SPG/SSP/SPS: Schweizerische Physikalische Gesellschaft
The SPS is actively organizing and supporting a wide range of projects and events:
- The SPS Annual Meeting 2024 took place between 9-13 September at ETH in Zürich, with a welcome from Prof. J. Mesot, ETHZ President.
- A funding session was held to explore success strategies for project applications, covering SNF, ERC, and Innosuisse opportunities, followed by a community Q&A roundtable.
- On 9 September, at the Annual Meeting, we launched a historical symposium series on quantum science with “Louis de Broglie: 100 Years of Wave-Particle,” following previous historical commemorations (In 2023, the 400th Anniversary of Blaise Pascal, and the inauguration of the EPS historical site of Daniel Bernoulli's house in Basel; the Röntgen one in 2021). Nobel Laureate Anne L'Huillier gave a public talk to an audience of about 180 attendees.
- The 3rd edition of the Women in Physics Career Symposium (WiP), organized by Marc Janoschek (PSI), Tobias Golling, and their team, was held as a satellite event. Petra Rudolf, former EPS president, gave the plenary talk on building a career in and outside academia. The program featured EPFL President Anna Fontcuberta y Morral, Laura Bégon Lours (ETHZ), Ilaria Zardo (University of Basel), and Janine Haase. The mentoring program, at the core of this meeting, continues.
- We strengthened our communications and outreach by maintaining the high quality of SPG Mitteilungen, preparing Focus 3 on Quantum, Neuromorphic and Semiconductor Computing (published Feb. 2025), launching a new webpage with the SCNAT’s framework, and issuing monthly newsletters via email and LinkedIn, where we also promote awards and events.
- The SPS supports young scientists from high school to PhD level, including events like the Swiss Physics Olympiad, the International Young Physicists Tournament (IYPT) 2024 in Hungary, the International Physicists Tournament 2024 in Zürich, Youth@STEM4SF, the Young Talent Day at ETHZ (Sept. 9), and SJF 2024 in Fribourg.
- SPS reorganized several sections and appointed new chairs. A new Energy, Sustainability and Environment (ESE) section was launched, replacing the previous atmosphere-focused section, and Medical Physics was integrated into Applied Physics, so that now the section on Biophysics and Soft Matter will be more focused on these topics and their links to the big-pharma industry. The Commission on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), now led by Philipp Schmidt-Wellenburg (PSI), will ensure that the Women in Physics (WiP) meeting becomes a long-term SPS activity.
The “SPG Mitteilungen” (“Communications de la SSP”, “SPS Communications”) was published 3 times in 2024 (No. 72-74). This is the main SPS publication which disseminates the society's activities and promotes and reviews scientific progress in various areas of Physics in Switzerland. High-class articles are published in specific article categories, i.e. “Progress in Physics”, “Milestones in Physics”, “Physics Anecdotes & Personal Recollections”, “Physics and Society”, “Physicists in Industry” or “History and Philosophy of Physics”. A paper copy of the SPG Mitteilungen is distributed to all members and with the EPS EurophysicsNews. An electronic version can be downloaded from our webpage, and it is also distributed through the SPS LinkedIn channel.
About every month, the electronic SPS Newsletter is sent to all subscribers by email and on LinkedIn, including news at the Swiss, European, and global levels. We reward the writers of these communication media, although their work is much larger than their reward. These items inform about current research, the Institute's activities on the promotion of science and education, prize winners, conferences, symposia and more. Besides SPS members, every interested person can subscribe to this information channels.
The Focus is the SPS journal on dedicated topics of scientific, technical and social relevance, and we worked in 2024 on the preparation of Focus 3 and 4 to be published in 2025.
The SPS Annual Meeting 2024 at ETHZ was summarised in the Mitteilüngen n. 74, which also lists the 5 awardees of the year. More than 500 participants attended, with oral presentations and posters. The conference opened with the second edition of the special session "Physics Funding in Switzerland"; the symposium on De Broglie, with 4 outstanding talks providing an idea of how computing resources evolved from the Pascaline to modern computers such as those at the super-calculus centre CSCS in Lugano. The meeting included, as usual, the General Assembly, plenary talks, and several topical sessions covering a broad range of research fields. The meeting hosted the Award ceremony, including the Charpak-Ritz prize presentation, and poster sessions. About 15 companies had exhibition spaces and actively engaged in discussions with participants. The 3rd Women in Physics Career Symposium was organised as a satellite event of the annual meeting.
