Young Minds Leadership Meeting 2024

Posted on 29/05/202431/05/2024 by Pasquale Francesco Romano

Monday 25th of March was the first day of the Young Minds (YM) Leadership Meeting (LM) at the EPS Forum 2024. More than 70 participants from the YM network, representing 39 YM sections, as well as guests from other associations, were welcomed by the LM organization committee chair Anna Grigoryan, the EPS Secretary General Anne Pawsey and EPS Former Chair Luc Berge. EPS YM former chair Mattia Ostinato presented an overview of the YM program and the new elected YM chair Carmen Martín Valderrama was presented to the participants. Following two masterclasses on scientific writing given by the EDP Science Senior publisher Isabelle Auffret-Babak and Publishing Director Anne Ruimy, the participants attended the lecture given by Antigone Marino on Impostor Syndrome. Could not be missing the “From PhD to CEO” panel discussion, always inspiring, in collaboration with OPTICA.

Tuesday 26th of March, the day started with the Nobel Prize Laureates’ Lectures. The opportunity to attend such interesting sessions was allowed by the co-location with the EPS Forum. The morning continued with lecturer Tatevik Chalyan on writing a successful grant application, after which Steven Goldfarb presented the talk “Why we bother – the urgency of education and outreach”. To further connect with other YM delegates, a networking session was conducted and the day and LM were concluded with the YM activity poster session and the corresponding “Young Minds Best activity award by EPL” ceremony where the YM sections PONYS and SPAM Caserta received the winners certificates from EPL and 250 euros.

The meeting brought together YM delegates from 20 different countries, as well as many interested students and young researchers from outside of the YM network, making it a great success. Beyond the programme of the LM, the participants could learn about industrial opportunities and attend lectures from world-class researchers conducted in the EPS Forum. Thanks to the European Physical Society and Luc Bergé for the invitation and this opportunity and congratulations to the organization for the success of the event.

We believe that scientific outreach, cultural exchange and mutual understanding, and peaceful international collaboration are more important than ever and we believe that bringing young scientists together and equipping them with tools and skills is a great way of fostering these aspects.

We are very excited that so many young minds gathered for the meeting, and we are very much looking forward to the Leadership Meeting in 2025.

Section Starting

Posted on 16/07/201811/10/2019 by YM Webmaster

The Young Minds section of the University of Liège was created recently (May 2018). During the past months, our group has organized a “get-to-know-us” presentation for physics and space science students (masters, PhD and post-docs). It sparked great interest for the Young Minds activity in the Liège physics community. The objective was also to brainstorm ideas of activities to be organized for the upcoming academic year 2018-2019. This meeting, along with three other group reunions over two weeks, lead us to the idea of a networking event under the theme “Physics and Sport” (see the corresponding document for more details), during which we will test activities we plan using to create an outreach event destined to high school students. It also allowed us to gather motivated PhD students with experience in science outreach event (sci-fi movies analyses, broad audience communication, …) and effectively reinforce the initial team. We have also made contact with a local organization specialized in the field of science popularization at the University of Liège (“Réjouiscience” – http://rejouisciences.uliege.be) and they showed enthusiasm in collaborating with us in the organization of physics outreach events. We committed to participating in the next edition of their “Printemps des Sciences”, a yearly, high-impact science fair week for schools and general public in the Liège area. Members of our team are also dedicating their time to the construction of a website (www.ymliege.uliege.be) and a Facebook page (“YMLiège”) for more visibility. We created a public mail address: youngminds@uliege.be.

Our group takes the opportunity to be part of the Young Minds network very seriously, and we think we are off to a great start. We hope that the aforementioned activities testifiy our motivation for holding physics-related events and for growing the Young Minds network.

Film screening “Kwantumrevolutie”

Posted on 16/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

In our latest event we held a screening of the Flemish documentary Kwantumrevolutie (Quantum Revolution). This documentary narrates the chronological discoveries concerning quantum mechanics, like Thomas Young’s double-slit experiment and Albert Einstein’s Photoelectric effect. The director of this documentary has a Master degree in both the Audiovisual Arts and Physics, which makes him the ideal person to narrate this topic. Since the physics behind all of these surprising experiments is explained clearly and shown intuitively, this movie forms a great introduction to quantum mechanics for those who are not yet familiar with its basic concepts. Moreover, the way these experiments are portrayed in a historical context also makes the documentary enjoyable for scientists who are more well-versed on this subject.

The documentary also focuses on the important role Belgium played in solving these quantum conundrums. The Belgian industrialist Ernest Solvay founded The International Solvay Institutes for Physics and Chemistry and facilitated the famous Solvay Conferences. During these conferences the issue with quanta, atoms, electrons and more, were thoroughly discussed by leading international scientists. The documentary narrates the story of the members of the first conferences and their important findings which have led to the quantum theory as we know it today. Not only does this documentary quench the thirst for historical and scientific knowledge, it also provides a prime example of how interdisciplinary and international collaborations can lead to a brilliant outcome.

