Category Archives: Uncategorized

05Sep/19

Physics outreach project nominated for Times Higher Education Award

A Queen Mary outreach project which takes physics research into schools has been nominated for a Times Higher Education Award 2019.

The School of Physics and Astronomy’s ‘Physics Research in School Environments’ (PRiSE) programme is shortlisted for the Widening Participation and Outreach Initiative of the Year for the event known as the ‘Oscars of higher education’.

The award will go to the most imaginative and innovative project that promotes diversity and encourages people from non-traditional backgrounds to enter higher education or extends the reach of the institution to new areas of activity.

PRiSE enables underrepresented students across London to experience cutting-edge particle and astrophysics through 6-month-long independent research projects.

As part of the programme students and teachers receive introductory workshops and school visits from researchers, helping them undertake a piece of research which they then present at a conference held at Queen Mary. Around 30 schools take part every year.

It has overwhelmingly built students’ confidence in science, developing skills not typically encountered within school, and has had lasting impacts on their physics and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) aspirations.

The programme has also resulted in a peer-reviewed paper, with student co-authors who successfully identified sounds caused by solar storm.

Dr Martin Archer, PRiSE project lead from Queen Mary’s School of Physics and Astronomy, said: “I have been developing PRiSE over the past five years and it’s been wonderful to not only see the long-term effects these projects are having on young people and their teachers. For this to be recognised nationally through the nomination is utterly fantastic”

PRiSE has developed teachers’ practice through the relationships forged with Queen Mary. As a result, teachers develop new lesson content, skills and mentoring; gain confidence in discussing research; and share students’ work raising their school’s STEM profile.

It is also informing the sector, with SEPnet and Ogden Trust adopting it into their strategies, Royal Society recommending it to their teacher network, and USA’s National Oceanic and Space Administration encouraging other researchers internationally to adopt it, with take-up from some universities already.

THE editor John Gill said: “I am delighted to say that the ‘Oscars of higher education’ go from strength to strength. With 23 categories this year, we’re also showcasing more exceptional stories than ever before, and it’s a real honour for us to shine a spotlight on all those who have made it as far as these shortlists – their stories deserve much wider circulation.”

These are the 15th annual THE Awards, and the first to feature a range of categories covering all university activity under one banner – excellence will be recognised both in academia and across the professional services.

The Awards ceremony is the biggest night of celebration in the UK HE calendar, and will take place at the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane in London on Thursday 28 November 2019.

A student presents his poster at the PRiSE student conference

02Aug/19

GRADnet Training Programme 2019-2020 Announced!

GRADnet is pleased to announce the list of forthcoming GRADnet Training events for the academic year 2019-20.

These events are only for SEPnet postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers.

These events are free to attend (SEPnet pays for your accommodation and course fees for residential courses) and travel expenses can be claimed from your department.

List of training events:

23 October 2019: GRADnet Induction at 1 Park Crescent, International Students House, London W1: This is compulsory for all September/October 2019 starters.

6-7 November 2019: Measurement Science Conference, the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex. (10 places available for SEPnet PhD Students)

27-28 November 2019: Astrobiology and Planetary Science, the Open University, Milton Keynes.

2-3 December 2019: Turning Science into Business, the National Physical Laboratory, Teddington, Middlesex.

4 December 2019: IOP/SEPnet Career Panel Event for Physicists at the Institute of Physics, London N1. (networking event for physics students and postdoctoral researchers.)

15-16 January 2020: Machine Learning and AI, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London.

17-19 February 2020: Teams, Communication and Leadership – Winter School at Cumberland Lodge, Great Park, Windsor.

25-27 March 2020: Student-led Research Conferences at University of Southampton, Highfield Campus. (Arrival 4pm on 25 March for meet and greet ): Soft Matter: the unseen science all around us and The Big Data Era in Astronomy

27-28 April 2020: Quantum Computing, University of Surrey, Guildford.

6-9 July 2020: Opportunities beyond your PhD – Summer School, Herstmonceux Castle, West Sussex.

13-16 July 2020: NExT PhD Workshop, Cosener’s House, Abingdon, Oxford.

Registration open now to SEPnet postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers!

 

26Jul/19

WRIPA & SEPnet Joint Workshop – Physics-Industry Collaboration: Aligning Student Skills with Local Economic Needs – 25 July, IOP London

50 academics, employers and career professionals came together to share good practice on embedding employability skills in physics courses at WRIPA & SEPnet’s 2nd annual workshop chaired by Professor Sir William Wakeham.

