The OPTO-Meeting for Young Researchers & 10th Anniversary International SPIE Student Chapter Meeting 2015, called OPTO2015 was organized by the Wroclaw University of Technology OSA & SPIE student chapters and newly formed EPS Young Minds Section at out university. I have been held between 27th and 30th of May 2015 in Wroclaw, Poland.
OPTO2015 was a great opportunity for young researches, BC, MS and PhD students to meet, present and talk about their scientific work. We organized several oral sections, poster session, lab tour, soft skills training and integration events. The number of attendees was around 100, making it the biggest even in Poland for students and young researchers within the physics field.
Because OPTO is the annual conference for OSA and SPIE student chapters in Poland, we decided to organize special event focused on their activities. After presentations and short discussion we presented the conference sponsors, which also was the EPS Young Minds organization. During this special section the conference participants could find out what the EPS is, what’s the Young Minds project, its mission, purpose, goals and tools to achieve them. Additionally we presented the benefits for new members and gave short instruction how to establish new EPS Young Minds Section and apply for grants.
This project cost us a lot of work. Organizing the conference by students who hasn’t done anything like that before is a big challenge, but our members accomplished that goal. We are very proud that the Warsaw University of Technology established their EPS Young Minds section and many other still consider doing so. For our section it was a good way to train ourselves within new EPS Young Minds structure at our university and to try work with our new and fresh team within other projects.