 Okay, welcome back everybody even welcome back out there in the hallway you can come on in now Okay, so we're gonna we postpone one talk till after but so we had warm coffee But now I Think we've got the We've got the talk loaded up so that I'd like to introduce So Rob, so Rob by Nareng is award-winning photographer from India and actually has Some some photos you can see outside. They're they're mounted out there These are photos from some of the highest villages in the world in the Himalayas wonderful photographs and I'm just gonna give it I'll give it to you and So welcome. Thank you. Thank you Joe It's I feel really honored to be you know present here and be a part of ideal event in in ICT P3 state so Like to you know start with I just want to you know give a little bit background of like, you know where I'm coming from I'm a photographer from India and And Before you know going into photography I used to work as a banker with Barclays and you know There are some you know Things in life when you start thinking like you know, what are you doing with your life? Like you know how things are going on. There's nothing seems to be working out and though I've been good with banking things were pretty good But still you know I used to have these kind of thoughts and here, you know, I'm just thinking with the Milky Way You know what I should do so that I have a really passionate and a very fulfilling life So I decided that you know, I would Stay with the banking so that I can meet my financial needs and I would passionately explore photography So I cut off from all the other things in life be it newspaper TV or anything and I switched to photography I learned it myself and And that's you know, I would be showing you some of my Photographs and would be telling you the back end background story of those photographs. So this is she is of 15 year old Monk Her name is Sumana and I met her in in Ladakh, which is around 3500 meter I just met her and I just told her you know if I can have a portrait of you and she said yes And I took that photo that photo went on to be One of the top photos one of the best hundred photos in India and it got exhibited by Canon So, you know, I was doing it and I was also started getting recognized the other thing Got recognized by Lonely Planet. They gave me this award for unexplored India So these are the photos all these photos. I'm showing today up from Like Himalayas near the Himalayan ranges And we that's why we call it like images from the roof of the top from the roof of the world This is another one from that Lonely Planet story So this particular photo like, you know, it was like when I started exploring it and I like, you know It was like a very golden moment for me Like you can see the golden light at the top of the mountain and it was like a very early in the morning. I was My next step was to catch the a Shear taxi to a to a different place and Around 5.30 in the morning. I was brushing my teeth and I saw this light, you know hitting the mountain and I was like I just need to go out with my camera and shoot it because it's like very You know, the time duration is very little like it gives you only five minutes to, you know, capture something like this This is Kaza, which is around 3300 meter And like, you know, these kind of places are very High and the oxygen level drops. So this was my first day ever in this beautiful valley called Spiti Valley And this is the town Kaza and I just, you know, was just going for a stroll evening stroll And I found this magical light magical moment happening in front of me and I just took some photos So there's a really good story. It's a kind of, you know, a story which was kind of like I almost died after taking this photograph And it's again, you know, it's an evening light which I captured in this photo and after this like, you know, we camped at this place This place is Chandrata Lake, which is like it means the Moon Lake and it is also like around 4200 meter So we camped there and at the night it was so cold I was actually, you know, started shivering And when the camp owner got realized that, you know, something is wrong with me They took me inside the camp and they gave me like three big blankets, like three huge blankets over me But still, you know, I was shivering inside those three blankets So they gave me this local medicine, they're like kind of, you know, very local thing It was made up of garlic and they just boiled garlic and gave it to me and it, you know, worked as a blood thinner And it actually, you know, saved me that night and the next day I was totally fine It's another shot of that same lake in the morning So you can see, you know, how beautiful this place and, you know, the roof of the world is After, you know, like I just wanted to, you know, understand like what else I can learn in photography And then I found, I really got fascinated with the astrophotographs which were trending those times And I started exploring astrophotography This particular photo is like, this is not a single photo, this is a merging of around 120 photos And each photo is around 30 seconds So I took this for around two hours and then I put it in the software and it gave me this kind of a result And this is, by the way, the highest monastery in the world, which is Comik Another shot with another very famous monastery called Ki Monastery, which is around 4,200 meter This is a very interesting thing, so like I got this shot like three in the morning I waited entire night to, you know, because it was very cloudy at the night And in the morning, because we have to, you know, start really early to reach the town So the driver woke us really early, it was like three And I saw this beautiful Milky Way with this good background foreground And I thought that I would really, you know, take this So I made everybody wait for around 10 minutes and then everything was really good Another Milky Way shot This is Arunachal and it is like a 5 a.m. like, you know, these monks are praying So I was able to sneak in and try to get a really beautiful moment It's, you know, it's like photography is about light and how you write with light Photo means