institution, email and phone #) of the speakers you would like to invite to speak in your session. For Focus sessions select 1 or 2 invited speakers; for Invited sessions select 5 invited speakers. Preference will be given to proposals whose invited speakers have indicated a willingness to speak, should the session be selected; please contact your proposed speakers and indicate this information in your application. APS March Meeting invited talks last 36 minutes, including 6 minutes of questions. Focus sessions, once approved, will be populated with contributed talks later in the year (you do not need to suggest contributed talks at time of submission). Please note that APS rules say that people who gave an invited talk at the 2018 March Meeting in LA are not eligible to be invited speakers in 2019 (the only exception to this rule is made for award winners or non-technical invited talks, such as education and policy talks). A list of previous invitees is here: http://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/MAR18/APS_Invited. APS does not provide funding to cover speaker costs.
5. Name and contact details (institution, email and phone #) of a proposed chair for your session. Preference will be given to proposals whose session chairs have indicated a willingness to serve, should the session be selected.

We look forward to receiving your proposals. The GSOFT program committee — Katia Bertoldi (bertoldi@seas.harvard.edu), John Crocker (jcrocker@seas.upenn.edu), Doug Durian (djdurian@physics.upenn.edu), Lilian Hsiao (lilian_hsiao@ncsu.edu), Daphne Klotsa (dklotsa@email.unc.edu), and Steve Whitelam (swhitelam@lbl.gov) — welcome your comments and feedback at any stage of the process.