Dear OCPA members,

    The year 2020 has been full of troubles. Among others, the pandemic severely disrupted our lives and research in unprecedented ways that we could not have imagined last year. I hope that we will all soon return to our regular life schedule in the near future.  

    The operation of OCPA was no exception. The OCPA10 meeting, planned for June of 2020 at National  Chung Hsing University, was unfortunately cancelled. We also cancelled the in-person presentation of the 2019 OCPA awards to the winners for the first time. We offered our sincere apology to the invited speakers of OCPA 10 and the 2019 OCPA award winners.

    On behalf of the OCPA President Dongping Zhong, here I outline our plan to resume the normal operation of OCPA to continue serving the international Chinese physicists and astronomers.

1. OCPA meeting:  We plan to reorganize the OCPA10 meeting as soon as the pandemic situation is under control. President Donging Zhong has reached out to institutes capable of and interested in organizing the event as early as in late 2021 or mid 2022.

2. 2020 OCPA awards:  We will continue to solicit nomination for the 2020 OCPA AAA/OYRA/ODA awards. Please find the announcement here:

http://ocpaweb.org/home/2020-ocpa-awards-nominations/

The nomination deadline is December 1, 2020.

3. Executive Committee:  A new committee will be appointed in 2021, which will include

Dr. Dongping Zhong as the immediate past president, Cheng Chin the President, Dr. Lei Bao (Ohio State) the Vice President and Dr. Vincent Liu (Univ. of Pittsburgh) the Secretary.

We are in the process of identifying other members.

4. Membership:  We are in the process of updating the OCPA member database. We strongly encourage you to contact us and share this email with other members if there is any update.

5. Broadr impact:  We are planning to upgrade our website and other tools to better connect international Chinese physicists and astronomers. We hope it can facilitate communication and information exchange for scholars at all levels.

   We very welcome your suggestion on any of the above points, and, especially, encourage your nomination of excellent candidates for the 2020 OCPA awards.

Sincerely,

Cheng Chin

Vice President of OCPA