light, graphic means writing And you also are able to, if you are able to capture such moments, it becomes really magical Another shot of monks So this is a post office in these kind of areas and the child sneaking in Really good story with this photo You know, like, we're talking about light here and so I asked him, like, you know, how was, like, he told me the story, you know, when somebody in the village saw the bulb for the first time She actually tried to blow it so that because she didn't know, like, you know, what is this? It could be a candle and nothing happened So she actually put a glass of water to, you know, put it off Another, you know, Himalayan shot And you can see, like, how these villages are, like, you know, like there used to be time When these trolleys, they used to pull it to carry the people And now there is a very big bridge So again, you know, I'm doing photography, I started getting recognized, but still, you know, there was something missing So I thought that, you know, what is missing? So I started this project, I started, I decided that I would take a one year career break from banking And do something with photography And I started this project called Create for Cause, which was basically, I would do something with photography But my fee would go to a mutually discussed social cause I started this project, I started taking photography tools to this same valley We did it as a part of International Day of Flight Last year we celebrated International Day of Flight at the highest village in the world And these photos are from that tour It's the highest post office in the world, highest village in the world These are the photos of some of the participating photographers In terms of cause, like, you know, so I collaborated with this organization called Spiti EcoSpear Which is a well-known social enterprise in India And they have, you know, multiple projects like solar power, girls' education, environment-related projects So like whatever I was earning through that project, money was going to fund these kind of projects This is like, you know, and the good thing, like, this is again from the comic village And the village has only 11 houses And these are the only kids in the school So there's one school and only two kids And there's one teacher This project is basically environment And it's about, like, we made this art installation Totally out of discarded plastic water bottles So we collected these water bottles from Dump Yard And made a huge life installation called I Love Spiti Love, Swine and Spiti And somebody would stand as an I And it would become I Love Spiti And that somebody would take a pledge that he or she won't use plastic, you know, plastic water bottles anymore Again, you know, now when I see this photograph And, you know, whatever I have done after taking the sabbatical year and everything So after the sabbatical, I actually left my banking job Because it was so fulfilling the entire one year We raised also around 75-100-0 Doing these kind of projects all around the world And I left my job and now I am a full-time photographer And working on this project, great for cause Thank you, thank you very much Thank you very much, Cesar In the interest of time, I think we can all grab you at the reception And talk about the photographs, cause it's really wonderful work Sorry? The photos are on display, as I said before They're outside here, so you can just go out here and take your time The photos, most, some of the photos you saw there You can walk around out here and take a look But again, this room will be available During the reception, you can talk to them all about the art of light and light gathering So now I think I'm going to give it to John So it's always nice to be surprised with having to chair a session Unless someone else would like to chair the session For, okay, no one wants to volunteer Okay, great Cesar, would you like to chair a session? And there you go, that's fine You haven't done enough work yet today My pleasure Name of the session Okay, well, it gives me great pleasure to open and chair the career challenges session And actually even greater pleasure to introduce one of my heroes, Jess Wade Who I have known vicariously through the internet and by reading things about her and by her And who I met for the first time today And she's going to talk to us today about gender balance And underlying bias and correcting that And how you have to stand up and do stuff And also hopefully a little bit about her research Yeah, thank you so much And thank you for having me And thank you for staying this long in the day It's been so fantastic so far I feel so lucky to have been here with all of you And to have heard so many great stories So my name is Jess I'm a physicist at Imperial College London I'm going to tell you a tiny bit about what I do research-wise And then something that's really important to me Which is the diversity of our science labs And what I think we can do about it And what I've been doing about it I don't know how many of you have been to London I'm hoping some of you Maybe you'll come and see me after this This is where Imperial is It's in a nice part of London We have Hyde Park just there up along the top That's very close to where Buckingham Palace is If you're a fan of the Queen And then we have all of these great buildings The big circular one that you can see in the kind of top left Maybe there's a laser pointer that I can use to try and get at this one This is the Royal Albert Hall So this is where you graduate if you go to Imperial And if you do your undergraduate and PhD there You graduate there twice, which is pretty cool And then we have all of these great things around us Like the Natural History Museum And the Science Museum And the Victorian Albert Museum So it's a really, really fantastic part of London to be in And I work there in something called the Centre for Plastic Electronics Where we're designing and creating new electronic devices And we're doing that kind of because Actually, so eloquently introduced before When we were talking about solar panels We use a lot of silicon at the moment Silicon has a limit on its efficiency