Brooke Storer-Church of Office for Students highlighted the mis-match between the supply and demand for skills in the UK. IOP’s new degree accreditation criteria will focus less on core content and more on skills development. This offers physics departments greater flexibility in the design of physics courses and can help to bridge the skills gap.

Students need to develop self-management and independent thinking to ‘flex’ into different careers. Placements offer opportunities to build skills but many students fear failing so may not have the confidence to apply. As an alternative, embedded bite-sized work experience can build confidence and resilience while assessed real-world industrial projects can engage students and develop entrepreneurship.

Mobility can be an issue with 45% of graduates choosing to stay in the region after graduation. More therefore needs to be done to build links with local employers to develop graduate opportunities. Industry advisory boards which include local employers can provide physics departments with input into courses as well as opportunities to address regional skills needs.

You can view the presentations from the workshop here: Dr Brooke Storer-Church, Officer for Students      Robyn Henriegel and Amy Pearce, IOP         Dr Alastair  Buckley, University of Sheffield         Professor Manus Hayne, Lancaster University      Danny Atkins, University of Portsmouth       Trevor Farren, University of Nottingham Part 1          Trevor Farren, University of Nottingham Part 2

24Jul/19

Benefits of attending GRADnet Summer School 2019 as a Postdoc!

I didn’t really know what to expect from the GRADnet Summer School, especially approaching it as a postdoctoral researcher as opposed to a PhD Student. Since my postdoc contract expires at the end of the year, I saw it as a good opportunity to expand my horizons and gain some inspiration about what I could do next. It’s always been my ambition to find a vocation outside of academia, so the chance to interact with employers from a range of different backgrounds was worth a shot. Moreover, it could be a chance to develop my ideas about how my PhD in Physics and experience in research could be transferred to other fields.

I was a bit worried that the activities might not be pitched appropriately for a professional researcher, but that fear proved to be unfounded. The seminars – two each day – were well built with a wide array of experiences in mind. Seminars which stood out to me were the Intellectual Property workshop run by WP Thompson and a talk on public engagement from the Science & Technology Facilities Council.

Between seminars, I had the chance to attend two employer-led workshops each day, which comprised an hour talk about their work and a group activity. Typically, the group activities were well thought out to bring across a specific point, and as a consequence they were highly engaging. A highlight was a workshop from Ultra Electronics, where we were tasked to design the most useless microwave which still fitted within the design specifications – my team decided that the specified OLED display should be only 1 pixel and communicate through Morse code. But amongst the fun, there was a serious take away – our training as Physicists has given us skills which come in handy in plenty of different contexts. In this environment, our technical Physics knowledge doesn’t count for nearly as much as our agile thinking and teamwork.

On the final day, we split into teams and took part in a “consultancy challenge”, where we tried to solve, in a matter of hours, the kind of problems a consultancy might work on for weeks. My team’s assigned problem was to make a recommendation about where the successor to the Large Hadron Collider should be built – at CERN in Geneva, or in a new site in China? Not only did we have costs and scientific merits to consider, but my team chose to emphasize the possible ethical issues of working with the Chinese government. Time was tight – we had only a few hours to put together a poster presentation and a pitch to sell our solutions. This extremely limited timescale forced us to focus on the principle of being “just good enough” to solve the problem, but no more rigorous. My team even won a prize for our efforts! The whole exercise really emphasized to me the importance of the leadership and time management skills I’ve developed. I left the summer school with renewed self-confidence, fresh ideas for new careers, and quite a few new friends.

Thank you to Dr Steve Chick, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Surrey for giving his perspective on attending this year’s GRADnet Summer School 1-4 July 2019 at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex.

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory:  Team 3 – Stephen Haywood, RAL, Bradley Garland, Dan Kelsey, University of Sussex and Stephen Chick, University of Surrey.

12Jul/19

Physics-Industry Collaboration: Aligning Student Skills with Local Economic Needs, Thursday 25 July 2019, Institute of Physics, London N1

Chaired by Professor Sir William Wakeham

The Office for Students (OfS) focuses on higher education participation, experience, outcomes and value of money. At the same time, the UK Industrial Strategy identifies ‘Places’ as a key “foundation of productivity” to address performance, regional differences and disparities in R&D funding.

