Encouraging networking among undergraduate students

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

At the beginning of 2018 we felt that we could try to expand the EPS Yound Minds Section of Rome with new members. The “Let’s make room for science” and “Let’s make fun with science” projects – partially founded by the 2017 Activity Grant – were fun and effective for the general public, but they also succeeded in creating interest toward the Section, especially among physics students of Roma Tre University, in Rome. For this reason, we organized at the Mathematics and Physics Department of the University of Roma Tre an opening event, during which the older members of the Section showed the activities we carried out these years. We started by advertising the event through the students’ Facebook pages and the University bulletin boards. Then, the day of the event, we placed some of the exhibits developed by the Section in the astronomical garden of the Mathematics and Physics Department of the University of Roma Tre, the AstroGarden.

In particular, we used the space-time exhibit, which easily attracted the attention of those present simulating the curvature of space-time using a trampoline and different masses. The thermal imager was also used, in order to show the concept of temperature and transformation of energy: even if Physics students should be used to such concept, seeing the thermal footprint they left on a table always creates wonder! Moreover, one of the professors of the Department has lent us some of his experiments concerning electromagnetism, together with solenoids and magnets.
In less than an hour, a fairly large group of people was talking about science, but not only: we talked about the University life, its problems, and all the different activities that could be developed in the near future to help students to create network, and not feel alone. At this point, the president of the Section, Adriana, showed some slides to explain the activities of the Section, inviting everyone to join it. Then, she officially opened the buffet: sandwiches, pizzas and beverages for everyone! And of course, the event could not end without a cake!

The opening event took place in June 2018, and it had more than 20 participants. We plan to organize more events during the year, especially when the University courses will start again. In the meantime, we have already welcomed two new members of the Section!

Atoms about atoms

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

According to our activity grant we have awarded 490 Euro for visiting 3 villages, organizing summer school, quizzes and building test devices.
We would like to note that because of the Velvet Revolution during March-May in Armenia and not calm situation in our country our plans have changed and we could not complete all of the activities reported in our grant request. Two school visits we will be finished within upcoming months.
However, we have organized the following activities in Armenia:
1. Summer School in Tumanyan village (25.06.2018-30.06.2018 Tumanyan, Lori province): We have organized activities about several topics: mechanical waves, optics, electromagnetic waves. During the classes children had opportunity to get basic knowledge and ask a lot of questions from real life. High school students were from 8th and 9th classes. And we have tried to cover all questions asked by them during the school with experiments prepared in advance.
2. Paper, plastic and glass is not a waste (9 events in Yerevan, Gyumri, Vanadzor, Ashtarak): We have teamed up with “Eco Waste” project and organized cleanups and collected more than 5300 kilograms of paper and 100 kilograms of plastic bottles and sent them to recycling as in Armenia there are huge problems concerning these issues: not all people are well educated and don’t sort trash.

All these events were conducted with a quiz, where our members approached participants and tested the basic knowledge in Physics and Astronomy. Winners got stickers and get acquainted with Yerevan Young Minds activities.
3. We have visited the Byurakan village (40 km far from Yerevan) for demonstrating simple experiments for 8 year old children from Byurakan village. Experiments were simple but the questions were very interesting for us.
Besides outreach event, with SPIE Yerevan chapters, we have involved in organizing committee of 5th International Advanced School on Frontiers in Optics & Photonics, 22-27 June, 2018.
Furthermore, we have awarded for the May Awesome Idea from The Awesome Foundation. Idea was to build equipment for schools with a help of students, which don’t have any practical experience because of universities. We have collaborated with Teach for Armenia and will choose schools located in the most remote parts of our country to visit and to give scientific tool kits consisting of equipment necessary for demonstrations of basic experiments from the textbooks.

We have established official Facebook page, called Yerevan Young Minds and it is already more than 400 followers and our group Science and Innovation has around 200 members. Due to social media we have received lots of invitations for visiting schools. So, we are almost succeeding in our mission to build a strong platform for answering Physics related questions.

School for Young Physicists

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

One more year for SYP has finished, and the upward trajectory for student interest has steadily held up. In the beginning of the year, we reported record numbers of attendance, and that continued throughout the entire season.

In addition to crowd-pleasing topics we looked at in the first semester, the second semester featured sessions on constructional physics, electronics, solid state physics, food physics and, finally, chaos theory. Highlights from these sessions include building model houses and testing them against shaking to imitate an earthquake and even advanced lectures in chaos theory and solid state physics that touched on master’s level physics, and yet students enjoyed them immensely.

