The joint international 17th European Vacuum Conference (EVC-17) and the 37th European Conference On Surface Science (ECOSS-37) was held from 17 – 21 June 2024 in the town of Harrogate in North Yorkshire, England. This combined event also included the Vacuum Symposium training courses (previously held at Daresbury Laboratory), the RGA users meeting and 44 industrial exhibitors.
The conference offered the more than 400 scientists, researchers, and engineers—whether in academia, national labs, or industry—a platform to discuss the latest advancements in surface physics and chemistry, plasma physics, gas dynamics, vacuum metrology, and vacuum technologies, along with their industrial applications.
The Cockcroft Institute made a significant impact at the conference, with ASTeC staff actively involved in the local organising committee, delivering six talks, presenting several posters, and conducting training sessions throughout the week. The training courses (coordinated by Joe Herbert) ran over the full week with 13 short courses available across vacuum and surface science techniques.
Notably, Christopher Benjamin, Hugh Churn, and Oliver Poynton received early career poster prizes, earning special recognition for their achievements.
The European Vacuum Conference (EVC) is held every three years (every two years before 2018) in Europe to discuss the latest developments in vacuum science, technology and applications. The conference series was initiated by Prof. John S. Colligon in 1988 and the first conference (EVC-1) was held at Salford University (near Manchester, UK). Dr. Oleg Malyshev and Joe Herbert from the ASTeC Vacuum Solutions Group took the bulk of the organisation of the event after successfully winning the bid to host the conference in the UK for the first time in 36 years. However, the inaugural session was marked by the sad announcement of the recent passing of Prof. Colligon.The European Conference on Surface Science (ECOSS) is an annual event that is held and co-ordinated by a joint standing committee of the International Union for Vacuum Science, Technique and Applications (IUVSTA) and EPS Condensed Matter Division. After approval for the UK to host EVC-17, ECOSS decided to join to make a bigger event that covers all scientific topics of IUVSTA.
The conference was well supported by all IUVSTA divisions, with divisional members present on the International Advisory Committee (IAC) and International Programme Committee (IPC).
The 447 conference delegates came from 40 countries with 42% from UK, 42% from Europe and 16% from Rest of World. The top three countries represented were UK, Germany, and Japan. In terms of gender distribution, 64% of attendees were male, 21% female, and 15% self-identified as other.
The ASTeC Vacuum Solutions Group and admin team played a huge role behind the scenes keeping the programme running and supporting all aspects of the conference. The conference would not have been such a success without the team support, thank you.
More information about the event can be found on the conference homepage: https://iop.eventsair.com/evc17-ecoss37