To address the twin challenges of graduate outcomes and regional economic prosperity, university physics departments need to consider ‘place-based’ decision-making in student graduate career choices and how to engage with regional employers.

This workshop is for those interested in embedding work-based learning into curriculum design, forming partnerships with regional employers and embedding entrepreneurialism into student skill training. It will build a wider network of employability-focused academic and professional staff and include presentations and case studies from the OfS, IOP and physics departments.

The event is for heads of physics departments, academics responsible for employability, programme managers, heads of teaching and learning, industry representatives and anyone with responsibility for developing physics graduates employability skills.

To see the agenda, travel info and to register for this FREE workshop, click here: https://sepnet-wripa-workshop2.eventbrite.co.uk

05Jul/19

GRADnet Consultancy Challenge Winners!

Congratulations to our consultancy challenge winners at the GRADnet Summer School 1-4 July 2019 at the National Physical Laboratory, in Teddington, Middlesex.

The consultancy challenges are an opportunity to take on the role of a consultant and propose a solution to a “real world” challenge that is facing an employer.  In doing the challenge postgraduate researchers discover the skills one has developed during one’s doctorate are transferrable to genuine business solutions.

The challenges this year were provided by Gil Travish, Adaptix Ltd; David Gorton and Duy Le Bui, BlueOptima and Dr Stephen Haywood, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

The winners are:

Adaptix Ltd:  Team 3 – Gil Travish, Adaptix Ltd, Michael Soughton, University of Sussex, Marta Venanzi, University of Southampton and Dominic Duffy, University of Surrey.

BlueOptima: Team 3 – David Gorton, BlueOptima, Adam Kennington, University of Surrey, Andrey Abramov, RHUL, Alexander Booth, University of Sussex, Carlos Vergara, and Michael Kritsotakis, University of Sussex.

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory:  Team 3 – Stephen Haywood, RAL, Bradley Garland, Dan Kelsey, University of Sussex and Stephen Chick, University of Surrey.

Peoples Choice Winners:  Adaptix Ltd Team 1:  Veronica Benson, Employer Liaison Director, SEPnet, Michael Spencer, University of Surrey, Giri Mani, RHUL, Jelena Gorbaciova, QMUL, and Maria Pintea, University of Kent.

Well done to all the participants.

05Jul/19

GRADnet Summer School PGRs get the measure of NPL!

The fifth GRADnet Summer School took place on 1-4 July 2019 at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, Middlesex.  Thank you to NPL because this is the third time they have hosted this event and offered laboratory tours, water rockets and a BBQ with the wonderful backdrop of Bushy Park.

40 postgraduate researchers signed up to this year’s school which provided an opportunity to experience some wide-ranging opportunities outside academia and to interact with employers from a variety of organisations.

A Sussex student said it was a “fantastic school, very well organised” and that they found “pretty much everything very useful”. The most valuable thing they took away from the school is that “academia is not the only way to do science and a job in industry doesn’t have to be a “fall-back”.

Thank you to all our speakers and employers who provided talks, workshops and consultancy challenges: NPL, University of Sussex, WP Thompson, IOP Teaching, Santander, Ultra Electronics, GlaxoSmithKlein, RBA Acoustics, UKAEA, Adaptix Ltd, BlueOptima and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

 

 

 

01Jul/19

Meet a new generation of leaders in data science, Tuesday 23rd July, 18:00 at The Grand Brighton

You are invited to a networking event to meet DISCUS* and DISCnet** data intensive science students; senior academics, researchers and leaders from industry and public sector regarding opportunities to collaborate with the next generation of leaders in data science and the training programme they’re undertaking.

A closed session from 6pm – 7pm will focus on collaboration initiatives and how your organisation can benefit. These initiatives include PhD industry placements and the DISCnet-Knowledge Exchange network.

From 7pm to 9pm we are hosting a networking event where you will meet with 100 PhD students from across 8 UK Centres for Doctoral Training in Data Science. These students undertake 6 months of industry placements during their PhD studies.

This event will allow you to discover how we are solving big data questions for growing organisations and provide you with the opportunity to meet our talented students.

Sign-up at https://lnkd.in/gqw_9u2

*DISCUS: Data Intensive Science Centre, University of Sussex
**DISCnet: (Data Intensive Science Centre in SEPnet)

21Jun/19

SEPnet PhD student participates in world’s first demonstration of a new method for contactless temperature measurements of solar panels!

