Consultations within the EC were mainly via E-Mail and phone. Personal meetings of the EC took place on several occasions during conferences and meetings (e.g. Kopenhagen 2018, MECAME 2018, HFI 2019, MECAME 2019).

The only expenses of the IBAME assets are the yearly payment of contribution for the membership of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry which is still active (IBAME-19-04b).

EC board was in contact with the IBAME board by the EC mailing list. Personal contacts to the Mössbauer Community were hold by the EC members at various conferences. Examples are: MECAME2018, LACAME2018, IWMS2018, HFI 2019, MECAME2019, SCIRS2019, PQE2018, PQE2019, IWMS2018, LPHYS2018.

The EC initiated national elections in countries where the active period of IBAME members ended or number of participants in last four ICAMEs reached the critical number to elect a member. Successful elections took place in Argentina (Gustavo Pasquevich), Australia (Paulo De Souza Jr.), China (Tao Zhang), Croatia (Stjepko Krehula), Egypt (Mamdouh Ahmed), France (Pierre Emmanuel Lippens), Germany (Franz Renz for the deceased Göstar Klingelhöfer), India (Ajay Gupta), Japan (Ko Mibu and Yasuhiro Yamanda), Oman (Abbasher Gismelseed), Russia (Valentin Semenov and Igor Presniakov), Slovakia (Jarmila Degmová), Spain (Fernando Plazaola), and UK (Paul Bingham). Due to passing away we have lost from the 39 active IBAME members Göstar Klingelhöfer (Germany), and Mamdouh Ahmed (Egypt). As successor for Göstar Klingelhöfer Franz Renz was elected. Election of a new representative for Egypt is still open (IBAME-19-04c).

It is our sad duty to remember colleagues having passed away in the last two years. Without aiming at completeness, EC got knowledge of the death of:

Gopal K. Shenoy († 29. November 2017),

Eddy De Grave († 24. January 2018),

Pierre Imbert († 30. January 2018),

Krzysztof Piotr Ruebenbauer († 23. April 2018),

Moshe Paz-Pasternak († 27. October 2018),

Göstar Klingelhöfer († 8. January 2019),

Mira Ristic († 19. April 2019),

Yuri Moiseevich Kagan († 4. June 2019),

Enver Murad († 12. July 2019),

Mamdouh A. Ahmed († 18. July 2019),

Örn Helgason († 19. August 2019).

Obituaries can be found at ibame.org.

This year the Award Committee could nominate two candidates for the IBAME Science Award (Esen Ercan Alp, Israel Nowik) and also two candidates for the IBAME Young Science Award (Makina Saito, Li Xuning (IBAME-19-07). You are kindly invited to join the Award Session on Wednesday September 4, 2019 at 08:30 in Convention Center Xinghai Campus of DICP, where all four are expected to give an award lecture.

This year seven colleagues are nominated for the IBAME Fellow award (IBAME-19-04 d). After anonymous voting by electronic means (Doodle) the following scientists were chosen for this award: Frank Berry, Pierre Bonville, Stewart Campbell, Fernande Grandjean, Gerard Le Caer, John Stevens, Gerhard Wortmann.

An award ceremony will take place during the conference. The EC was actively searching for candidates of upcoming ICAME conferences. Two proposal one of Colombia (IBAME-19-06a) and one Poland (IBAME-19-06b) were received. The IBAME board is expected to decide about the venue and time of ICAME 2023). No preliminary proposal for ICAME 2025 has reached EC up to now.

One of the objectives of the IBAME board is to cooperate with colleagues to arrange the dates and venues of the various international and regional Mössbauer conferences. E.g. it is with pleasure, that after some troubles with the number of participants in the last symposium the International Symposium of the Industrial Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (ISIAME), this meeting was not cancelled from the conference calendar. Next conference will take place at Olomouc, Czech Republic in September 2020 (http://isiame2020.upol.cz/). Thanks to Mira Ristíc the new series of the yearly occurring Mediterranean Conference on the Applications of the Mössbauer Effect (MECAME), established five years ago, becomes increasingly popular (http://mecame2019.irb.hr/). In spite of the death of Mira just before MECAME2019, this conference series will be continued with the next conference in Greece in 2020.