And it's also really, really expensive to process So I'm guessing you're all happy with what silicon is As a semiconductor It's really, really hard to break those atoms of silicon apart In a crystal and turn that into an electronic device And it's hard because we have to take it to such high temperatures And pressures to be able to do it So what we do in the Centre for Plastic Electronics Is we try and use carbon I'm hoping you're also all happy with what carbon is Carbon is really great And can have all of these different forms Even when it's just carbon So we can use it like a plastic We can have diamond We can have graphene But what we use it as is a semiconductor So we can create these semi-conducting solutions of carbon And then print those onto plastic surfaces And make flexible electronic devices And what's really, really neat about working with carbon Is all of those electronic properties of the carbon We can manipulate so that we can get something That emits a different colour Or absorbs a different colour Or we can work with it in a different way Using chemistry So we don't have to introduce any other weird atoms We just use that Using the chemistry of the carbon that we have So most days we take these kind of solutions And we're turning them into these kind of These kind of flexible electronic devices And we do that by doing lots and lots Of different characterisation Using loads of really, really exquisite Experimental techniques My project particularly Is looking at organic electronics for OLEDs So for organic light emitting diodes If you're lucky enough to have an iPhone X That's what the pixels in your iPhone are emitting Organic light emitters there Are the ones emitting the light And we can print them We can print them just like you print at home With an inkjet printer Where we put in different organic light emitting inks And print out each different pixel individually Now this is where it gets to the part of my research Obviously I did not design the iPhone X pixel architecture What we're trying to do Is create more efficient light emitting diodes And the way we're doing that Is by using certainly polarised light We're happy with polarisation Because we were introduced to that So earlier on so well But we have linear polarisation Where the light wave moves in one plane So the electric field oscillates in one plane And also circular polarisation Where the light can twist as it moves towards you And it can either twist counter-clockwise or clockwise Now what's really clever About your television displays at home If you have an OLED display If you're lucky enough to have one Or if you've seen one Is they have a circular polarising filter In that display And that's there So if you're watching TV You have the shiny electrode on the back Right, that's where we inject the charge To get the pixel to light up If I go near there Am I getting feedback? So we have the shiny electrode on the back You have a circular polarising filter there Which you're not aware of And that's so if you turn on the light behind you That unpolarised light can go through that filter Become right-handed Become circular polarised Flip off that back electrode And become left-handed And then not be able to get out the screen So that improves the resolution When you're watching it It is echoey, isn't it? Sounds a bit... Is it okay? Fine, okay I'll not be worried So it improves the resolution When you're watching Means that you get better contrast And it means that the image you get Isn't distorted in any way But that means if you emit unpolarised light So if unpolarised light Goes through that circular polarised filter You're losing about 50% of it So it's not very good for the OLED pixels So what we're trying to do Is fully emit circular polarising light So you get no loss When you go through that screen And that's really, really neat It's a kind of cool physics And chemistry-related challenge And we're doing that by using the science Discovered by Pastor So Pastor didn't only give us milk and cheese And maybe you're a big fan of Pastor as well But he also introduced us to chirality And chiral molecules And that was because when he was younger He was playing around with wine barrels I think his parents owned a vineyard And he was getting really into looking at the crystals In these barrels of wine And realised that this crystal of tartaric acid Could have identical crystal structures But be mirror images of one another So you have these crystals Forming in the wine barrels That were complete mirror images And that led to this whole new area of science Which was called chirality And kind of chiral separation Of all of these different enantiomers And it's actually really fascinating So you can get molecules That have exactly the same chemical structure But when you draw them out They're left and right-handed forms of one another Just like your left and right-handed Left and right hands And that can give them Really, really different chemical properties The best example I think is Spearman and Caraway The sense of those Are exactly the same chemical structure But mirror images And they smell totally different, right? There are really, really cool examples Of this in nature So you have the eyes of mantis shrimps They can detect circularised light So they actually have If you buy a lot of expensive equipment On the Thorlabs website You can buy all of these Different quarter waves plates Mantis shrimps have those in their eyes So that they can detect their friends And see when there's another mantis shrimp about The shells of these beautiful jewel beetles They arrange themselves in such a way That they reflect circularised light So if you've seen any of these Really, really brilliant green beetles If you look at them through 3D glasses So kind of cinema glasses Those are left and right-handed Circularised And in one lens You'll be able to see them In the other lens They'll look completely black Because the light that they're reflecting Is circularised That's also I think So that they can see their friends When they're out And just identify their Batal friends As opposed to all the other beetles They don't want to hang out