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Dr Christoph Eisenmenger-Sittner, Secretary General IUVSTA about the upcoming 20th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-20) in Busan.
Your 20th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-20) will kick off on August 21. Is there a specific topic of the congress?
The International Vacuum Congress (IVC) of IUVSTA is a triennial event which covers the scientific topics of the union, i. e. Applied Surface Science, Biointerfaces, Electronic Materials, Nanoscience, Plasma Technology, Surface Engineering, Surface Science, Thin Films and Vacuum Science. The common denominator of this wide field of scientific disciplines is that they all use vacuum technology, which can provide a very clean and well defined environment for scientific investigations as well as for technological processes. Although not widely known to the public, vacuum technology is be the basis for technological fields as diverse as food packaging, large scientific machines like particle accelerators and highly advanced microelectronic processing.
Is your conference also of social and cultural resonance?
Of course any scientific community as widespread as the Vacuum Technology group will create social impact. For instance, the touch screen technology of modern day smart phones would not be possible without processing techniques based on vacuum technology. And we all know from personal experience how strongly mobile communication has changed the way we all live. This is just one example. However, vacuum based techniques also enter the fields of medicine or agriculture, where hew trends towards the modification of biological tissue or agricultural products by atmospheric plasmas can be observed. We may expect surprising developments here in the future.
For your congress you have chosen Busan. Why?
It is long standing practice that Vacuum Societies from the 30 member nations of IUVSTA make bids for hosting the IVC. For IVC 20 the venue of Busan/Korea was chosen. This coincides well with the fact that as of today Korea is a nexus of high tech industry, comprising consumer electronics in general and mobile communication in special.
For those delegates who cannot join you in Korea. Can they participate remotely?
Presently the Union relies on the personal contact of the delegates which still seems to be the optimum setting for creating new ideas and collaborations. Nonetheless, remote forms pf participation in major events of the Union like IVC or other associated conferences will be a major issue in the years to come.
What are the main challenges of the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications these days?
Of course, in times of damped economic growth, one major challenge is to maintain and to even improve a high technological and scientific level in our member nations. The IUVSTA does so by supporting workshops, schools, technical training courses and short courses for persons of different educational background from academia to industrial engineers. In addition, also to get young scientists interested in our technological fields is a major issue. This has been done successfully in the past and we are sure that we will be able to fulfill these tasks in the future.
The International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA) is an international federation of thirty national vacuum organizations. It represents nearly 15,000 physicists, chemists, materials scientists, engineers and technologists who are active in basic and applied research, development, manufacturing, sales and education. The key body in IUVSTA is the Executive Council which comprises a Councilor from each of the national society members, together with seven elected officers. The purpose of IUVSTA is to provide a worldwide platform for the promotion, proliferation, and education of vacuum science, techniques, and applications.
http://iuvsta.org/