EMA Editorial for January 2024

Dear Colleagues,

We wish you and your loved ones a fruitful and enjoyable 2024. Time flies for EMA and so much has happened in the world since our last New Year’s Editorial. We very much hope for a peaceful future, and we are thinking about how science can contribute to this. By encouraging open exchange and promoting an inclusive magnetic community, we believe that we can do our bit to bring people together across borders, and promote research, knowledge transfer, and friendship. This ambition underlines EMA's objectives as a learned society, developing knowledge, connecting people, and contributing to the development of society.

Educational and research events are now pretty much back to normal, which is great to see and highly motivating. Last year, the Joint European Magnetic Symposia JEMS2023 took place in Madrid in a hybrid format, attracting almost 800 participants from 40 countries, who contributed to a lively and stimulating atmosphere. The plenary lectures by the recipients of the EMA awards – now a cornerstone of JEMS – were given by Oliver Gutfleisch and Samuel Mañas-Valero, who received the Dominique Givord Award and the Young Scientist 2023 Award, respectively. The European School on Magnetism ESM2023 also took place near Madrid this year and we were excited about the remarkable interest of excellent candidates. 90 young scientists had the possibility to participate on-site and 50 additional candidates joined online simultaneously.

We are now looking forward to the major events in magnetism that will take place in Europe in 2024. There will be no JEMS in 2024 as ICM2024 is coming to Europe, taking place in Bologna at the beginning of July and we strongly encourage everyone to join this international meeting! (submit abstracts until 16 January 2024 !). To all of our interested young scientists, we remind you that ESM will take place in York, UK, at the end of the summer (link, call for applications). And, as we do every year, we will honour outstanding young researchers active in magnetism – please do not forget to nominate potential candidates – the call for nominations for the EMA Young Scientist 2024 Award is open until 31st January, 2024!

As mentioned at the beginning, time flies and we, Olivier Fruchart and Dennis Meier, are now halfway through our three-year mandate as EMA president and vice-president. This is then a good time to reflect on EMA, and review our past as well as future actions. Last year, the Treasurer and the Officers for Industry Relations and for Higher Education were renewed. A warm welcome to Matthieu Bailleul, Diana Leitao and Bertrand Dupé and a big THANK YOU for taking care of these important tasks within EMA! We also conducted an open survey to get new input how we can serve the magnetism community in the best way and to find out what you as part of the community expect from EMA. The survey received over 300 responses, enabling us to identify the most relevant actions to develop. These concern the link with national societies, the involvement of young scientists, EMA membership, and the role of proceedings at JEMS. Dedicated commissions worked to define an EMA strategy for each topic, which then were approved by the General Council. We are happy about all the positive feedback and support we received, and we are now in the process of implementing these four strategies. In particular, we have already created the Young EMA Officer position and appointed Sofia Ferreira Teixeira to strengthen the connection with younger members of the magnetism community. Actions concerning links with national societies and proceedings are under development and first actions will be put in place soon. With respect to EMA membership and how you can support EMA, you'll find out more in a few days' time in a dedicated message!

Stay tuned, all the best for 2024, and a happy New Year!

Olivier FRUCHART, President
Dennis MEIER, Vice-President