Activities of the Prague EPS Young Minds section
The Prague (CZ) EPS Young Minds (YM) section was established in April 2015, and since then its members have organised 22 social and scientific events for university and high school students. These events took place mainly at the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague, where the section is based. Young Minds is a great opportunity to broaden the knowledge of its members, who make new contacts with other physics students and acquire new skills of team work and event planning.
One of the most popular activities, organised by Prague section, is the Physics Pizza Party. It aims to connect young scientists in various physics fields, as part of the overall goals of EPS YM project. Physics Pizza Party is in reality an informal students’ colloquium, where doctoral and master students present their research activities to other, mainly younger, students.
Altogether, nine Physics Pizza Parties have taken place, with various topics from physical electronics to experimental particle physics. For most of the invited speakers, it was their first presentation of their research activities for an audience unfamiliar with the topic. Nonetheless, every talk was prepared consistently and both presenting students and attendees found this experience interesting, amusing and it provided many networking opportunities. The average number of participants was roughly 25 students per colloquium and most of them participated in the lively discussions.
The Prague YM section has also organised other student meetings including the Start of the Semester Party. Well organised advertising of this event across the various Prague universities resulted in a large attendance. At the beginning, an invited speaker gave an interesting talk about gravitational waves, followed by a long and lively discussion. Participants were particularly interested in this multidisciplinary talk about a current topic, and therefore this model will be repeated in the future.
Another big event that Prague section co-organised was Czecho-Slovak Physics Students Conference. Sixty students from Slovakia and the Czech Republic had a great opportunity to meet their colleagues, present their physics research and compete for the best talk award in 7 categories.
Other activities of Prague section are reported on the EPS YM web page. The Section is supported not only by an Activity grant of the Young Minds project, but also by The Union of Czech Mathematicians and Physicists and the Czech Physical Society.
