Report on Attendance at the 28th European Conference on Surface Science
(ECOSS-28), August 28th to September 2nd 2011 in Wroclaw, Poland
Dr Marc Walker, Department of Physics
The ECOSS series of conferences brings together the Surface Science community
from across Europe and beyond. This year, supported by the Roberts’ Fund, I was
able to attend the meeting and present our work on the study of the Cu(100)/Sn
system with low energy electron diffraction and ion scattering spectroscopies. Some
700 delegates attended the conference, split in to six parallel sessions of presentations
and two poster sessions, held in various buildings of the University of Wroclaw. In
addition, there were six plenary talks by experts in the field held in the very
impressive Opera House. With approximately 300 talks and 150 posters presented at
the conference, it was an ideal opportunity not only to discuss our own research
programme, but also to gather information on potential new studies and
collaborations.
My 15 minute presentation took place at the beginning of the first set of parallel
sessions and went well thanks to good preparation and practicing the talk as part of
our internal Surface Science Seminars. The interest which it generated also attracted
people to our poster on a different material system on the Monday evening, giving
one of our PhD students additional opportunities to discuss his work with other
researchers in the field.
Networking at the poster sessions was a little difficult due to the small venue and the
large number of people attending, but there were plenty of opportunities to discuss
various subjects over lunch or dinner in the many restaurants in the Rynek (Market
Square), or during refreshment breaks at the conference itself. In particular, this may
lead to a collaboration with the group at TU Vienna as they are about to set up a
Pulsed Laser Deposition system similar to the one our group has in the Department of
Physics at Warwick. Whilst the materials may be different, we will be able to share
our knowledge with them and then use the range of techniques available to the two
groups to study a range of samples.
Particular highlights of the week included the opening plenary session with talks by
Karsten Horn (Graphene) and Wilson Ho (atomic scale inelastic tunnelling), as well
as invited talks by Falko Netzer (metal-supported oxide nanostructures) and Helmut
Winter (fast atom diffraction).
All in all, a very enjoyable and beneficial week, both personally and for our research
programme, amongst the leading figures in the surface science community.