Although there is a large number of conferences devoted to Mössbauer Spectroscopy, many are facing the same problem of a decreasing number of participants. One possibility to stop this tendency is to merge conferences. Therefore, after some informal contacts and after having got the mandate for official negotiations with the representatives of HFI conference, the Chair and the Secretary of IBAME met on May 25, 2018 with two members of the Executive board (Lars Bo Stegeager Hemmingsen and Stefaan Cottenier) of Hyperfine Interactions conference to discuss possible scenarios for a future cooperation (IBAME-19-09b). After some internal discussions in the HFI board HFI 2018 was shifted by half a year to February 2019 in Goa, to better fit into the sequence of ICAME conferences. Chair and Secretary of IBAME and the Chair of ICAME2021 were present in Goa. Finally, the HFI Executive Committee decided to join ICAME2021 in Brasov with the intention to go on with this cooperation in future. Unfortunately, the decision for the HFI 2023 conference was made long ago to take place in Japan. A proposal for a common ICAME – HFI conference in Japan was planned but not supported by the Japanese Mössbauer community. Details about the future cooperation (procedure for decision of future conferences, programs, invited talks, committees etc.) have to be elaborated in the coming years and should be agreed and decided during ICAME-HFI 2021 (IBAME-19-09a).

Concerning the planned foundation of the new International Union of Mössbauer Spectroscopists (IUMS) the collection of members is going very slowly. After two years only 42 colleagues have signed up in the New Directory of MEDC. Formulation of the statutes of IUMS by the Structure Committee are on the way (IBAME-19-08).

Committee members: Stewart Campbell, Jean-Marc Greneche, Göstar Klingelhöfer, Michael Reissner, Ralf Röhlsberger (Chair).

In August 2018 a call for nominations for the IBAME Science Award and the IBAME Young Scientist Award reached all IBAME members with deadline 24 September 2018.

For the IBAME Science Award five nominations have been received, for the IBAME Young Scientist Award the committee received three nominations.

From these nominations that all had arrived within the deadline, the Award committee unanimously selected the following candidates to receive the respective awards:

The IBAME Science Award 2019 goes to:

Esen Ercan Alp, Argonne National Laboratory, USA

for his outstanding contributions to the development of synchrotron radiation techniques and their scientific applications based on the Mössbauer effect.

Israel Nowik, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel

for his numerous outstanding contributions to science, especially to magnetism and solid state physics, based on the applications of the Mössbauer effect.

The IBAME Young Scientist Award 2019 goes to:

Li Xuning, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

for his outstanding contributions to the study of catalytic processes and nanomaterials using the Mössbauer effect.

Makina Saito, Kyoto University, Japan

for his outstanding contributions to the study of slow dynamics in condensed matter via nuclear resonant scattering of synchrotron radiation.

Ralf Röhlsberger

Hamburg, 10 August 2019

As reported at ICAME2017 (IBAME‐17‐13b) IBAME Chair has initiated an informal exchange with Lars Hemmingsen of the executive committee of HFI Conference series about possible future cooperation. After positive reaction from the whole EC committee of HFI and the mandate given in St.Petersburg to the Executive board of IBAME to lead official negotiations, on May 25, 2018 a brain storming about possible cooperations took place in Kopenhagen, Denmark between Stefaan Cottenier and Lars Hemmingsen for the EC of HFI and Ralf Röhlsberger and Michael Reissner for the EC of IBAME. The minutes of the meeting (IBAME‐19‐09b) were sent to all members of the EC of HFI and to all IBAME members. From both committees mainly positive reactions came. After confirmation by the organizer of ICAME2021 Victor Kuncser that a joint conference HFI and ICAME would be technically possible in Brasov, aim of the further contacts was to clear if this would be acceptable by the EC members of HFI. IBAME Chair and Secretary as well as Victor Kuncser participated in the Hyperfine Interaction conference in February in Goa. There EC of HFI officially decided to join ICAME2021 in Brasov. In the following discussion some boundary conditions were fixed: both conferences will run under their own name (HYPERFINE INTERACTION and ICAME). There will be one homepage with two starting pages. Each conference will have its own programme committee, but there should be a superior programme committee, consisting of few members of both communities, which will overlook the programme if there are not possibilities for common sessions. Further an own local organizing committee for HFI should be established. This committee is now agreed and started to cooperate with Victor Kunscer. For further cooperation there are some important issues open, which have to be discussed intensively. For example how decision about future conferences should be made. For 2023 HFI EC has decided in Goa that the HFI2023 conference should go to Japan. This was an old promise which could not be changed. Although the chances are not high that IBAME will decide to join HFI in 2023 in Japan, after having in the past 2 ICAMEs in Japan (the last in 2011 in Kobe), the IBAME representatives of Japan were asked to find out if Japanese Mössbauer Community is willing to prepare a proposal for a joint ICAME‐HFI conference in 2023 in Japan on which the IBAME board could decide. Unfortunately, Japanese colleagues refused to prepare such proposal (IBAME‐19‐09c). Thus next possibility for a common conference will be 2025. Until then rules have to be elaborated about how to come to common decisions avoiding that the larger community overrules the smaller one. Chair of structure committee was informed in advance that appropriate changes of our Constitution are necessary.

