The third Korean Physics Symposium at the APS March meeting was held at Plaza Court 1, Sheraton Denver Downtown, on Wednesday evening, March 5, 2014. This annual symposium is intended to serve as a forum during the APS March meeting, where Korean physicists in US and Korea exchange information on their research activities in an open environment, which would lead to potential collaboration in future. This year, the symposium was organized by Professor Seunghun Lee, University of Virginia, and the session was chaired by Dr. Hoydoo You, Argonne National Laboratory.
The session started with an opening remark by Professor Jaehoon Yu, University of Texas, the current AKPA president, by introducing AKPA and KSEA. The first speaker, Prof. Luke Lee, UC Berkeley, gave an overview of his program, Bioinspired Photonics-Optofluidics-Electronics Technology and Science and presented various molecular-level controls using plasmonic excitations of gold nanoparticles attached to DNA’s and proteins. Professor Steve Granick, UIUC, followed and presented a fascinating system of two dimensional monolayer formed on water surface and driven magnetically. Professor SungChul Hohng, Seoul National University, presented his recent study of long-standing issues in biology, whether biological ligands actively influence the conformational change of receptors or not. Using single-molecule fluorescence technique, he was able to unambiguously demonstrate that conformational change are not influenced by the presence of ligands. The last speaker was Dr. Dohun Kim, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, one of the two OYRA 2014 awardees. He presented his recent activities on control and measurements of quantum bits, which lays down a basis for future quantum computing technology.
The AKPA APS Korean Physics Symposium was a great success with many participants from US and Korea attending the symposium. After the symposium, the participants joined for the traditional Korean Physicists’ Wednesday Banquet organized by Professor Young-Kee Yeo at a nearby Chinese restaurant, in which further discussions of collaborations and networking took place in a courteous atmosphere. The annual Korean Physics Symposium is organized by AKPA (Association of Korean Physicists in America) and KPS (Korean Physical Society), and sponsored by APS-FIP, KSEA (Korean-American Scientists and Engineers Association), and KUSCO (Korea-US Science Cooperation Center).