with What we're trying to do Is to do that with twisted molecules So to get molecular structures Whether they're long chains So polymers or small molecules Make them twist in such a way So that they emit circularised light And that the science is really, really neat And actually something I've realised Over the course of this research So doing this for my PhD And now my postdoc Is the people who design these things You know, who create these really great materials There's a really great research group at Princeton Who are making windows Which can absorb in the UV and near IR To generate electricity And also moderate the heat in the building Or there's a fantastic group at Cambridge Who are using these materials To detect epilepsy and treat it simultaneously All of them are pretty much led by women So we know there are some really, really Fantastic women scientists out there But we also know that there aren't enough And I think something really important about this Is really exceptionally exciting science goes on When you have really, really diverse teams Of scientists doing it Something that I think is really frightening Is when you start to look at the statistics of it So I only have the data for the UK in this But I think it's pretty comparable For the rest of the world In the UK, almost half of the workforce are women Right, it's about 46.5% But only 11% of the physics professors In the UK are women So all of our physics professors If you know the UK well Which I do We have a lot of physics departments Only 11% of the professors Are women And even more frightening Less than 1% of our physics faculty In the UK are black So we have a massive, massive diversity crisis In the United Kingdom going on at the moment And I think this is pretty comparable To the rest of the world So I wanted to start off by saying Why it's important that we have diversity Why we don't have it And what I think we can do about it And talking particularly about the project That I've been working on I think it's really important Not only because it's fair, right It's super important that Whether you have a boy or a girl Wherever they're born in the world They have equal access to education And the same opportunities to do research But actually also determines the science we do A couple of years ago now Actually in mid-2017 The UK government announced Their science and technology select committee So this is the group of people Who'll be making decisions About what we do as an entire country Where we invest, what we don't invest in What big projects we're going to collaborate On internationally And this was the team they announced And they put this very confidently on Twitter And then got so criticised Within about a day that they had to go To all of their women MPs Many of whom are physicists And say please will you join our boys network But even more frightening, right So my science is largely funded by a body Called the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, EPSRC You may be familiar with it And they announced last year That due to a freedom of information request Someone got this information out of them But in 2016 Less than 7% of their research grants Went to teams led by women And I think that's really really scary That means the science we're doing Isn't representative of the whole society The people making these really really big decisions Are biased in some way And you can see it, right Because it determines whatever society we're creating At the moment basically everything in our lives Is designed by a bunch of men Who look and think And have had remarkably similar backgrounds And I think that's really really scary And you're seeing it It's creeping out, right You have massive bias in facial recognition software You have bias in job adverts This was Amazon Amazon had a job tool That they tried to advertise jobs By basically training machine learning On their old data So they advertised jobs to people Who they'd advertised jobs to before They were majority white men They found they were discriminating against Pretty much everyone else other than them And we have a massive massive gap In medical research and health research Because women have been historically excluded From studies A really frightening statistic in that Is that it was only in 2005 That in America they made it legal A legal requirement to include women in medical trials So before then you could design a new drug Or come up with some new medical process That would not involve women in that design We're just over half of the population I think that's pretty terrible I also think that different voices bring new ideas I'm hoping everyone knows who this fantastic woman is This is Jocelyn Balbanel Does everyone know who she is I'll give you a quick primer For the non-brits in the room She was at Cambridge just over 50 years ago And she came from Northern Ireland And she was the only not very posh person At Cambridge at the time So everyone's quite fancy there And she wasn't very fancy She was the only woman in her research group And she got there And she wanted to get into astrophysics But didn't like staying up all night We don't have those beautiful dark skies In the UK And so she started getting into radio astronomy And in doing this It's a fantastic story So please look it up I'll ruin it if I tell it very quickly But she discovered pulsars These incredible, rapidly rotating neutron stars That emit radio waves at either end Her supervisors went on to win the Nobel Prize For that discovery Pretty unfair A lot of women physicists have been very angry About this for the past 51 years But last summer She won the Breakthrough Prize for Science Which was $3 million $3 million went entirely to her And she's donated every single dollar Every last one To the postgraduate research of physicists From underrepresented groups Because she said She wouldn't have made that discovery If she thought like everyone else in her team She had to make that Because she was slightly different to everyone else The person who uncovered all of the bias And facial recognition Software is an incredible computer scientist At MIT called Joy Bellamini And now I think we have