International Association of Physics Students

Introduction

IAPS is an association of physics students and student societies from around the globe, working to promote peaceful collaboration amongst its members. These are represented by national and local committees, who meet regularly to ensure the relevance of activities. Since 1987, IAPS has worked continuously to support friendly relations and collaboration between physics students. The group supports its members in their academic and professional work by discussing and acting on scientific, social and cultural issues. IAPS is a recognised non-governmental organisation run entirely by students from around the world.

IAPS runs an annual International Conference of Physics Students (ICPS), one of the biggest student organized conferences in the world. IAPS also organizes visits to global research institutions such as CERN or Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, international physics competitions, summer schools, exchange programmes and multinational meetings.

On a daily basis, IAPS is run by an Executive Committee, which is elected at the Annual General Meeting (AGM), held during the ICPS with the participation of all member societies. Most of the activities are run through the help of student volunteers, whose collaboration is necessary to ensure that all activities are offered at prices that allow participation from countries with weaker economies.

Throughout its existence, IAPS has been accumulating a number of partnerships with several international organizations. Between the most long-standing collaborators stand the European Physical Society (EPS) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP). IAPS continuously pursues collaborative partnership efforts with other organizations to have a positive impact in the global scientific community.

Executive Committee

The IAPS Executive Committee (EC) is currently composed of 9 students, elected between representatives of the different member societies. The 2016/17 EC is composed of:

International Conference of Physics Students

ICPS International Conference of Physics Students is the International Conference of Physics Students, which is the main event of IAPS, organized yearly by one of its member committees. The purpose of the conference is to create an opportunity for physics students from all around the world to come together, to talk about science and life, to practice presenting their research and, all in all, to have a great time.

The first ICPS was organized by students of the Eötvös Loránd University, in Budapest, Hungary in the year 1986. The event had less than fifty participants, but since then, the conference has grown considerably, nowadays bringing together more than four hundred students. The one week of the conference has its fair share of scientific, social and touristic programs. One gets a chance to listen to and give lectures on various topics in physics, to check out the laboratories of the host city, to make friends with physics students from all around the world, to get a little glimpse of the foreign cultures that gather here, and to see another part of the world.

The last International Conference of Physics Students was hosted by the German NC, the Youth section of the German Physical Society (DPG), at Heidelberg University in August 2014. The event featured about 120 student lectures, 80 posters and 7 guest speakers. It also included visits to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), some of the Max Planck Society institutes and several private companies. ICPS 2015 will be held in Zagreb (Croatia) and ICPS 2016 will be in Malta.

International tours

Since its foundation, IAPS has organised several trips to international research facilities, either directly or through its member societies. In the last five years, the EC has organised annual tours to CERN, in Geneva (Switzerland). The highly successful iaps2CERN programme usually has approximately 40 participants, representing up to 20 different nationalities. The tour usually comprises visits of the CERN exhibitions, some of the experiments currently accessible and also a visit of the United Nations offices in Geneva.

At the end of October 2014, the IAPS EC has announced the expansion of its visits programme to other research facilities. Current plans include a visit to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (Italy) and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (UK).

International Physics Competitions

In May 2014, the A-Eskwadraat student association (Netherlands), held the Physics League Across Numerous Countries for Kick-Ass Students (PLANCKS). IAPS contributed to its publicising and, from May 2015, this competition is officially organised as an IAPS event. In 2016, this will be hosted in Bucharest (Romania), by the local IAPS NC, the Asociatia Studentilor Fizicieni din Universitatea Bucuresti (ASFUB) .

IAPS also support other physics competitions, such as the Ortvay competition (organised by the Hungarian NC) and International Physics Tournament.

Membership

IAPS members may be national physics student organisations, called National Committees (NC), physics student association localised at one university or city, called Local Committees (LC) and individual members (IM) if none of the before are present where one studies. In a broad sense, all the members of NC-s and LC-s, as well as IM-s, are members of IAPS. Membership costs are calculated for each applicant based on the type of committee and the applicant country's GDP.