Has Mark Mentioned He is From Pittsburgh?
This year, AVS 72 is going to be held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, from November 8-13, 2026, and our chair for the symposium is Professor Mark Losego from Georgia Tech, who just so happens to have also grown up in Pittsburgh.
We had a chance to sit down with Mark and ask him what our AVS 72 attendees can look forward to when they come to Pittsburgh this fall.
So, having grown up near Pittsburgh, you must be pretty excited about chairing the AVS 72 Symposium in your hometown?
Very excited. I grew up about five miles from downtown Pittsburgh, and lived there until I moved away for college, and now I get to bring my favorite professional society to my favorite city!
What should we know about Pittsburgh?
Known as the “Steel City” and home to Heinz Ketchup, Andrew Carnegie, Mister Rogers Neighborhood, and Westinghouse Corporation, Pittsburgh is a pretty special place, full of hard-working, friendly folks that really love their city.
Pittsburgh is known for a very localized culture with eccentricities all its own that don’t spread much farther than the Southwestern Pennsylvania region.
I thought a lot of things were pretty normal growing up in Pittsburgh, but then found out no one else knows what a gumband is (it’s a rubber band in Pittsburghese), weddings don’t usually have a 10+ foot-long table full of hundreds of home-baked cookies [with boxes for taking them home], and not all cities are hidden behind a mountain until you come out of a tunnel – that last one you can experience for yourself if you come to AVS 72!
That’s right, Pittsburgh sits in an interesting geographical location at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers. Can you tell us more?
Yes, Pittsburgh is beautifully located at the intersection of three rivers. On the south banks of the Monongahela River are pretty steep hillsides, making it a fairly “protected” position. Not surprisingly, the city started out in the mid-1700s as a fort, Fort Duquesne, established by the French. However, not too many years later, during the French and Indian War (or Seven Years’ War, depending on which side of the Atlantic you are on), the British took over the fort and rebuilt it as Fort Pitt, creating the city’s namesake. George Washington actually led one of the British (Virginia colony) regiments that helped claim the fort from the French, and these historical sites are still marked and available to visit at Point State Park, along with a museum and the original Fort Pitt Block House, all within a short walk from the AVS 72 convention center.
What other sights might AVS72 attendees take in while visiting Pittsburgh?
The convention center itself is a great location, with a rooftop terrace you can visit and look out over the Allegheny River and see the city’s famed sports stadiums. A short walk away is also the Heinz History Center, with lots more history about the region, and what is known as the “Strip District” with lots of markets and restaurants. Or you could get on the subway, which is free to ride in the city, and go to the North Shore, which has many sights, including the Andy Warhol Museum and the National Aviary, an indoor zoo for birds! Head the other direction, and you can reach Station Square for nightlife, taking a riverboat ride on the Gateway Clipper Fleet or riding the Duquesne Incline up the hillside to get a panoramic view of the city from the top of Mt. Washington. If you are a bit more adventurous, you could take a ~15 min bus ride to the Oakland neighborhood, which is where the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University are located, and visit the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, which holds a fantastic collection of real dinosaur bones, including the original holotype for the Diplodocus. Also in Oakland is Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, and the second-tallest educational building in the world, the Cathedral of Learning, where you can visit the Nationality Rooms that celebrate the many cultures of the region.
And of course, another great activity is to tour the iconic sports stadiums throughout the city, including PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, PPG Paints Arena, home of the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Acrisure Stadium, home of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Here’s to hoping that the National Football League schedules a Thursday night home game for the Steelers on AVS 72 week so everyone has the opportunity to attend a game!
Of course, as you mention, Pittsburgh is well-known for their sports franchises, tell us more about what AVS 72 attendees might expect?
Yes, Pittsburgh is known as the “City of Champions” because of its great history of winning championships in many of the major U.S. professional sports (5 World Series in baseball, 5 Stanley Cups in hockey, and 6 Super Bowls in American football – tied for the most of any franchise). Along with those championships are also many famous players and coaches like Terry Bradshaw and Chuck Noll with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Mario Lemieux and Sidney Crosby with the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Bill Mazeroski and Roberto Clemente with the Pittsburgh Pirates. But what is less well recognized is that all three of our sports franchises (Pirates, Penguins, and Steelers) share the same color schemes – Black & Gold! It turns out that arguably no other U.S. city has all its teams share the same colors, but in Pittsburgh, you need only buy one black-and-gold jersey, and you are ready to root for any of our teams! And of course, Pittsburgh is recognized for having invented/popularized the rally towel, which in Pittsburgh is known as the “Terrible Towel”. I twirled my towel a few times at AVS 71 events, letting folks know that we were coming to Pittsburgh in 2026, but I’m hoping we see a few more terrible towels waving at AVS 72!
What else are you excited about for AVS 72 in Pittsburgh?
I’m hoping that we get to experience some of the culture of Pittsburgh and Southwestern Pennsylvania. It wasn’t until I moved away that I realized that Pittsburgh has some pretty special culture all its own. Many of the residents of the region emigrated from Europe to work in the steel mills and other industries in the early 1900s, and a lot of those immigrants came from Central Europe (Italy, Germany) and Eastern Europe (Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine) with a healthy dash of Irish as well. Those cultures still ring strong in the city. Our local (world-famous) amusement park, Kennywood, has its annual Italian Day.
One of Pittsburgh’s more famous neighborhoods is “Polish Hill”. And of course, classic Eastern European foods like kielbasa, pierogies, halupki (golumpki) and haluski are all common fare around Pittsburgh – hopefully we will get to have some of those foods at the conference banquet! (And maybe a few Primanti sandwiches!).
So it seems like Pittsburgh is going to be a great host city for AVS 72. Any final words for potential attendees?
I am really looking forward to hosting colleagues from all over the world in my favorite city in the world!
Besides the great locale, I think we have some really exciting new topics that we are highlighting this year, including EUV Lithography, Advanced Packaging, Materials and Innovations for Fusion Energy, AI and Autonomous Experimentation for Thin Film Processing, and the Future of Temperature Sensing, as well as continuing to see huge support for many of our long-standing communities like Plasma Science, Thin Films, Surface Science, 2D Materials, Atomic Scale Processing, Biomaterials, and Quantum Sciences. We are also hosting a very special session honoring the many decades of contributions of Professor Gary Rubloff from the University of Maryland.
I’m looking forward to seeing many familiar faces there, but if you haven’t been in a while, or this is your first time to attend AVS, I hope you will really consider submitting an abstract this year! Like Pittsburgh, AVS continues to be one of the most welcoming communities I have had the pleasure of being a part of, and the technical sessions remain at the forefront of materials, processing, interfaces, and devices because of the unique mix of disciplines and expertise that attend from academia, government labs, and industry. So, I expect to see yinz all in Pittsburgh in 2026!