this 16-year-old Climate activist Who is genuinely making everyone She came to the British Parliament She's spoken to the Pope This is someone who's saying This isn't right And we need to be there And we need to be thinking differently So I'm going to touch very briefly On why I don't think we have diversity Because I think that's a bit depressing That we should all be campaigning to change it But I think we have a really big problem That people think If we don't have a certain group in science Whether it's people of colour Whether it's women It's because they're either Not very good enough Or not interested And this is the thing that gets pushed out A huge amount in the British media This was an article that came out last year Boys are better at physics Because they learn about projection While going to the toilet Ridiculous, right? Or this This was a couple of weekends ago This was in the Sunday Times Massive, massive newspaper And this kind of thing really, really infuriates me Because it's just not right There's absolutely no evidence That boys or girls perform differently At maths and sciences And there's no evidence That it's an interesting, right? We know it's not interest We know it's not their natural ability It's something else that's going on So what is it? I mean it's really, really obvious When you start looking This is the kind of way That we advertise to girls And this is the stuff we do to boys This was an ad campaign from Gap I don't know if it ever made it To your countries Because it was so criticized very quickly Girls got the social butterfly Boys got the little scholar And they spelled Einstein wrong On the t-shirt, faux pas, gap Not cool Or Lego When they were trying to increase their sales Made this ridiculous Lego friends thing We all love Lego As scientists and engineers, right? But girls got this ridiculous Lego kit Where the girls were all an abnormal size I don't know if you've ever bought this Lego The characters are one and a half times The size of a normal Lego So even if you want to liberate the girl And take her to the cool world Where the boys hang out She doesn't even fit Which is ridiculous All the books that we give to kids, right? So this is a massive problem, I think A massive study of 9,000 books That was done in the New York Times The best seller list Found that only 19% of those books Had a girl as the main character And less than 1% of those main characters Were black or minority ethnic And I think that's a really, really big deal, right? From even before you go to high school You're being told that this is what you're really interested in Girls, toys, unicorns, whatever You can only really read these kind of clothes And the books you're reading don't represent you You don't see yourself in them So I think there's a lot of parent and teacher bias I think there's a huge lack of career advice And I think there's a shortage of specialist science teachers We have a really, really big problem There's other challenges Obviously when we get to university That I don't even want to try and get into today But if you want to talk to me about them on Twitter Or elsewhere, I'm really happy to do it What do I think we can do about it? Well, the incredible thing that the Institute of Physics have done Is for the past kind of 15, 20 years Really do actual proper research Into this gender gap In the people choosing physics at high schools So what kind of people are choosing it? Why are girls not choosing it? Why are black and minority ethnic students not choosing it? And what they've done is a really, really great program And a great study This is the, I gave that a really great animation That was a great late night decision by Jeff But this is the most important one That I think you should all read It's not very long And they did it kind of scientifically Which is absolutely brilliant They took a whole bunch of schools in the UK They separated them into three categories They had one where they worked directly with the physics classroom Which is kind of what we do usually with outreach You go in, you speak to a bunch of high school kids about science You leave thinking you've changed the world They had another one where they worked with the science teachers So they went and worked with science teacher programs And they had another one, Strand C Where they worked with the whole school So this was thinking about not just the science departments But also the arts teachers, the music teachers, the math teachers The parents, the people who plan the curriculum The timetable advisors And that was the only one that worked When they worked with the entire school When they collected data When they looked at stereotyping When they gave really, really proper careers advice Across everything That not only challenged these stereotypes To make it better for the girls But also for the boys So much so that they've turned this into an award It's gone out across all schools in London But will go nationally soon And you can get involved if you go on the website So schools that are kind of involved with this Challenging gender stereotypes Can get a nice, shiny certificate From the Institute of Physics And that's really what we've done in the UK Not only for high schools, but also for universities We have a whole bunch of great award schemes The Institute of Physics have the Junior Award For physics departments, recognizing gender equality There's Athena Swan, which is run by the government It's gone to Australia now Australia have this science in Australia And gender equality And the AAAS have just taken this on To make a really intersectional award Recognizing commitments to equality and diversity SPIE do a huge amount as well They have this great network of women and optics Which you've heard a little bit about today From some of the speakers who've presented Who've been involved with it But if you go on the website You can apply for money to go To do activities to promote women scientists Wherever you are at whatever career stage And you can order these really, really fantastic Optics and Photonics planners Which feature 12 women doing incredible optics And photonics from all over the world