The EPFL Young Minds section expanded with success during the last year. As planned, monthly seminars were organised under the label ‘Pizza Physics Beer’ (PPB). We noted a steady number of participants ranging from 30-45 during the past semester. We are now 8 students fully invested in the organisation of the PPB meetings and other events.
The subjects covered in the PPB meetings were: nuclear fusion, with a visit to the Tokamak reactor at EPFL; surface treatments to create ultra hard materials; safety measures regarding fission nuclear reactors, and the risks associated with human failure; the fabrication of anti-hydrogen at CERN; correlated dynamics in quantum systems; the use of perovskites for optoelectronic applications; the social behavior of solitons in microresonators.
This seminars were attended by PhD students from the whole EPFL Physics PhD Doctoral School (EDPY) as well as curious master students. This allowed some interaction between students, both during and after the seminar. The after-seminar gatherings lasted, in some cases, more than one hour.
We successfully organised the physics day: a major event that took place on October 16 at the Rolex Learning Center, EPFL. The four speakers of this event included the Nobel prize winner in chemistry, Stefan Hell, as well as three other prominent physicists (L. O. Silva, P. Hazzi, A. Kellerer). This event was also the occasion of a poster competition between the physics PhD students and fostered interactions among physicists of the physics doctoral school of EPFL.
Rogerio Jorge, the association’s secretary, attended the leadership meeting of the EPS Young Minds associations in Naples, bringing a large number of innovative ideas to develop within the coming years, including “Physicist Speed Dating” and “Recruiting Event” activities. This first year, made possible by the EPS grants, was clearly encouraging. It reinforced us in our goal to make the EPFL physics community more interactive both within EPFL and with other members of the EPS community.