The 3rd School Cup competition also came to a close, and it was essentially a photo-finish. Teams battled for points until the final session, and the winning team beat out their rivals only by one point – to give perspective, the total point count for the winning team was about 300 points. Teams from various schools showed their mettle all year, performing well on tests as well as showing ability in the four creative extra tasks that were given to them. The best teams were also awarded prizes for their hard work.

Additionally to the main sessions, regional sessions in cities were also still held – more than ever. Cities of Valmiera, Ventspils, Rezekne and Liepaja saw numerous sessions take place – and Rezekne even had 7 sessions, which is only two less than in our capital!

All in all, the 8th season of SYP was a resounding success, and we will look to keep building on this success to increase our output and outreach even more, allowing more students to see that physics education can be fun indeed!

This year, our Young Minds section participated in the first ever physics festival in Latvia – an event solely for the popularization of physics and science for the public. Almost all groups that do physics outreach were gathered in the same venue – which means our team was also their. Multiple experiment workshops were set up, and a competition for middle-schoolers also took place. The event was a success, as the amount of visitors from the general public attending went up to a few thousand.

The event was well covered – it garnered enough attention for some TV and radio coverage. Feedback from the public was very positive, and that means this will be no one hit wonder – another festival for physics is in the works for next year, and our section will certainly attend next year as well.

XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

On June 7-8, 2018, the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Lviv hosted the XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory, which was organized by the Lviv Young Minds Section and supported by the EPS Young Minds Committee.

26 young scientists from Dnipro, Kyiv, Lviv and Sumy had an opportunity to present their own results during the Workshop as well as taking part in the Competition. 5 invited lecturers, leading scientists from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Uzhgorod, Lviv and Warsaw, spoke about physical approaches to non-physical problems, the phenomena in Bose-Einstein condensation of atoms and photons in rarefied gases, stable and metastable states of ferroelectrics with multi-valued potential, thermodynamic properties of liquids in disordered porous media, quantum criticality in metallic systems.

The winner of the first prize of the competition was Vasyl Palchykov (ICMP) for the cycle of works “Self-organization and emergence of structures in complex systems of different nature”. The second prize was given to Galyna Panochko (Ivan Franko National University of Lviv) for the cycle of works “The problem of Bose-polaron in quantum gases”.

In the framework of the competition Roman Ovcharov (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (KNU)) was noted for a successful scientific start, Olha Mazur (Institute for Physics of Mining Processes of the NAS of Ukraine, Dnipro) – for high-quality presentation of the results and Alina Dvornychenko (Sumy State University, Sumy) – for the best presentation.

According to the best reports within the framework of the workshop, the centre of the Ukrainian Physical Society at the ICMP noted three young scientists – Oksana Dobush and Mariana Krasnytska from the ICMP, Lviv, and Volodymyr Shubnyi from the KNU, Kyiv.

Besides the official part, some cultural activities were organized, including city sightseeing excursion and evening beer-party. As usual, the Workshop gave a great chance to young researchers and their more experienced colleagues to get in touch, to discuss interesting topics and to enrich scientific connections in a friendly atmosphere.
Members of ICMP Young Minds Section in Lviv familiarized the audience with the section’s activities and the general scope of EPS Young Minds Organization.

The total amount of 400 EUR for the “XVIII Workshop and Award for young researchers in the field of statistical physics and condensed matter theory” was distributed as follows:
 54 € for posters and promotional materials;
 67 € for publishing the books of abstracts;
 72 € for personal participant packages (folder with a sticker, pen, notebook, badge);
 23 € for diplomas and certificates for lecturers and participants;
 21 € for small expenses (paper, cartridge refill, whiteboard markers, batteries, etc.) (partly covered);
 12 € for materials for preparing the sightseeing tour (few books);
 148 € for coffee breaks and other informal meetings (partly covered);
 3 € for the bank commission connected to the swift transfer.

The photos related to the event can be found on the site of the event:
http://www.icmp.lviv.ua/konkurs/gallery.html

Students Meeting at the Start of the Semester

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Our Prague EPS Young Minds section organized already the fifth Students Meeting at the Start of the Semester, which currently has the status of an established event at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering (FNSPE). This was truly demonstrated by the high attendance of an amazing amount of 100 people which increased again, compared to the previous semester. As usual, we invited a speaker who gave a talk on the recent topic in physics. This time we decided to invite young scientist Dr. Vaclav Potocek, who spent two years at Edinburgh University after obtaining his PhD, and is now part of the Quantum information group within the FNSPE, to give a talk on the problem of quantum computers. He introduced the basics of the quantum information theory, then explained the concept of quantum computer and presented recent results, together with the discussion on its possible applications, and future outlook in the field.

