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

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.

Computational Physics Course

Posted on 12/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

Taking into consideration the success of our last theoretical course about General Relativity, lectured by professor Carlos Herdeiro, we opted to embark on other course given by a lecturer from the same research group (Gr@v).
Motivated by our colleagues who wanted to learn Python, we asked professor Valério Ribeiro, a researcher at Gr@v, to give some lectures about how to solve physics problems in that programming language.
The course, which was named Computational Physics, took place from the 8th of March until the 7th of June, once a week, during the afternoon.
In the initial sessions, the professor taught the basics of the Python language, which is incredibly useful in Physics. Each lecture had the duration of 1 hour and a half. After an initial presentation of the methods and the algorithms we were going to use, the sessions were spent solving exercises on personal computers.
The initial attendance exceeded our expectations, registering a surprising number of 33 students, from most of the courses lectured in the Department and even some alumni. These students were allocated in all years of studies, from the 1st year to the 5th year.
Even though the number of students decreased with the number of lectures (as expected), a reasonable number of students stayed, which made the lecturer – student relation more informal.
In the end of the course a certificate (with a template given by EPS) was gave to the students. Each one had the handwritten signatures of the president of our section and the lecturer, Valério Ribeiro, to whom we are thankful for sharing his knowledge with the students.
The feedback of our courses is positive and we intend on continuing on doing them next year.

Volunteers-development weekend

Posted on 12/07/201812/07/2018 by YM Webmaster

From the 30th of March until the 1st of April 2018 the Rino Foundation had its volunteer development weekend. The weekend was very exciting for everyone involved. The members loved it, learned a lot and the people who gave the workshops were also very excited about the group.
Volunteers at Rino primarily give science shows in the whole country. These shows are given by two presenters. Because the volunteers have to work together, it is very important that they know each other in different manners. On the weekend we organised activities for people to strengthen their bond. We did, for example, a karaoke night. To hear other people try to sing definitely puts people into perspective 😉
In order to enhance presentation skills, we invited an expert in public speaking to the weekend. He gave a very inspiring talk and we did a workshop on debating, which led to interesting discussions, but was especially useful for learning how to communicate in a nice way. He is also a high school teacher and taught us about communicating with kids aged around 15.
The last big thing which was very useful, was the ice cream making workshop. After the Freezing Physics shows the high school kids receive ice cream (made with liquid nitrogen). To find out which ice cream to use next year, we experimented with different kinds of ice cream to test and taste which was the best (see the attached photo).
In short, we learned a lot during the weekend, strengthened the bond between section members (and the board) and enhanced our public speaking skills in a workshop.

Scientific research around us: “Printed Nano-particles Based Bio Sensors”

Posted on 12/04/201823/04/2018 by YM Webmaster

Sensors are nowadays in everything, always smaller, efficient and interconnected. In our smartphones are irreplaceable tools for the interaction with the touchscreen and for the gesture (i.e. gyroscope, accelerometer etc) as well as for the health monitoring and the interaction with the environment (i.e. hearth rate monitoring, compass, barometer, GPS etc). In the next future, their number will increase exponentially to guarantee new service and security application. Indeed, sensors permit us to understand, monitoring and interact with the environment around us. In these last years, there was an exponential growth of the research about the bio sensoristic with innovative sensing platform based on nanostructures thanks to their innovative properties and the very high surface to volume ratio with respect to bulk materials. In this seminar, the importance of very cheap and interconnected sensors was enfatized also for the smart agricolture in poor country to fight against the scarsely food production. Prof. Shacham is one of the most global experts in this field and proposed an innovative technique to realize very cheap printed sensors based on metal nanoparticles by using special ink in common optimized printers. In this way, the estimate cost amount in large industrial production of these sensors is so cheap to be competitive in third world country agricultures showing new opportunity against the world hunger. The sensors showed are mostly Enzymatic and was exploited in the medical field (i.e. glucose sensing) as well as in environmental monitoring for smart agriculture (i.e. monitoring of plant conditions by the protein expression).
Prof. Shacham has treated with meticulous clarity different topic from screen printing of nanoparticles to biophysics and the functionalization of different material for sensors with a very intressing vision of the next future of the sensors. Finally, Prof. Shacham did not lose the opportunity to acknowledge our YM Section and the general YM philosophy, inviting interessed students and researchers to think to the opportunity to apply for an experience in his laboratories. The primary target of this seminars was mostly graduated and Ph.D. students with the appreciated participation of the undergraduate student, researchers and department professors and we obtain an odience of about 40 people.

