11/03/2024
In this Editorial, Daniela PETTI, EMA Officer, gives an overview of the recent activity concerning EMA digital networking as well as information about its future developments.
Dear colleagues,
The European Magnetism Association (EMA) has been organizing a series of online seminars, including both Plenary Lectures and Early-Career e-seminars by early-stage researchers since November 2020. These events aim to promote Magnetism in Europe and encourage networking among EMA members while maintaining a low carbon footprint.
We continually seek and accept nominations for the Early Career Scientist series; if you have recently seen an excellent PhD defence or a postdoc seminar on a topic related to magnetism that would be of interest to our community, please let us know about it. Nominations can be made by sending an e-mail to Daniela Petti or via the form available on the EMA website.
Overview of recent activity and information about future developments:
In 2023, the number of researchers reached by this initiative improved. The recorded video abstracts and seminars, available on the EMA website, have been viewed more than 5000 times (+18% from the previous year) and accessed from over 5,000 (+25%) different devices (phones, computers, tablets, etc.). The majority of viewers are still from Europe, but we also have many viewers from around the globe, e.g., from the US, India, and South Korea. Regarding the live sessions, as well as the Zoom attendees, we also reached more than 400 people on Twitch with more than 100 people viewing some of the streamed events.
Our hope for the next year is to reach even more people, particularly young researchers and students, both as speakers and as attendees. For this reason, we are collaborating with the Young Officer, Sofia Ferreira Teixeira, to find new strategies to engage young people.
In the last year, we received positive feedback about those seminars that were not purely related to research but instead dealt with other topics of interest for our community, such as those about mental health or professional relationships in academia. In 2024, we plan to include more of these non-research-related talks, by scheduling "Industry in the Spotlight" seminars and special seminars or events about gender equality in academia. We will also continue our "textbook style" seminars, in collaboration with the European School of Magnetism.
Regarding the organization, at the end of last year, Joo-Von Kim and Sebastian Meyer joined the committee and will act as pro-tempore digital networking officers for the first six months of 2024. We would like to thank Bertrand Dupé, who initiated the organization of these seminars but has now left the committee due to his full commitment as Officer for Higher Education.
We would like to highlight once again that our vision remains to ensure geographical, thematic, and gender diversity of the researchers working in the field of magnetism. For this reason, we welcome your suggestions concerning the seminars and, above all, nominations for the Early-Career Scientist series.
We hope to see you all online!
With our best regards,
Daniela PETTI, Officer for Digital networking
Joo-Von KIM and Sebastian MEYER, Interim Officer for Digital networking