The event was advertised on our increasingly popular Facebook profile, on our web pages, and in the form of posters in several buildings of Czech Technical University, Charles University, and the Nuclear Physics Institute. Students and faculty from several universities and institutes came and enjoyed coffee and tea before the lecture and then attended the presentation. During the subsequent discussion, which is in our opinion the key part of the event, they enjoyed refreshments organized by us. During the event, we also advertised other activities organized by the Prague EPS YM section.

This event was generally rated as very good, popular and successful idea. The large attendance, which grows every semester, makes this the most popular single event organized by our EPS YM section and was achieved mainly thanks to a large number of posters that were distributed at the university campuses in Prague and also thanks to our active advertisement at social media. The meeting presents a unique networking opportunity that can connect faculty and students of different ages, fields of study and from different universities. In addition, such an event can be interesting for the public as well, the proof can be the attendance of several high school students at previous meetings. All these reasons prove the popularity and the need for such high-profile talks at our university.

Physics pizza party season 6

Posted on 16/07/201816/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

One of the main goals of EPS Young Minds project is to connect young scientists from different physics fields. We have therefore decided to organize students’ colloquiums called Physics Pizza Party: students 4 students (PPP), where young scientists from our and other universities presented their research activities in an informal manner. After the success of these colloquiums in the previous semesters, PPP has shown to be a successful concept also in this summer semester of 2018.

Totally, three PPP events were organized this semester, where different physics fields were presented by students from Faculty of Mathematics and Physics and Faculty of Science of the Charles University and by students from the FNSPE CTU in Prague. Students’ research talks presented topics such as determination of protein structure, atomic force microscopy or search for the life in the solar system. The last colloquium was organized in the collaboration with The Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists.

Majority of invited speakers have not experienced before presenting their research activities in front of the audience which was unfamiliar with the topic. Despite this fact, each talk was perfectly prepared, and therefore there was no problem to understand the given topic. These events were scheduled for 90 minutes each, with half of the time dedicated to the presentation and another half to the discussion, but due to participants’ interest and their questions, in the end, the colloquiums took even more time – around 2 hours. According to the speakers, it was a very rewarding experience for them.

Advertisement of the events was made in form of posters placed in the buildings of FMP CU and FNSPE CTU. To catch the interest of as many participants as possible, these colloquiums were also promoted through social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. Due to the promotion, which aroused high interest for the PPP events, the average number of participants was around 30 students per one colloquium.

The Prague EPS Young Minds Section found these colloquiums rewarding since the “students for students” style of presentations is still very rare in our country and we were one of the first who organized this kind of meetings. According to the feedback from our participants, we concluded that our colloquiums were successful since they were very positively rated. Thanks to this positive feedback and the high number of attendees, we would like to continue with this activity during the upcoming academic year.

Physics Cafè 2

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Similarly, as in the previous semesters, Prague EPS Young Minds, together with JCMF (the Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists) and CFS (Czech Society of Physics), organized Physics Café during the spring semester of 2018. The aim of the project was to further enhance the achievements gained in previous volumes of Physics Café – to organize informal meetings related to the physics and related scientific fields where students and senior academics can meet each other and share their experience and interests.

Because of the high ratio of student participants on meetings (for presentations, discussions etc), the meetings in this semester were more informal than the previous ones. In total, two meetings were organized during the semester.
The first one was dedicated to the “blind presentation” session, the specific format of presenting to the audience. Firstly, organizers of Physics Café prepared several slides for each volunteer, who has come forward. Without knowing the slides, content or theme of the presentation, volunteers presented a given topic. This led to funny situations when speakers often talked about something different than their slides were dedicated to, trying to maintain the idea they got when seeing the first slide of the given presentation. Each performance was rated by the audience. In the end, two best volunteers were awarded. This meeting attracted around 30 people.
The second meeting was dedicated to free discussion of Prague EPS Young Minds members with students, senior academics, and other audience. The main topics of the discussion were future plans of the Prague EPS Young Minds (new ideas and proposals, what should be improved, what should not be changed etc). The annual election of the new board of our section – the president, vice-president, secretary and treasurer was also part of the programme for this meeting.

