Monthly Archives: July 2015

31Jul/15

Reflecting Photonics IYL garden voted Best Garden

Designer Helen Elks-Smith’s Reflecting Photonics won a Gold medal and the People’s Choice Award at the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) show at Tatton Park. The garden was inspired by the International Year of Light and the fibre optics work being carried out at University of Southampton. An outreach team of post-graduate students from Southampton took part in the event and spoke to over 2,000 people, handing out information on the garden and fibre optics research at Southampton.

Pearl John, Southampton’s SEPnet Outreach Officer and Public Engagement team leader for Physics and Astronomy, who has been working on the project said, “I’m very glad that the enthusiastic response we’ve had from people visiting the garden and talking to our outreach team. Having our outreach team there really helped the garden win the People’s Choice Award for Best Garden.”

The International Year of Light themed garden was also featured in a special BBC programme on the RHS Tatton Show, which can be seen here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063jx7p .

08Jul/15

GRADnet Summer School

The GRADnet Summer School took place at IBM’s Hursley Laboratory on the 6-8th July 2015. The three day Residential School focused on the skills required for effective leadership and maximising the impact of physics research. In order to explore the technological, societal, economic, political impact of physics and of physicists, researchers discussed examples of how physics have made an impact on the world and what the future impact could be. Experts from academia and industry presented specific case studies.

Thirty Five Physics PhD students from around the South East region attended and the overwhelming feedback has been positive.They gained tremendously from the IBM workshops: the Hackathon and Strategic Leadership challenges as well as the other team exercises including building a trebuchet from garden canes.

01Jul/15

SEPnet Software Bootcamp

With the objective of equipping physics students with industry-relevant technical skills, SEPnet partner, Queen Mary’s School of Physics & Astronomy, organised a Software Bootcamp at QMUL’s Mile End campus in June. The event was attended by physics students from the SEPnet partner universities. The aim of the bootcamp was to equip students with technical skills needed by industry and provide an insight into the role of a software developer. In this blog post, Sean Cooper, 3rd year MSci Physics student at QMUL shares his experience of being thrown in the deep end of programming and what he learned.