In summary, this meticulous portrayal of the history and physical consequences of the quantum theory is an absolute must-see for anyone with an interest in modern physics, and we are proud to have reached a quite international and diverse public made up of members from the whole Science faculty with our screening.

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.

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.

Scientific Poster Competition

Posted on 12/07/201816/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

At the end of the academic second semester, a poster contest was made in our department. The timing of this activity was well thought since the presentation of the bachelor projects and master thesis was just around the corner. This would promote an interest in the ongoing projects of the students. The main objective of this contest is the improvement of the writing and oral capabilities of the students, which will be shown important in future conferences that they might participate. Being this said, the activity was conducted for students participating in bachelor or master courses, being extended to students attending the 1st year doctoral program.

In a first phase was asked for a small abstract of the presented project, and later the poster version. These were printed by our section and, later, delivered to the students. If the number of abstracts shown itself relatively high for our budget a selection of the best abstracts would be performed. We were granted with 10 posters, where only one was from a student doing the bachelor project at the same time. Most of the other posters were from master thesis, bachelor projects or individual work for a course. These covered different areas, since applied physics, theoretical physics and oceanography. Being the later the less abundant, with only one poster. We were still, very praised with the number of interested students.

The jury panel was composed of researchers from different fields of study, since applied physics to theoretical physics, is in accordance with the expected submitted posters. It was decided that the judges should select the criteria for the nomination of the three best posters. The scheme of the presentation was also decided by the judges, were the contestants should present their work in 3 minutes, followed by some questions from the judges. The presentation was realized on the 6th of June. These were placed in the atrium of the physics department, this way every person that would enter the place would see them. This attracted a lot of attention, due to the quality of the poster itself and due to the place where they were posted. The placement was made one day before the presentations so that the number of interested people would increase.
This attracted a really good audience, since students to professors, on the day of the presentation. After the presentation a coffee break was realized for all the people involved in this activity. The three best prizes were from Physical Engineering students. The first prize winner was given to Nuno Caçoilo, a student from the 1st year of the master degree, with its bachelor project, under the title Tuning the magnetic anisotropy in perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (pMTJ) by means of ion irradiation.

The second prize was given to Bohdan Kulyk, a student on its 1st year of the doctoral program, under the name CVD Graphene for Electrochemical Biosensing: Synthesis, Characterisation and Device Fabrication. The third, and last prize was given to Liliana Sousa, a student doing its master thesis (from which the poster was about) under the portuguese theme Emissor ótico recongurável para Lidar. Being this poster presentation the first experience for most of the students we are glad with the ideas and constructive commentaries of the jury panel. We expect that next year the numbers of students will be larger since their bachelor project and master thesis is already concluded.

Lunch lecture with Swedish Young Minds

Posted on 18/05/201802/06/2018 by YM Webmaster

The activity was a lunch lecture about gravitational waves held by professor Ulf Gran, with partial aim to promote the Swedish Young Minds section and gain more members. The lecture was held at Chalmers University of Technology (CUT) in Gothenburg on the 20th of April in connection to one of the board’s planning meetings for the Lise Meitner-days event, our annual activity weekend for high school students from all over the country, which is currently the main activity of our section. In that way, all members of the board could be present. Our section was founded very recently so gaining publicity and members are currently our main goals. Providing lunch and an interesting lecture is known to be a successful way to gain publicity that other organisations do from time to time at CUT, and the number of attendants and the response we got indicated that this event was successful as well.
Before the lecture advertisement was made by putting up posters in the physics department building and a few other places, by giving announcements in lecture breaks and by sharing a facebook-event. This turned out to give sufficient publicity to attract more people than the 100 lunches we provided.
We (the board) started with presenting ourselves, the Swedish Young Minds section, what kind of activities we are planning to arrange in the future and why the attendants should become members. For the rest of the lecture we invited professor Ulf Gran to talk about gravitational waves. Professor Gran is known to be a very popular lecturer from the first course in mechanics at the Engineering Physics and Engineering Mathematics programmes, where most of the attendants study. He has also been awarded several pedagogical prices from CUT and was therefore considered a very suitable choice of lecturer.
The lecturer involved a description of the basic concepts concerning gravitational waves and the experiments made to detect them, many illustrating animations and a live demonstration of an interferometer to illustrate the operation principles of the LIGO detector. There were quite a lot of questions both during the lecture and afterwards, and the overall reaction showed that the attendants thought the lecture was very interesting.
The 100 first attendants, which was also the actual number who participated, were provided half a pizza and a soft drink. Providing pizza for lunch was considered a good option with costs comparable to or even less than other common alternatives such as salads or baguettes, and we also believe it was much more appreciated. We also got a small price reduction from where we bought the pizzas (0.5 euro/pizza). After the lecture we handed out a note with instructions for how to become a member, and a few students also stayed and talked both to professor Gran about the lecture and to us about the future plans for our section.