Every year, the SPS invites to the Young Talent Day (YTD) the students who participated with success in Swiss physics science competitions. The 2024 edition took place on Sept. 4 on the sidelines of the SPS annual meeting. About 10 students have been welcomed at the Physics Department of ETHZ for an exciting guided tour through the Nano- & Quantum physics labs. After lively discussions and exchanges during lunch, the students attended the De Broglie Symposium.
The Young Physicists Forum (YPF) fosters links across all student associations at Swiss universities and organises a yearly event. In 2024, the chosen topic was ‘Ultra-Fast Laser Physics'. It took place at EPFL on 26-28 April.
The International Physics Tournament 2024 at ETHZ was a great success. The SPS strongly supports this event. It is a competition for university students organised by PhD and Postdocs. They prepare problems every year that do not have trivial solutions. The winning teams this year, among 21 country teams, were Germany and Switzerland, and the SPS is organising a celebration. Some Universities, like ETHZ and EPFL, formally honour this activity in the students' curricula by recognising the credits the students spend on this.
A)
The SPS and the SFP (Société Française de Physique) sponsor a joint prize named the Charpak–Ritz Award. This prize is given alternately to a French physicist (in odd years) and a Swiss Physicist (in even years). In 2024, the winner was Frédéric Mila, nominated for his successful analysis of several experimental results in systems ranging from high-temperature superconducting cuprates to frustrated quantum magnets.
The EPS is another important international forum where the presidents of the main European societies and the APS meet. Christophe Rossel has been involved in the discussions of the Innovation WG and Tomoko Muranaka (chair of the ESE) of the energy group. The EPS produces position statements also useful for policymakers (see e.g. this recent one on IYQ-2025) and an energy statement will be produced.
B)
Bernhard Braunecker is the Delegate of SPS in SATW and also a member of the SATW Energy Group, which prepares dedicated publications and organises symposia. Several SPS colleagues are members of the board, scientific and industrial advisory committee.
The SCNAT Delegate is currently Philippe Jetzer, from Dec. 2024.
SPS is a member of the European Physical Society (EPS) and distributes the EPS publication "Europhysics News" to its members. In 2024, the SPS delegate was Hans Peter Beck and the representative in the Executive Committee was Andreas Schopper.
Michel Calame, vice-President, is the SPS delegate within the European Physics Journal (EPJ) Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) (chair in 2023), which ran very successfully in terms of publications. In 2024, the EPJ Web of Conferences hosted more than 20 events, including conferences on topics as electrical sciences, nuclear astrophysics, and more. For example, the SQM 2024 conference on Strangeness in Quark Matter took place in Strasbourg, France, from June 3-7. Other notable events included EU PVSEC 2024, the European Photovoltaic Solar Energy Conference and Exhibition, held in Vienna, and EOSAM 2024, the European Optical Society Annual Meeting, in Naples, Italy.
Hans Peter Beck (Uni Bern), the Swiss Delegate of SPS and SCNAT in IUPAP, attended the 3rd IUPAP general assembly in Haikou, China in October. The newly elected Swiss and CERN IUPAP commission members are:
C10 Condensed Matter - Member, 1st term- Thorsten Schmitt (PSI);
C14 Education - Member, 1st term - Andreas Müller (Uni GE);
C16 Plasma Physics - Vice Chair - Christian Theiler (EPFL)
C19 Astrophysics - Vice Chair - Carlo Ferrigno (Uni GE)
Florencia Canelli (Uni ZH) as Deputy Secretary General for Legal and Financial Affairs
Jens Vigen (CERN) as Secretary General for Legal and Financial Affairs
General Assembly meetings take place every year, with in-person meetings at three year’s intervals and online meetings in between.
Commission members and other IUPAP functions are elected every three years at the in-person meeting.
The SPS Awards, amounting to CHF 5000 each, are given every year to young physicists at an early stage of their career (PhD student - early post-doc). The 2024 winners are as follows:
• SPS Award in all physics domains (sponsored by ABB): Paolo Colciaghi
• SPS Award in Condensed Matter Physics (sponsored by IBM): Patrick Lenggenhager
• SPS Award related to Metrology (sponsored by METAS): Simon Scheidegger
• SPS Award in Computational Physics (sponsored by COMSOL): Lucrezia Maini
• SPS Award in relation to Energy technology (sponsored by Hitachi Energy Switzerland AG): Alberto Rolandi.
As stated above, Newsletters, LinkedIn channel, new webpage under SCNAT framework.
