President's Page
Amsterdam, 27 Sept. 2009
Dear ELGRA member and other participants of the 2009 Bonn Symposium,
Let me first thank you all for your contributions to this very successful ELGRA Symposium. We had some 200 participants from Central and Eastern Europe but also our colleagues and friends from the United States, Japan and even Australia made it to Bonn. Based on the reactions I received personally, it seems the Symposium and its organization was perceived very well. There was again a very good overview of the current state research in the various disciplines as portrayed by our key-note speakers, for which I would like to thank them all. We also had the interesting and historic overviews by our ELGRA Medalists Dr.ing. Alberto Passerone and Prof.dr. Dag Linnarsson.
ELGRA General Assembly:
There was a good attendance of the membership for the General Assembly (GA)
during this symposium. The recent activities, financial status and future plans
were presented by the ELGRA Management Team. The GA is also the time to vote
for the new Management Team. We had several candidates for the vacant position
in physical sciences. We are pleased that Prof.Dr. Hans Fecht received the majority
votes for this. With the welcome for Prof. Fecht we also have to say goodbye
to Dr. Thodoris Karapantsios who served the microgravity community, through
ELGRA for many years. Thank you Thodoris for your support. The composition of
the current Management Team can be found at the MT page.
Publication:
As mentioned during the meeting you are invited to enter a manuscript related
to your presentation in Bonn to the Microgravity Sciences and technology journal.
The deadline for this is 1st of November. You can upload your manuscript to
the MST Editorial Manager. When uploading your manuscript to the editorial manager,
please do not forget to choose article type = ELGRA Symposium Bonn 2009. This
is the first question after clicking on "Submit new manuscript". Reviewed
papers will be published on the web as soon as they are accepted. The hard-copy
version of the special issue will become available end 2010 / early 2011.
ELGRA Student initiative:
As mentioned during the General
Assembly a very active group of students wants to establish an ELGRA student
group. As ELGRA management we fully endorse this initiative. We therefor want
to ask and encourage you to provide ideas and input to the students. If you
have students in your department or faculty who might be interested to participate
or join this group please inform the coordinator of this initiative: Mr. Hector
Salvador at hector.salvador@leem.es. And if you are a student yourself, please
get in contact with Hector to inform him about this.
ELGRA Bonn Symposium pictures:
You can find and download the
Bonn-Symposium Family picture from the Symposium web site: www.elgra.org –
“ELGRA Symposia”.
More picture can be found on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elgra.
If you have any questions or remarks on any of the subjects above, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely yours,
Jack J.W.A. van Loon
ELGRA president
