The Virtual Organizing Committee of the 2021 Virtual CAP Congress, along with the Division Chairs and Symposium Organizers, have completed the program for this year’s Congress. We have an impressive number of contributions – 685 – of which 171 are invited speakers and 204 are students participating in the oral competition. There are 107 posters, of which 75 students in the poster competition. The 685 contributions represent the work of 1651 authors. We encourage all authors to register and attend!
The full Congress Program is available on the CAP Indico website — https://indico.cern.ch/event/985448/. Use the Timetable tab in the left menu to see the entire program. The Contribution list and the Speaker list options in the menu can be used to find a particular talk or a particular speaker.
NETWORK WITH YOUR COLLEAGUES / MAKE NEW ACQUAINTANCES
There will be opportunities for Networking throughout the entire Congress using virtual lounges and seating areas hosted on the Gather.Town platform implemented within Underline. This platform is really quite remarkable. One can wander about the exhibitor and sponsor booths which will be placed in a central location, with rooms leading off to the different poster rooms, organized by disciplines. In Gather.Town, one is represented by an avatar (please make sure you label it with your name so people can find you). When you approach somebody, a small, local Zoom-like room opens up and you can have a real conversation. Any person in the local neighbourhood can join the conversation. You can interact with other delegates on the Underline platform and arrange to “meet” in the Gather.Town interface.
INVITATION TO GRADUATE STUDENTS
Finally, we are putting out a call for graduate student volunteers. We require about 15 to 20 graduate student volunteers to help with technical assistance during the parallel sessions, each volunteer expected to cover at least 4 sessions. The selected volunteers must undergo the training that will be offered by Underline. The final team of graduate student volunteers will get registration fee waivers. Please contact Christine Kraus, PhD, at christine.kraus@snolab.ca if you are interested. Please include your name, university, e-mail, along with the name of your supervisor and the field of your graduate program (e.g. condensed matter, medical physics, theoretical, etc.)
REGISTRATION
Registration for the 2021 Congress is scheduled to open the first week of May. The link will be posted at https://cap.ca/congress/2021. The registration fee is quite nominal: $150 for regular members, $75 for graduate students. This year we are introducing a special rate of undergraduate affiliate members at $20. Please have a look at the details here: https://cap.ca/congress-conference/2021-cap-virtual-congress-june-6-11/2021-registration-fees/
As much of the Congress is being run in the flipped hybrid mode, you will have access to the pre-recorded talks as soon as the CAP Underline website goes live at the end of May. You are encouraged to listen to the pre-recorded talks that interest you or correspond to the session that interests you. The live session during Congress week will include short summary/update talks and a lively question/answer/discussion session.
We have programmed an exciting program, starting on Sunday June 6th with the High School Teachers Workshop on Quantum Computing and the Herzberg Memorial Public Lecture to be given in the evening by Frank Wilczek, Nobel Laureate, entitled: “Quanta of the Third Kind: Anyons”. This lecture will be live-streamed so should garner a huge audience from across Canada and abroad.
From Monday June 7th to Thursday June 10 inclusive will be the standard part of the Congress, which will be hosted on the Underline platform — https://underline.io/events/105/reception. NOTE: This site is currently being set up; it is scheduled to go live on May 31st.
MONDAY, JUNE 7
The Monday morning will start with a plenary address from Alejandro Adem, the President of NSERC (there will be a detailed update on Thursday morning). There will then be parallel sessions, followed by a plenary talk by Avery Broderick on the Event Horizon Telescope. The lunch period will feature a Science Policy Session with Lorna Somers of McMaster who will lead a discussion on how to speak to anybody (especially administrators and funding agencies) about our research.
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
On Tuesday June 8th we will hold the Symposium Day. We have seven Symposia scheduled, including the Cosmology Symposium in celebration of James Peebles’ Nobel prize, the Symposium on Quantum machine Learning and the NRC Symposium on Quantum Sensors. We will also host a mini-conference called Magnetic North which will be held during Symposium day and on Wednesday.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9
The plenary sessions on Wednesday morning will start with a presentation of the CAP EDI Survey results, followed by a talk by Brian Wilson on Cancer and Light. The afternoon plenary will be by Alessandra Lanzara on Local Symmetries and Engineering New Materials. During the “lunchtime” break and at the end of the day we will hold the poster session. This will be hosted on the Gather.Town platform implemented within Underline. Each poster room will include a series of virtual poster boards. During the poster sessions, being in the demarcated zone around the poster allows you to interact similarly with the presenter and others in the demarcated zone. Clicking on the x allows the pdf file of the poster to be shown on your screen.
THURSDAY, JUNE 10
The Thursday morning we will start early with a one hour Community Update from NSERC by Catherine Harrison and Sara Ellison, followed by the plenary talk by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein on the EDI-related topic entitled “The right to Know and Love the Night Sky”. The afternoon plenary talk will be by Renee Horton from NASA on Friction Stir Welding in Aerospace.
FRIDAY, JUNE 11
Finally, on Friday, we will have the IPP/CINP Joint meeting followed by the CINP AGM. The DNP business meeting will also be held following the CINP AGM. The annual business meetings of the rest of the divisions are being organized by the division executive to be held before the end of June. The Division Executive will issue meeting notices to their division membership and a list of meetings will be posted on the CAP Congress website.
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17
The student oral and poster competitions at the division levels will be held during Congress. The judging of the poster finals, oral student competition finals and the awarding of the CAP level prizes will happen one week later on June 17th.