The SPS works on these themes in contact with national (MAP Plenum, SATW, SQI,..) and international organisations.
The SPS has a code of conduct and statutes (see link). Social topics are addressed by the ESE and DEI sections.
At the pre-university level, SPS also sponsors two awards for the best winners of the Swiss Physics Olympiad "SPG Nachwuchsförderpreis") and two awards for Swiss Youth in Science ("Jugendpreis der SPG").
Youth@STEM4SF, is a SPS-sponsored pioneering outreach project, bringing physics and STEM to high schools in the context of society and sustainable development. It offers to girls, boys and their teachers a dive into the real innovation ecosystem through interaction with role models of both genders from research and industry. In 2024 the pilot has been extended to several Swiss cantons (Vaud, Bern and Zurich), reaching up to 150 students and 8 teachers, inspired by researchers from CERN, University of Bern, GSI, EMPA, EPFL, and tech companies, such as ABB, MPS, COMSOL and DAPHNE. The inspirational thematic day(s) inspired students to become co-creators of new digital educational resources connecting science with society. A hackathon with 10 best teams was organised for almost 30 students and 4 teachers in Bern in September 2024. A winning proposal has been developed as digital open educational resource by experts from EPFL, and the 4 best students were awarded their participation at the summer school at EPFL. Barbora Bruant Gilejova, who leads the project, presented at the BSBF in Trieste in 2024 her project Youth@STEM4SF.
In 2024, work on organizing or supporting events for and with physics teachers was continued and the following were supported by the supported program of SPS (SP10), coordinated by Andreas Müller and conducted also by Maria Alice Gasparini:
- "A quantum lab visit program for high school students and teachers"
- "A workshop and continuous professional education offer for physics teachers on “Physics Teaching and Sustainable Education Goals”
- "Astroparticle physics and digital skills – a course and learning activities for high school physics teaching"
- Support for the preparation of a large, Swiss-wide congress for science teachers, organized by the "Verein Schweizerischer Mathematik- und Physiklehrkräfte (VSMP)".
A session "Physics education and communication: Good practice examples within the Swiss Physics Community" was held at the annual meeting of the SPS (Mitteilunen 74, Nov. 2024, p. 13). Presenting teachers were supported by the SPS program (conference fees) and led to decisions on future activities.
Work on continuous professional education (CPE) was further pursued. An event for teachers on “Exoplanets and life in the universe” was held in Geneva (in collaboration with the Département d'Instruction Publique). A collection of teaching resources and materials for classroom activities was developed and is currently under review. It will be made available Swiss-wide within the SPTEN program. A larger, one-day CPE course on cosmology and quantum physics is in preparation and will be held in 2025 to facilitate the integration of contemporary physics into high school physics teaching.
Efforts for online resource collections on topics of current interest for physics teachers were also carried forward, in close collaboration with several teachers.
“Physik im Advent” (PiA) is an online physics Advent calendar that presents 24 physics experiments or riddles to young pupils and anyone interested. SPS organised for the 2nd year the French & Italian translations together with German and English for all experiment descriptions and solutions. Prizes for pupils from all over the world were provided by the SPS for individuals and school teams from Switzerland in its national lottery. The Swiss prizes are sponsored by the SPS, the SCNAT, the foundation Metrohm Stiftung, and supermagnete.ch.
In 2024, there were over 70'000 registered participants from over 70 countries worldwide, and over one million clicks on the PiA link and videos on YouTube. The number of participants from Switzerland (roughly 1000) has been stable since 2023, and Switzerland is in the top 3 of the 80 participating countries, after Germany and Austria.
SPS contributed to increasing the “Swissness” of the national STEM expertise and shaping high school science curricula by supporting the pioneer project “Youth at STEM for Sustainable Future” Youth@STEM4SF. A successful pilot was realised at the Gymnase Bugnon–Seveline in Lausanne with 55 students, 3 science teachers and 5 (2 female) role models from research (Uni Bern, CERN) and industry (ABB, Solstis) on 11th of May 2023 under the umbrella of UNESCO International Year of Basic Sciences for Sustainable Development. Showing physics and STEM in action for sustainable development inspired 30% of students, especially girls, to consider STEM-related careers, and half of the students to act as ambassadors for the role of science in society in their future non-scientific careers. Youth@STEM4SF has been recognised by education21, the Swiss federal authority for high school education on sustainable development, as a perfect example of a pioneer program implementing a new education plan for Swiss gymnasiums.