ASTeC had a big presence at the joint international 17th European Vacuum Conference (EVC-17) and the 37th European Conference On Surface Science (ECOSS-37) in Harrogate. This combined event also included the Vacuum Symposium training courses (previously held at DL), the RGA users meeting and 44 industrial exhibitors.
The European Vacuum Conference (EVC) is held every three years (every two years before 2018) in Europe to discuss the latest developments in vacuum science, technology and applications. The conference series was initiated by Prof. John S. Colligon in 1988 and the first conference (EVC-1) was held at Salford University (near Manchester, UK). Dr. Oleg Malyshev and Joe Herbert took the bulk of the organisation of the event after successfully winning the bid to host the conference in the UK for the first time in 36 years. It was with great sadness that we had to report the recent death of the Prof. Colligon at the inaugural session of the conference.
The European Conference on Surface Science (ECOSS) is an annual event that is held and co-ordinated by a joint standing committee of the IUVSTA and EPS Condensed Matter Division. After approval for the UK to host EVC-17, ECOSS decided to join to make a bigger event that covers all scientific topics of IUVSTA.
The conference was well supported by all IUVSTA divisions, with divisional members present on the International Advisory Committee (IAC) and International Programme Committee (IPC). The IPC suggested Plenary and Invited speakers and tried to maintain a reasonable regional and gender balance. Thus, of the 6 Plenary and 44 Invited Speakers (50 in total), 39 came from Europe, 6 from the Americas, and 4 from the rest of the world. The gender balance was 35 male and 15 female and reflects the ratio o
f male and female scientists in this field.
Prof. Jim Clarke delivered the opening talk 'Particle Accelerators at Daresbury Laboratory: A Colourful Past and a Bright
Future', which was well received by the community.
The 5-day conference programme included: The 6 plenary sessions followed by 4 to 6 parallel sessions consisting of 44 invited, 18 featured and 200 contributed talks. The 3 poster sessions saw 91 posters presented on a wide range of topics.
Early career researchers (ECR) were offered the opportunity to attend 4 ECR Sessions with presentations on topics as diverse as winning research funding in Europe and public engagement.
The training courses (coordinated by Joe Herbert) ran over the full week with 13 short courses available across vacuum and surface science techniques.
The 447 conference delegates came from 40 countries with 42% from UK, 42% from Europe and 16% from Rest of World. The top three countries represented were UK, Germany, and Japan. In terms of gender distribution, 64% of attendees were male, 21% female, and 15% self-identified as other.
ASTeC staff delivered 6 talks, 7 posters and training sessions throughout the week. A special mention goes to Christopher Benjamin, Hugh Churn and Oliver Poynton, who were all successful in winning early career poster prizes.
The Vacuum Solutions Group and Admin team played a huge role behind the scenes keeping the programme running and supporting all aspects of the conference. The conference would not have been such a success without the team support, thank you.
The ASTeC and Hartree BID team were also out promoting Daresbury and our capabilities at STFC with a very impressive looking exhibitor stand.