The NPL work entitled ‘In situ contactless thermal characterisation and imaging of encapsulated photovoltaic devices using phosphor thermometry’, was recently published in one of the most prestigious solar energy peer-reviewed journals, Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications.  James Kneller, a physics PhD student at Queen Mary University, secured a SEPnet placement with NPL last year and was one of its contributors.

Through collaboration between the Electronic and Magnetic Materials (EMM) Group and the Temperature and Humidity Group, NPL has demonstrated for the first time accurate, contactless temperature measurements of a photovoltaic (PV) device within its glass/polymer/glass encapsulation, with uncertainty of less than 1 ºC.  Authors included Yameng Cao, George Koutsourakis, Gavin Sutton, James Kneller, Sebastian Wood, James Blakesley and Fernando Castro. You can read more about the research here and find out more about James’s placement with NPL here.

 

20Jun/19

SEPnet Public Engagement Leader involved in Europe-wide photonics project getting thousands of girls in STEM

Thousands of young women and girls have had the chance to explore the world of science, engineering, and light technologies thanks to a European photonics research consortium that has created their girls in STEM ecosystem, a series of 33 workshops and 11 Photonics Challenger projects across 10 European countries in a bid to tackle the underrepresentation of women in science.

According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS), less than 30% of the world’s researchers are women.

However, a new outreach project has been tackling this underrepresentation by engaging young female minds with STEM, in the hope that they will pursue a career within the photonics, science or engineering industries.

Staged in ten countries across Europe, a total of 1221 girls have attended the ‘Phablabs 4.0’ initiatives since last year. The workshops have created novel and innovative problems for students to solve using lasers and photonics, the technology around the emission, manipulation and detection of light.

Combining a ‘Fab Lab’ – or a fabrication laboratory – with the world of photonics, the workshops and Challenger Projects offer a glimpse into careers in photonics, engineering, computer coding, and robotics.

Pearl John, SEPnet Public Engagement Leader at the University of Southampton, has led the UK element of the project. Partnering with the Green Lab agri-tech laboratory in Bermondsey Pearl and her team have delivered a series of hands on photonics workshops, reaching audiences who would not otherwise have the opportunity to access hands on physics experiences.

Pearl John and the team from Southampton University.

Hands-on Opportunities

Students have been exploring tasks as varied as creating an artwork made from lasers, modifying a cuddly toy with photonics, or building an infrared glove that acts as a remote control where touching two fingers creates a signal.

The more advanced Challenger Projects have tasked students with building an Invisibility Cloak or creating their own hologram. Some students, like Ester Muylaert, 18, from Halle, Belgium, are really excited to discover material they would not learn anywhere else.

“Phablabs is amazing and interesting. We’ve learned lots of new skills that we wouldn’t have picked up in school. To see the job in front of me and to meet the person who does that job has given me loads of ideas about what I can do in the future. It’s really made me want to work with photonics.”

The researchers have targeted three age categories with workshops aimed at high school girls (Young Minds), female university students (Students) and women who may have already started their careers (Young Professionals 18+).

Gender Balanced Resources

One of the results of the PhabLabs 4.0 project has been the publication of a new booklet, A Gender Balanced Approach. The booklet acts as a guide to future Fabrication Laboratories so that organisers in schools or universities can use it as a reference to gain the interest of girls and young women in science and technology.

By creating gender-sensitive material for the workshops and “Photonics Challenger Projects” the organisers have garnered the interest of girls and young women in science, to generate a lasting impact on their personal relation to STEM and Fab Labs.

Supported by the Gender Action Team, the developers have had the backing of the European Commission with funding from Horizon 2020, and support from a number of professionals such as Professor Averil MacDonald from WISE (Women in Science and Engineering).

“We are delighted to be able to open a door into a world of science that some girls and young women may feel is closed,” Professor MacDonald said. “Girls and young women are more likely to consider studying STEM subjects beyond age 16 if they see that the subject keeps their options open.”

“The STEM sectors can only benefit from the talents of these young women. More girls and young women deserve the chance to have successful and satisfying careers in science, technology, engineering, manufacturing, mathematics and construction,” said Professor MacDonald.

The resources are available as an open resource toolkit for educators to use with their students.

For more details contact phablabs4.0@gmail.com.