Message from the Chair of ILASS-EUROPE – ILASS-Europe and the covid-19 pandemic

Dear members of the ILASS-Europe Community, I am writing to you on behalf of the ILASS-Europe Committee. I hope that all of you are in good health and coping with this unexpected and dramatic situation in the best possible way. First, we would like to offer all our support to any of you that might have suffered or be still convalescent of the covid-19. We would also like to present our condolences if you have suffered the loss of any colleague or relative due to this epidemic. As you will know, after much hesitation, we decided in conjunction with the local Organizing Committee to suspend our annual ILASS-Europe Conference that was going to take place in Tel-Aviv, Israel from the next September 7^th to 9^th. We thought it was the best option considering the uncertainty in predicting how the covid-19 pandemic will have evolved by these dates. These annual conferences have always been the main gathering point for the members of our association. For the first time in many years, now we are not going to have this opportunity. However, we want to maintain the spirit of our association alive, intensifying the communication among our associates, even if it is by telematic means. For this reason, we have decided to study the possibility to organize a single-day remote Conference comprising around 6 comprehensive presentations to be delivered by the leaders of our community. A panel session will be devoted to the covid-19 aspects to discuss about the role that atomization and sprays research may play in understanding it better and possible ways to mitigate its effects and its propagation. This will be a way to get in contact and have a chance to talk about our work. We hope to be able to resume our normal activity by next year, and we expect to have our ICLASS Conference in 2021. The European Conference in Tel-Aviv will be thus postponed until 2022. As soon as we agreed in these decisions, a short note was posted in our web pages, and a special newsletter was distributed. We thought that it was urgent to notify all of you because the deadlines for paper submission to the Conference were close and some of you might already be planning the trip to attend the meeting. However, we felt that further elaboration was appropriate. I can assure that the ILASS-Europe Committee is deeply concerned about the impact that covid-19 can have on our community and firmly committed to strengthen the ties that bind us. We are open to any suggestion for ideas or activities oriented to this end. We encourage you to participate in the remote Conference, and as always, we also encourage you to submit the results of your research to our journal Atomization and Sprays. We hope to meet you all again personally and in good health at our international ICLASS 2021 conference that is going to be held in Edinburgh 29/8 to 2/9/21. We wish you all the best, and keep safe   Antonio Lozano On behalf of the ILASS-Europe Committee