To conclude, there were not organized as many Physics Café as we originally wanted, but the quality of meetings continue to be at the same or even higher level compared to previous semesters. We plan to continue with the Physics Café concept in the future, hopefully with higher activity of senior academics.

International Particle Physics Masterclasses 2018

Posted on 16/07/201816/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

This year’s International Particle Physics Masterclasses were held at the FNSPE CTU in Prague. This annual event, traditionally held during the first four months of the year in many institutions around the world, gives 15- to 19-year-old high school students an opportunity to discover and become familiar with particle physics. Speaking in numbers, approximately 10.000 high school students from 47 countries participate every year, effectively obtaining insight into topics and methods of basic research. The students are not only allowed to spend a whole day outside of school without being considered a truant, but they also receive a chance to choose and carry out an experiment themselves by performing measurements on real data from particle physics experiments at CERN. Almost 200 universities or research centers are involved in this project.

This year, the event took place on March 9, at the faculty’s headquarters with 60 registered and 53 participating high-school students. The Czech part of the project is being organized in cooperation with the International Particle Physics Outreach Group, Prague EPS Young Minds section, and CERN. The students are given a unique opportunity to obtain insight into the day-to-day business of a particle physicist without the necessity of any prior knowledge of the subject.
Also, on February 12th, Masterclasses dedicated to women students exclusively were organized. The principle is the same, aiming to encourage young women to study physics and related fields and also the programme of the event had the same structure as the Masterclasses held in March.

In the morning, the students attended a series of instructive lectures given by scientists working at CERN, whereas in the afternoon, an actual data analysis from two major LHC experiments – LHCb and ATLAS – was carried out. This year, they could either find the Higgs boson at the ATLAS or discover b-physics at the LHCb experiment. The results of the whole group were merged and during a video conference presented to experts at CERN and students from other institutes from all over the world, where International Particle Physics Masterclasses were held on the same day.

At the very end, the organizers thanked the students for participating and the most active ones of them, as well as the speakers who talked to CERN during the conference, were awarded prizes of the organizers’ choosing. During the day, organizers took care of having the lunch delivered as well as the preparation of refreshments, beverages, and coffee for participating students.

Workshop on LaTeX environment for scientific visualization and publishing

Posted on 16/07/201816/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

The very Workshop is still coming (will happen in the end of September), but we already have started the preparation.
The topic of LaTeX and its importance is now being exploited in local media. The President of Minsk Young Minds Section delivered a lecture with tutorial at School For Young Scientists at the Belarus National Academy of Sciences this May.
The lecture covered such topics as basics of TeX syntaxes, the technical aspects of scientific paper preparation, the online services that offers similar to TeX functionality in the cloud and basics of reference management systems such as open-source Zotero.
Lecture slides were uploaded to ResearchGate portal.
We also have major achievement: as the Law of Republic of Belarus is very specific (we are “protected” from foreign money investment even for small non-commercial activities) it was very challenging to get possibility to handle money from the Grant. We have found solution with the help of Belarusian Physical Society. While solving this problem, YM Minsk team was able to make strong connections with young members of Belarusian Physical Society. We are going to implement several projects together and we expect strong collaboration with Belarusian Physical Society during the Workshop.
That’s all news for now, thank you for the attention.

Working in Photonics in Berlin 2018

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

On June 13th, 2018, the Berlin Optik Young Minds Section hosted our annual career event “Working in Photonics in Berlin”, at Humboldt University of Berlin. We presented talks by research institutes and companies, followed by an informal “Meet-the-Expert” session with time for questions and discussions in smaller groups.

The event “Working in Photonics in Berlin” aims to support the career planning of students and young professionals in the field of photonics/optics by providing a platform for students, companies, universities and research institutes to meet, exchange information and connect.

We had an exciting program with short talks by speakers from companies First Sensor, Corning, Zeiss, Eagleyard, Jenoptik, Springer Nature and Berliner Glas, and from the research institutes HHI, MBI and FBH.

Many of the students that are about to complete or have recently completed their degree in physics (Bachelor/Master/PhD) do not yet have a clear idea about their career path, or information about careers in industry and academia are limited. This event allows prospective and recent graduates to get an insight into different possible working environments. Companies and institutes on the other hand get the opportunity to introduce themselves to the students and talk to potential new employees.

Additionally, this year we were happy to also include our event as part of the “Perspektive der Physik” Lecture series, in which students are invited to reflect about the different fields of study they can choose. This widened our reach also to younger physicists still at the formation stages of their studies. With this effort we hope to strengthen the image of optics/photonics within our larger student community and support their future career choices.