In order to have the possibility to host a high-profile scientist, we organize this seminar join in the collaboration of the University of Catania and the University of Palermo about their project of the
inter university Ph.D. in Nanomaterial Science.

After the end of the scientific discussions, further informal scientific interactions were catalyzed by a convivial environment and the students had also the opportunity to interact directly with Prof. Shacham and discover different interessing suggestion about the next future of the sensoristic field by one of the
most recognized scientific expert.

Visit to the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory

Posted on 21/01/201814/03/2018 by ggunaratnam

On November 18th, SCOPE organised a night trip to the Scottish Dark Sky Observatory (SDSO) located in the edge of the Galloway Forest in Ayrshire.

During this visit twelve of our members had the chance to visit the SDSO centre and enjoy their indoors exhibition together with an astonishing sky observation outdoors allowed by the clear skies during the visit.

The observation was guided by two members of the SDSO staff that were operating two telescopes, one of which was inside an impressive 5 metre dome. With the mentioned equipment, we were able to observe some of the major objects in the Northern Hemisphere night sky including major constellations such as Cassiopeia, Orion or Pegasus, some galaxies like Andromeda, and even the planet Uranus.

During the observation we also received interesting explanations not only regarding the astronomical objects we were looking at but also about the process of observation itself. Moreover, we had the chance to practice night photography with some of our cameras and the help of the members of SDSO and their tripods.

After this, we visited the exhibition inside the SDSO centre that included some models of planets, astronaut missions and some Physics demonstrations.

We consider that this trip was a fantastic opportunity for SCOPE members to learn about Astronomy and the local facilities that currently exist in Scotland for this purpose. Moreover, we gained awareness about issues like light pollution that obstruct observation.

Finally, we would like to mention that this activity was also aimed to show SCOPE members that there are many career possibilities with a background of physics outside Academia, such as outreach in Astronomy.

Career Evening

Posted on 21/01/2018 by ggunaratnam

EPSYM2017B24_1 After a very successful first run last year, we wanted to repeat our SCOPE Career Evening which took place on October, 24 2017.
Three speakers, with a PhD in a natural science subject and a relation to Strathclyde University – either through their current job or past studies -, were invited. While the event last year was dominated by alumni working in the field of photonics, we wanted to mix things up more this year and hence, through successful internet searches, were able to engage a university lecturer with a research fellowship, an outreach officer and a business development manager to join us for the evening.
Each of the three gave a 15-20 minute presentation about their career path, their current positions and the career advice they gathered along the way and wanted to share with us. The talks turned out to be as varied as the speakers are: firstly in form, as they ranged from PowerPoint presentations to simply talking to us with some outreach props. But also in terms of content, we were able to gather both very practical career advice as well as more inspirational insight into how careers can develop and what aspects we should consider in our choices.
Finally, the evening was completed with a question and discussion round with all three speakers, before we finished off with a small reception during which speakers and audience could mingle a little more.
The audience consisted mostly of postgraduate students with some undergraduate students also attending and amounted to approximately 20-25 people. The feedback we received was overall positive and we take it as a positive sign that there was very lively discussion until the end of the evening.

