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meetings. Examples are the 40thanniversary of
BELVAC which was celebrated in 2003 during a
meeting co-organized with the Société Française
du Vide (Nouvelles Tendances en Procédés
Magnetron et Arc pour le Dépôt de Couches
Minces) inGent (see Figure 1). The 50 thanniversary
of BELVAC was celebrated in 2013 in the
context of an international scientific meeting
at the University of Antwerp in the presence of
Pr. Jean-Jacques Pireaux, Belgian President of
IUVSTA for the 2010-2013 Trienium
The activities of BELVAC mainly include the
organization and the support of scientific
meetings in Belgium or in a partner country.
These meetings have sometimes been organized
together with either the French or the Dutch
Vacuum Societies. During a certain period of time
there was a close cooperation for the regular
organization of an annual joint meeting both
with NEVAC, Nederlandse Vacuum Vereniging,
(Netherlands) and with the SFV, Société Française
du Vide, (France). In addition, IUVSTA related
meetings such as ECOSS-5 (Gent, 24-27 Aug
1982), ECM 1 (Brussels, 8 Dec 1962), ECM 4
(Brussels, 3-4 Dec 1964), ECM 85 (Namur,
March 2000), ECM 111 (Namur, 11-13 March
2011) have been organized in Belgium with
Belvac as organizer. Nowadays, BELVAC still
contributes and participates to several events
per year such as, for example, the International
Conference on Thin Films (ICTF14) in 2008,
and the International Vacuum Conference 19
in Paris in 2013. The participation of BELVAC
to such event is very important in terms of
visibility of the society. This is also why BELVAC
act as the main organizer of the participation of
Belgium as partner country for the 2018 issue
of the Plasma Surface Engineering Conference
which is held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen every
two years.
More recently, BELVAC has also decided to
enhance the promotion of Vacuum technologies
towards the Belgian industries by participating to
industrial fairs such as Eurofinish 2017 in Leuven
where a booth as well as a workshop have been
organized.
In addition to the support and participation to
scientific events, BELVAC also publish each
trimester a technical review journal, BELVAC
News which is sent to all BELVAC members.
Its publication started in December 1985 (see
Figure 2). In addition to regular scientific papers,
this journal advertise events related to vacuum
and allows to inform the BELVAC members on
the life of the society. In order to complete the
information, a website ) is also
available since 2008. On this website, in addition
of the information also published in the journal,
grants are offered to students who participate to
vacuum oriented conferences.
Figure 2.The first BELVAC News was published in May 1985. As Belgium is a bilingual country two separate copies
were published, one in Dutch (left), and one in French (middle). Now BELVAC News is published in English (right).
SUMMARY