Robinson Research Institute co-hosts International Symposium on Superconductivity
Held as an in-person and virtual conference for the first time, the symposium, jointly hosted with National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Japan, was attended by more than 400 scientists from 21 countries.
Aimed at facilitating conversations and collaborations among the global superconductivity community, this was the 33rd International Symposium on Superconductivity - ISS 2020. The sessions were focused on highlighting pioneering research and findings in four key areas—physics and chemistry, wires and bulk, electronic devices and large scale applications.
Sessions presented by researchers from Robinson Research Institute covered crucial topics in these fields. These included presentations on HTS transformer-rectifiers for superconducting magnets (Jianzhao Geng, R. A. Badcock, and C. W. Bumby); critical currents of commercially-available HTS wires (N. Strickland, S. Wimbush, N. Long, M. Rupich, R. Knibbe, C. Notthoff, P. Kluth), and heat load calculations on an HTS Coil integrated into a small satellite during a sun-synchronous low earth orbit (Jamal Olatunji, Chris Acheson, Mathieu Szmigiel, Stuart Wimbush, Nick Long), among others.
Other organisations represented at the symposium included Hitachi, Kyoto University, Oxford University, Seoul National University, Slovakia Academy of Sciences, Stanford University, Toshiba, University of Tokyo, University of Houston and University of Southern California.
In his welcome address, as co-chair of ISS2020, Dr Nick Long, Director, Robinson Research Institute and co-chair for the symposium, said “It has been a matter of great pride for us to co-host ISS2020, along with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology this year”.
“An interesting outcome of the pandemic has been the wide adoption of dual online and in-person conferences. Although the online experience doesn’t duplicate the social experience of an international conference, the ability to present our work and listen to the best of current research from one’s own desk in real time feels like a milestone in interconnectedness. This conference being in Japan had the advantage that time zones were not a barrier for Asia-Pacific participants.”
Dr Long also presented a short overview on Robinson Research Institute hosting the ISS in 2021, between November 23 and 25, in Wellington.
This is the first year that Robinson Research Institute has partnered with AIST to organise the conference.