At least two decisions have to be made in Dalian:

1) Acceptance of the outcome of the negotiations with HFI EC about joining ICAME2021 in

Brasov

2) Nominations of member of the superior programme committee from the side of IBAME

Michael Reissner

There are presently in Portugal the following Mössbauer facilities:

The most active, which have managed to always have sources with a reasonable activity, are those in

- The University of Coimbra Fac. Sciences and Technology, Prof. Benilde Costa.

- The University of Lisbon, Faculty of Sciences, presently Dr. Liliana Ferreira.

- The University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear (CTN), Dr.

J. C. Waerenborgh.

They have transmission and CEMS spectrometers, cryostats. There are furnaces in the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon and in the Fac. Sciences and Technology of the University of Coimbra.

A facility which in the last years has also worked regularly had to temporarily stop as they had to move for new installations in a different building. Hopefully will restart soon:

- Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Prof. Pedro Tavares. Transmission Mössbauer spectrometer with a CCR cryostat. A small permanent magnet of 500 gauss is used when required.

Due to reduced financial support there are other facilities which not always have the possibility of acquiring sources:

- Universidade do Algarve, Dr. José Mariano. Transmission Mössbauer spectrometer, no cryostat.

Two more groups have been inactive in recent years:

- In the University of Lisbon, Instituto Superior Técnico, Tagus Park Campus, the facility has been inactive since Prof. Mircea Rogalski untimely demise in September 2013.

- In the University of Porto the Mössbauer spectroscopy facility has also been in stand by since the departure of Dr. David Schmool in 2013 for the Université de Perpignan, France.

Although most groups remain small, in most cases they comprise only one permanent staff, there was a slight improvement in the last 2 years. In Campus Tecnológico e Nuclear a contract research was hired. Permanent staff act as supervisor of MSc or PhD students, mainly in the field of materials science. Lectures on Mössbauer spectroscopy and the possibility to visit Mössbauer laboratories are also offered to students in several graduation courses.

Cooperation with Mössbauer groups in Spain has also started this year with a successful joint meeting, IBERMOSS2019, organized in Bilbao, Spain, by the IBAME representative in Spain, Fernando Plazaola. Six Spanish groups and two Portuguese ones (Univ. Coimbra and IST) participated. The next meeting is planned to take place in Coimbra, Portugal, on January 2021.

This year we have organized two Mössbauer meetings:

1) The “1st Iberian Meeting on Mössbauer Spectroscopy, IBERMÖSS-2019”. It was organized between the IBAME representative of Portugal, Joao Carlos Waerenborgh, and myself. It took place the 30-31 of May in Bilbao. It was meant as the first meeting point of the Portuguese and Spanish Mössbauer Communities. It helped us to get to know each other and to strengthen the collaborations between the different teams in order to program future collaborations.

The meeting consisted in two parts. In the first one, each team presented its history, equipment, collaborations and actual research lines of interest. In the second part, there were short talks of the different groups.

In Spain there are actually 8 Mössbauer teams, and 6 of them participated in the meeting. The ones from:

• ICMAB-CSIC, Barcelona
• UPC, Barcelona
• ROCASOLANO-CSIC, Madrid
• CSIC-Universidad de Zaragoza, Zaragoza
• Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla
• UPV/EHU, Bilbao

The other two groups, due to last moment inconveniences ,could not assist the meeting. Indeed, they were the groups from UAM, Madrid and Universidad de Cordoba, Cordoba.

It was decided to give a biannual character to the meeting and the “2nd Iberian Meeting on Mössbauer Spectroscopy, IBERMÖSS-2021” will be organized by Prof. Benilde Costa from the Universidade de Coimbra, in Portugal. It will take place in the second half of January 2021.

https://www.ehu.eus/es/web/ibermossmeeting

2) The 10th international “Workshop on applications of Emission Mössbauer Spectroscopy, WEMS 2019” was organized by members of the Mössbauer collaboration at ISOLDE/CERN, and the host has been the Bilbao Mössbauer team and its chair was Dr. Iraultza Unzueta. It took place the 15-17 of July in Bilbao. The aim of the workshop was to review the main findings of the collaboration in recent years and bring together groups with interest in emission Mössbauer spectroscopy for studies in material sciences and biophysics.

https://indico.cern.ch/event/WEMS2019

Fernando Plazaola

IBAME representative from Spain