Photos: APS hosts record number of satellite sites around the world

At the same time physicists were gathering in Anaheim, California, for the Global Physics Summit, more than 1,000 scientists and students were meeting in person and online at 17 satellite sites around the world.

The session in Ghana not only “provided a platform for knowledge exchange,” said Garu Hagoss, a faculty member at the University of Ghana, but highlighted “the role of Ghanaian researchers in the global scientific landscape.” Topics ranged from computational predictions of materials’ properties to the Ghana Radio Astronomy Observatory’s new telescope.

This is the fourth year in which APS has supported satellite sites, first launched in 2022 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We wanted to give people an opportunity to be involved in the March Meeting without having to necessarily travel,” says Michele Irwin, the senior international programs manager at APS.

The 2022 March Meeting had four satellite sites. By 2024, that number had more than doubled: Nine satellite sites in Asia, Africa, and South America held a March or April Meeting event for the local physics community with support from APS. These events help scientists outside of the U.S. participate, and they boost APS’ partnerships abroad, says Irwin.

This year, satellite site meetings were held in Brazil, Cameroon, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Hong Kong, Jordan, Morocco, Nepal, two places in Pakistan, the Philippines, Senegal, Serbia, South Africa, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Several of the sites also organized virtual sessions.

At the site in Ukraine, talks touched on quantum materials and their applications. “The post-talk discussions proved particularly valuable,” said Sergiy Perepelytsya, director of the Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. (The timing was prescient: A week later, Perepelytsya celebrated the opening of the School on Quantum Sensing and Metrology, organized with support from APS and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.)

And in Pakistan, attendees listened to talks on condensed matter and high energy physics. For Hassan Shahzad, associate professor at the National Centre for Physics, the meeting was a chance to connect with “leading physicists, potential collaborators, and peers.”

APS plans to build on this momentum at future physics summits. "The satellite sites have helped bridge the gaps created by distance, by place," says Irwin. "Physics is a global effort, and we’re a global society, so these sites are a big part of our future."

See scenes from satellite sessions around the world.