International Year of Light news
“Highlights of Physics” event in Germany is a huge success with 53,000 visitors
Under the slogan “Lichtspiele” (Light Shows), the science festival co-organised by the German Physical Society (DPG) and the Federal Ministry of Research in Jena (Germany), attracted more than 53,000 visitors. That made it by far the most successful event in the history of the Highlights.
More information here.
Call for entries for IYL 2015 Film Festival
The International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2015 (IYL 2015) will be brought to an official close with a ceremony to be held over three days from 4-6 February 2016 in the city of Mérida, Mexico. As a parallel event of the programme, the IYL 2015 Film Festival will be organised to showcase videos/documentaries developed to celebrate this UNESCO year.
A call for entries is open to select films for the festival. Details can be found here.
Thousands of people celebrate IYL 2015 in the Franche-Comté Region in France
On 8-11 October 2015 over 13,000 people celebrated the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies 2015 (IYL 2015) in the Franche-Comté region (France) thanks to an event from the LUX! Programme organised by the University of Franche-Comté and the CNRS FEMTO-ST Institute. The event was part of the French National Science Festival 2015.
More information here.
A Year of IYL 2015 activities in Hungary
Solar eclipse, Wigner-memorial site, light relay and a multitude of programs – those have happened so far in the International Year of Light and light-based technologies 2015 (IYL 2015) in Hungary.
You can read more about it here.
LIGHT2015 Project Updates
- The iSPEX-EU campaign was a success with the participation of many citizens in 11 European cities that have contributed to a total of 5386 measurements. At the moment we are processing the data and the results that we will make available for all, in the form of maps with post-processed individual measurements in txt/ascii format (downloadable) and mapped (zoomable and google based map).
- Many LIGHTtalks have been organised during this month around Europe. For instance, The Roland Eötvös Physical Society organised a LIGHTtalk: The Power of Photonics in Szeged (Hungary) on September 25th. This series strive to reach new sectors and industries where photonics may be applied to unleash innovative potential, improving industrial processes and bringing new products to market. The organisers consider it a great success that 46 professionals from 33 scientific, entrepreneurial and industry communities attended the talks and the subsequent round table discussion. Dr. Zsolt Geretovszky, senior lecturer in the University of Szeged, Department of Optics and Quantum Electronics directed the organisation of the event.
- The LIGHT2015 Project was present at the ICT 2015 Innovate, Connect, Transform on 20-22 October 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal, organised by the European Commission, together with the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. The project shared a space on the exhibition with the other two outreach projects funded by the Photonics Public Private Partnership (PPP) within the Horizon 2020 framework (GoPhoton! and Photonics4All). The aim of this action was to increase the visibility of photonics and light-based technologies. We were able to interact with over 700 people and we organised a Photonics Explorer Kit workshop with around 30 Portuguese students.
More information on the LIGHT2015 website.
Find the latest updates about the International Year of Light on www.light2015.org and on the IYL 2015 Blog and IYL 2015 social media channels: Twitter, Facebook and Google+.
