1st EPS Technology and Innovation Group’s (TIG) Maker Event for Science, Technology and Interfaces at IdeaSquare, CERN
EPS-TIG (Technology and Innovation Group), in close collaboration with the EPS Young Minds Programme, the Soleil synchrotron and CERN, organised a hands-on Maker Event for Science, Technology and Interfaces at CERN from 4-6 November 2019. The purpose of the event was to offer young physicists and engineers new hands-on skills in hardware, software and related interfaces. This was in response to an identified need among physics and engineering students to develop various skills which are difficult to obtain during their studies. Experiments necessitate many hard skills, such as physical understanding of processes, but also a bundle of other skills like know-how in instrumentation, hardware and software and strong team-work capabilities. In a physics laboratory, an ever-changing problem is interfacing the experiment with –finally- the human who analyses, interprets and exploits the data.
The 1st EPS-TIG Hands-on-event addressed this need, employing “hands-on” methods using available devices. “Really available” meant devices that are modern, compact and affordable for a standard laboratory. Examples include Raspberry Pi as a standard platform, easy-to use FPGA software, fast semiconductor-based Avalanche Photodiodes, a camera containing FPGA for ultraprecise timestamping.
24 students or (early) post-doc level researchers from Italy, Spain, UK, Switzerland and France joined the event. According to the feedback, on average, 80% of the attendees found the exercises useful. This would encourage TIG-EPS to organise a second workshop in 2020, naturally doing its best to improve on the lessons learned.
Photos of the workshop can be found here.
The programme and more can be found here.
