2013 60th IEEE NSS/MIC and 20th Symposium on Room-Temperature Semiconductor X-ray and Gamma-ray Detectors

The 2013 60^th IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium, Medical Imaging Conference, and 20^th International Workshop on Room-Temperature Semiconductor X-ray and Gamma-ray Detectors were held for the first time in the Asia-Oceania region, in the beautiful and historical city of Seoul, Korea, from October 27 to November 2, 2013 at the spacious and modern COEX Convention Center. Our theme for the conference was “Beyond Imagination of Future Science”. Very interestingly, it was the 60^th anniversary of the nuclear science symposium and the 20^th anniversary of the workshop on room-temperature semiconductor detectors this year. Accordingly, Korean traditional ceremonies were arranged during the conference to congratulate them. There were 2369 registered attendees from 48 countries, including 1875 overseas participants and 1661 presentations out of 1846 abstract submissions. Particularly, more than 38% of the attendants were from Asian countries: 18.6% from Korea, 14.6% from Japan, and 5.2% from China. The US attendants occupied about 19.0%, and about 8.2% of the attendants came from Germany. The conference also had an exhibition promotion and 80 booths were all sold out by 67 companies, which was a conference record. These numbers confirm the success of the conference held for the first time in Asia-Oceania region. Earlier this year, the organizing committee members were very concerned about the conference when there were increasing tensions between North Korea and South Korea. Approaching the conference, there was another crisis due to the US government shut-down. In spite of these critical situations that might have jeopardized the success of the conference, we had hosted a surprisingly successful conference both in quality and in quantity.