Preparations for the program of AVS 65 International Symposium and Exhibition are well underway. The deadline for the submission of was the 1 May, 2017. That means that those of us who are on the Program Committee of the Vacuum Technology Division are reading through the abstracts and putting together the program.

I have just been through the 57 abstracts for the VTD program and I am impressed. We will be getting briefed on some cutting edge technologies. There is a new paradigm in pressure technology discussed. NIST is moving over from mercury manometers to photonic based pressure standards.

Tri Alpha Energy will be giving a talk on the progress of their latest fusion reactor. They have some very stringent vacuum requirements and are using chemisorption surfaces to pump H2 along with cryogenic surfaces.

There will be several discussions about vacuum generation in high energy physics experiments in Japan, the UK, Germany and the US.

Paul Arnold of MKS/Granville-Phillips will give an invited talk as part of the AVS History Committee endeavor to preserve our technical heritage. He will discuss the Electro-Ion pump developed in the 1960s. This was a complex UHV pump that combined cutting edge technologies in one package; a titanium sublimation pump with a triode pump.

There will be discussion about handling EUV exposure systems, vacuum systems to improve storage batteries, process development for new lighting technologies and much, much more.