Dear OCPA members,
Greetings and best wishes for the Chinese New Year!
As we enter the fifteenth year of OCPA, we are pleased to report that OCPA continues to grow as an organization serving the interest of Chinese physicists worldwide. This growth is a result of the hard work of many dedicated OCPA members. In particular, we would like to take this opportunity to thank Keh-Fei Liu, the outgoing OCPA president, for his superb leadership during the past two years!
The highlight of the OCPA 2004 activities is undoubtedly the tremendously successful 4th OCPA Conference in Shanghai. The large turn-out (including many young students), the excellent quality of the plenary and parallel talks, the sense of excitement permeating throughout the conference, and the active interactions among physicists some of whom met for the first time, all testify to the success of this truly memorable event. The organizers of the 4th OCPA Conference, particularly the Chair - Tu-Nan Chang, deserve much credit for their tireless effort. We now look forward to the next OCPA Conference to be held in Taipei in 2006!
We would also like to take this opportunity to welcome the 2005-2006 OCPA Officers, Councilors, and Coordinators. We are fortunate to have many accomplished and dedicated physicists volunteering their service for OCPA. As you may have heard, a new Committee on the Status of Women Physicists, chaired by Shang-Fen Ren, has been formed to address issues unique to women physicists.
We would also like to point out that a Bylaws Committee, appointed by Keh-Fei Liu and chaired by Bing-Lin Young, has been deliberating on several proposed modifications of our bylaws. The recommendations of the Bylaws Committee will be available in the near future.
We are pleased to report that both the OCPA Outstanding Young Researcher Award and the Achievement in Asia Award have continued to attract candidates of excellent caliber. Thanks to a generous donation from Tu-Nan Chang, the Achievement in Asia Award for the next few years will be dedicated to the memory of Robert T. Poe. We are also very grateful to many OCPA members who have responded to Keh-Fei Liu's call for donation to the OCPA general fund. It has led to a total contribution of over $5000 in the last two months! These generous donations will help support other OCPA sponsored activities including Summer Schools and receptions in APS meetings.
We look forward to hearing from you for inputs and suggestions. We count on your ideas and participations to make OCPA an even stronger organization which can better serve us all.
With our best wishes to you for a happy Chinese New Year,
Jen-Chieh Peng
President, OCPA
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
jcpeng@uiuc.edu
Wu-Tsung Weng
Vice-President, OCPA
Brookhaven National Laboratory
weng@bnl.gov