FIAP Activities 2014: Building the Industrial Physics Community

John Rumble, FIAP Chair

The importance of industrial physics is clearly high; the contributions by industrial physicists to science, technology, the economy, and society are large and well documented. Yet many in the industrial physics community don’t get the recognition and support as well as services from professional societies as other physics and scientific communities do. FIAP was founded specifically to help address some of these issues.

During the past year, FIAP has tried to raise awareness of these problems and more importantly taken vigorous steps to develop solutions. Many of these activities are described in other articles in this newsletter, so I will just summarize them here.
  • National Issues in Industrial Physics Workshop – FIAP and APS held this workshop in October 2014; the attendees identified a number of issues related to industrial physicists themselves, industrial physics as an entity, and industrial physics as part of the U.S. society. A number of recommendations for direct action by FIAP, APS, physics departments and others were made. One key recommendation is to foster the development of the industrial physics community. The final Workshop report has been released and is available online.
  • Early career scientists – FIAP continues to expand its partnership with the APS Careers Program to sponsor events at Section and National meeting directly aimed at introducing industrial careers to undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs.
  • APS Local Links – this new program aims to develop local communities, especially of industrial and other physicists. FIAP works closely with APS to help involve industrial physicists in this exciting new activity. More information is at the APS Local Links web page.
  • Industry Day at the APS March 2015 Meeting – FIAP has organized the first-ever Industry Day (Wednesday, March 4, With satellite sessions on Thursday, March 5) at the APS March Meeting that focuses on the use of polymers in industry and the development of new advanced manufacturing methods, such as 3D-printing. Speakers include industry R&D leaders and senior scientists both academic and industrial labs such as Dow Chemical, IBM, DuPont, ExxonMobil, GE, and Boeing. See more details at the Industry Day events page.
  • APS Industrial Physics Fellow – FIAP has worked closely with Steven Lambert, the APS Industrial Physics Fellow, on integrating FIAP goals and mission into the fabric of APS. Steven (who can be contacted at lambert@aps.org) has done an outstanding job of linking FIAP and various APS departments together on looking for new activities and improving existing ones.
  • Distinguished Lectureship Award on the Applications of Physics - Paul Grant of IBM and W2AZG has concluded a highly successful year as the first recipient of the APS/FIAP Distinguished Lectureship Award on the Applications of Physics. Paul will be giving a brief talk about his experience at the FIAP Business Meeting at 5:45 pm on Tuesday March 3, 2015 at the San Antonio March APS meeting. He also is writing an article for the next newsletter. James Wynne of IBM has been selected at the 2015 recipient of this lectureship.
  • More in 2015 – Incoming Chair David Seiler, Chair-elect Barbara Jones, and Vice Chair Jeffrey Hunt have exciting plans for extending FIAP’s efforts to build and serve the industrial physics community. Volunteers are welcomed to help. Contact Dave at david.seiler@nist.gov
Opinions expressed represent the views of the individual authors and not the American Physical Society or authors’ employers.