Recruitment event

Posted on 21/01/2018 by ggunaratnam

epsym2017b25 As part of a developing SCOPE tradition, we welcomed, on October, 12 2017, new and not so new students to SCOPE with a start-of-the-semester social night.
Thanks to our EPS Young Minds grant, we were able to provide some food and drinks for the event and attracted about 30-35 students to our department’s common room in the evening. We started off with a short introduction to our student chapter and the activities that we are involved in during the year, in particular the upcoming chapter committee elections which was the centre of our recruitment efforts of the night.
After this official beginning, the rest of the evening was focused on networking, meeting and exchanging experiences with other students within the university. For the SCOPE committee, it was particularly also a good opportunity to find out more what kind of activities our members are interested in.
Throughout the night, we distributed our chapter business cards and had information and sign-up sheets for our mailing list displayed to fill in.
Although still a bit early to tell – as elections have not taken place yet -, our recruitment evening was very successful. A large number of new PhD and Master students attended with some very interested in our activities and how to officially join the chapter. A small number of undergraduate students also attended the event; this is a very positive sign, as we have recently increased our collaboration with the very undergraduate-oriented Physics Society at Strathclyde University in order to broaden our membership base further.
Overall, around ten people signed up to join our mailing list with some also already attending our follow-up event to the Welcome Night, a Career Evening at the end of November. As most current members of the SCOPE committee will step down this year due to their studies coming to an end, this event was very important for us in order to increase SCOPE’s visibility among students and ensure that we can find enough members for the new committee; we hope to have succeeded in this goal.

Get-Together-Meeting, Researchers Night and much more

Posted on 21/01/201821/01/2018 by ggunaratnam

At the beginning of 2017, our newly formed section organized a Get-Together-Meeting, inviting the local SPIE and OSA chapters to present its proposed activities for 2017 and to extend an invitation to join the INFLPR YMS.

In February, our section has been invited by the Former President of the Romanian Physical Society to attend the meeting organized by the EPS-EC and EPS-CEI, taking place in Bucharest. This event presented great occasion for our section to be introduced to the public. The President and Vice-President of our section participated at the meeting, presenting the 1st Announcement of the sections’ international student conference, thus delivering the information to many EPS Member Societies.

Throughout the year, the INFLPR YMS organized laboratory visits at the National Institute for Laser, Plasma and Radiation Physics for kindergarten, primary, middle and high school pupils, thus providing participants an insight of the current scientific work carried out in the institute, and in the same time encouraging them to choose a career in research or academia. The President of the section also arranged small physics experiments, providing simple and concise explanations regarding fundamental physics phenomena in a funny and interactive way. It also has to be mentioned that in 2017, for the first time, INFLPR opened its doors for foreign students and their teachers from Germany.

Furthermore, a representative of the INFLPR YMS had the chance to attend the 6th Young Minds Leadership Meeting, organized in Naples, Italy, during 12-13 May 2017. He had the opportunity to make new connections and to advertise our student conference.

The INFLPR YMS was proud to organize together with the local OSA and SPIE chapters IONS® Balvanyos 2017, representing on one hand a huge commitment and responsibility, while on the other hand an incredibly worthwhile experience. IONS® Balvanyos was a memorable conference for all of us with high quality scientific program, opportunities to meet and discuss, as well as a truly enjoyable woodland experience. The conference was held at a geographically unique and vibrant resort in the heart of Transylvania’s Eastern Carpathian Mountains, near Lake Saint Ana, the only volcanic lake in Romania. IONS® Balvanyos brought together 65 participants from 10 different countries. Our generous partners and sponsors, including EPS as well, allowed us to offer Travel Grants to 18 students. The event didn’t lack of social activities, such as icebreaking games, field trip, playing Frisbee and campfire. The most courageous attendees also could take part in “bear watching”.

Moreover, the INFLPR YMS participated at Researchers Night in Bucharest, involving physics related experiments and providing visitors with funny and friendly explanations. Another aim of our participation was to promote and bring into the public attention the section and its activities.

Last but not least, at the beginning of 2018 our section launched a photo contest. Youngsters are asked to capture the beauty of science. With the help of the photo contest, our section will try to address people with various background and interests, showing the intertwining fabric of science and arts.