2012 Quadrennial Physics Congress

As announced in the SPS meeting yesterday, every 4 years Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society, hosts a Quadrennial Physics Congress.  The next one is November 10-12, 2012 in Orlando, Florida, and includes a tour of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, a number of very interesting invited speakers, and other highlights.  (See http://www.spscongress.org/ for more details.)  The meeting does NOT require that you present research results, but there is a poster session for those who wish to do so, and another for presentations on outreach and community service.  Presentation abstracts are due October 15.

I want to clarify deadlines, which I had mixed up earlier. Registration for the conference is not due until next fall (September 17 for early registration, October 15 for regular, more expensive registration).  However, applications for $500 funding support from SPS to offset the cost of the trip are due in just 2 weeks, on Tuesday, May 15.  The total cost of the trip is significant, so this sort of support would be valuable, but it requires that at least 4 chapter members attend the meeting, and that they write an article about the conference as a “Chapter Reporter” and submit this afterward to the SPS National office for publication.  If we want to pursue this, we need to (a) have a list of at least 4 people who may attend the meeting and (b) submit an application for “Chapter Reporter” status to the SPS main office by May 15 — realistically, by the end of exam week.

So, I would like to ask that students who are interesting in attending the Physics Congress please contact me in the next few days (before you get distracted by final exams?), and then we will see if we have enough interest, and people, to consider the Chapter Reporter Award.  Thanks everyone for your attention.