First edition of the Physics Day a great success
The first edition of the Physics Day took place at EPFL, in the Forum Rolex, on the 16th of October 2017. The event was the occasion to celebrate physics and gather physicists from all over Switzerland.
The event brought together more than 200 participants for five talks spanning all areas of physics from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, from fundamental to experimental physics: the future of the LHC (Patrizia Azzi), to super resolution microscopy (Stefan W. Hell, Nobel laureate 2014), quantum telescopes (Aglae Kellerer), ultra energetic plasmas (Luís O. Silva) or the behavior of allosteric materials (Matthieu Wyart).
The Physics Day was also the occasion of numerous exchanges during the final cocktail and the poster session which featured 35 competitors for this first edition. The winners of the poster awards were Jennifer Schober (first prize of the Jury), with a poster entitled “Astrophysical Plasmas & the origin of magnetic fields”, Lino Ferreira Lopes (first prize of the public), with a poster entitled “Production and quality assurance of scintillating fibre mats for the LHCb tracker upgrade”, Vamshi M. Katukuri (second prize of the public), with a poster entitled “High-throughput search for materials with Kitaev-type magnetic interactions”. The poster awards were sponsored by LOT Quantum Design - a leading European company in high tech scientific instrumentation. Throughout the day, the Irrotationnels (Association of students in physics) showcased experiments and social events.
The Physics Day is organised by the graduate students in physics, who recently created their association, POLYPHYS. It is a tremendous opportunity for the physics community to share, discover, learn and exchange, and we are looking forward to the second edition next year.
The event was supported by EPFL, the European Physical Society (EPS) Young Minds, LOT Quantum Design, the Swiss Physical Society (SPS) and the Swiss Academy of Science (SCNAT).