Summary: new Chair! Psi-k General Conference moved to Aug 22-25 2022. Volker Heine Young Investigator Award deadline: Apr 15 2021.

Dear Psi-k'ers,

I'm writing with a few important and hopefully exciting announcements about Psi-k and its activities, at these difficult times all over the world.

As my 3-year term as Chair of Psi-k ends, I can only say I'm incredibly proud of what this community achieves, year after year - it's a fairly unique example of a bottom-up organization that depends and responds only to its constituency - you all, the Working Groups, the Scientific Advisory Council, the Trustees.

In these years I've been very dedicated to advancing representation, diversity and transparency - from internal rules to terms of office to proactive efforts to involve more members. If you want to know more, contribute, or get involved, the slides from our streamed webinar to the community are available from the Events menu and directly here.

Now, on to the announcements:

1) I'm tremendously honored to announce the new Chair of Psi-k, that will be Peter Haynes. Peter is a Professor and Head of the Department of Materials at Imperial College London, with an extensive record of developments and applications in electronic structure, starting from his very days as a PhD student in the Theory of Condensed Matter Group at the University of Cambridge, pioneering linear-scaling methods. Peter has also been a Psi-k Trustee for 4 years, so he knows very well the functioning of the Charity.

Peter - a very warm welcome! I know Psi-k will be in very good and capable hands, and I am delighted to welcome you to this new responsibility.

2) the Psi-k general conference, originally scheduled to be at EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland, in Sep 2020, has now been moved to Aug 2022 (noon Mon Aug 22 to evening of Thu Aug 25). Hopefully science will help us, and we'll be able to travel again. Having the general conference this forthcoming summer seemed still too early, and we all long for physical presence and intellectual exchanges. Keep an eye on this forum for the announcements. This webpage will keep the updates: https://www.psik2020.net, and ultimately be moved to psik2022.net.

3) the Volker Heine Young Investigator Award will be kept as a flagship activity for 2021 - and that will be streamed all over the world, on Sep 9 2021 (2pm CET). The  Award recognizes individuals for their outstanding computational work in the areas covered by the Psi-k mission statement ("...to develop fundamental theory, algorithms, and computer codes in order to understand, predict, and design materials properties and functions"), and applicants may be of any nationality working anywhere in the world,  either currently enrolled in a PhD program, or recent PhD graduates who have received their official PhD certificate no earlier than September 11, 2015. Deadline for applications is April 15 2021 (23:59 CET); all informations at https://www.psik2020.net/volker-heine-young-investigator-award

With this, I thank you for all the support to Psi-k, and, as always - be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

            nicola marzari