Only nine days to go until we meet again in Siófok!
After two years, we’ll again have invited speakers from abroad, and we’ll have a traditional vote for the best young lecturers. The latter means that we won’t get the results in a single click, but we’re happy about that for now.
Our conference program is different in several ways.
There has never been such a disproportion in the number of presentations in life and materials sciences, and it is not because of this, but only to emphasize it, that we are commemorating Árpád Barna, who died last year, with a special session.
He was a prominent member of the not large but enthusiastic community of Hungarian electron microscopists, and it is fitting that we commemorate him in this way.
A special announcement will also be made at the conference to ensure that his memory is preserved.
The world has paid a heavy price for him, but there are also rewards to be gained from the fact that it has been difficult to organize major events with a personal presence in the last two years. We have also learned to communicate with each other in the way we saw in the astronaut films of our childhood.
So one of our plenary speakers, Attila Losonczy, who works at Columbia University and is unable to travel home, will give his talk using Zoom, and we will use a separate camera so that he can see his audience and ask more personal questions.
On Thursday, 17 Ph.D. and TDK students will “compete” for the Best Young Lecturer award. Among them is Lívia Vásárhelyi, winner of last year’s one-day web conference competition and this year invited to the society.
We have never had an evening lecture before, but we are making an exception for a Nobel laureate who would not be able to give a lecture at any other time. (The practice of a lecture starting at 7 pm is, however, mostly only for other Nobel laureates, in the future, too.)
Joachim Frank, one of the 2017 Nobel Laureates in Chemistry, will honor us by accepting an earlier invitation and giving a lecture from New York. And how nice that he is able to do it with Zoom what he could not do in person for reasons beyond our control!
His lecture starts at 7 pm on Friday evening, and I really hope that no one who will be in Siófok will miss the opportunity to join us in the auditorium and not only listen attentively, but also feel free to ask questions.
This is a great opportunity, especially for young people. They can ask questions not only about the topic of the talk but also about Professor Joachim Frank’s other achievements, his present activities, the present, and the future of cryo-electron microscopy.
When planning the program, we have made sure that there is time to relax and that no one has to be hungry during or after the lecture.
After this talk, the general assembly will begin, and all MMT members present are invited to attend.
All the more so as there will be a renewal of the board, and it is not at all clear who the new board will consist of and how much work and what tasks they will undertake to ensure that our society continues to grow and provide useful programs and opportunities for its members.