There's also a great network called 500 Women Scientists So I don't know how many of you have heard of this It's a really fantastic platform That actually started in the US After a bunch of women scientists were Incredibly upset about a recent election And they made a database Of women scientists And the name comes from the fact that They thought they'd get about 500 people signed up Within about a week I think they had 20,000 people Showing interest on this website They've turned it into a platform now Where you can go on there You can register as a woman scientist And you can also request a woman scientist So if you're planning a conference In an area where you don't know many women But you want a gender balance speaker list You can go on here If you want a media comment For an interview you can go on here If you're doing an outreach event for a school They just published their results So they did a big scientific study Of the countries that were best represented And the disciplines that they were in Were about it I can send this to you afterwards But they had about 8,000 women joining This database So being involved with this And they were going out And doing really, really incredible things Something else that's really important Not only building networks But also nominating people From different underrepresented backgrounds For awards That was a great example recently In the American Geophysical Union And I can send all this to you later If you're interested in reading about it But they noticed that they were getting A decrease in the number of women And people of color nominated For fellowships and prestigious awards So a bunch of people formed a task force So really senior people within the university Got together and said this isn't right We'll work together To put together nomination packages For these people We'll identify them before And work on it for, you know, half a year To make sure that their fellowship application Is really, really good Before we submit it And that's been absolutely incredible So how did I What have I been doing And what have I started About two years ago now I read this phenomenal book called By Angela Saini I don't know if any of you have ever read it She is an engineer She's born in India, raised in the UK Engineer, turned science writer And she studied engineering at Oxford And then became this prolific science journalist And this book really looks at the origin Of these stereotypes That we have about men and women How bad the science is behind it Why we still keep pushing it as a society And what we should do better How we can all work together to change it Was actually Charles Darwin Who looked at this world around him And said women are intellectually inferior to men At the time Darwin was around saying this Late 1800s women weren't allowed To own properties We weren't allowed to graduate from university And we weren't allowed to vote And he was looking at that And saying that inequality was biology Rather than the stuff society Was inflicting on them But anyway this book was so incredible for me I took it all over the world Every time I met people Or ran different events I gave it to school children I gave it to impressive scientists We formed a huge network Largely over Twitter But also with people In so many different countries A book club of all different people Talking about it And then I met this great woman Called Alice White Whose job it is to edit Wikipedia So she works at the welcome collection In London And she tries to get the content From the welcome onto Wikipedia And she told me about Just how biased Wikipedia was So if you Google Physicists The images that you get on that Come up from Wikipedia It indexes Wikipedia really quickly Google So everything that Google largely learns Is from what's on Wikipedia And if you Google Famous Physicist Like you might do as a young person You get a nice wall of men And not much diversity there either And actually Wikipedia Is this incredible platform, right? It's accessed 32 million times a day It's the fifth most popular website It's our largest crowd-sourced Amounts of knowledge In Cyclopedia If you want to democratize Access to any kind of information Do it on Wikipedia Unfortunately, like I mentioned Before about 17.5% The biographies on there about women And that's because about 90% of the Wikipedia editors Are white men And so they're writing about things Like battleships And really obscure kinds of bullets And football teams that never scored And music that never got released And films that have been really badly rated But they're not writing profiles About women or people of color scientists I think the most depressing thing for me Is that 20% That 20% biographies on Wikipedia Is very similar to the proportion of women We have on banknotes Statues and blue plaques That we put outside houses that are important But anyway, I can't change any of those things I can change Wikipedia So for the past kind of year and a half now I've been really, really working hard On making Wikipedia less sexist and less racist Oh, this is all of the different languages But I won't go into that now If you're interested in checking What school your language has You can go to this website I'll send it to you later on So yeah, what kind of things are they doing? Every single day I write the biography Of a woman or a person of color Scientists or engineer from all different parts Of the world, all different types of science And it's been the most fascinating journey To learn about all of these different people And all of the things that they've done I'll tell you very briefly about one of them Because I think I've already run over time Maybe someone can come and kick me off chair When I'm talking for too long Okay, so this is Gladys West She was my favorite Wikipedia page For many reasons I watched a video about her last February In America And she was born in the 1930s She was a mathematician at a time Not many women went to study maths at university And she ended up working for the government And working on really early kind of procedures For GPS technology So she was doing the maths behind That eventually became GPS And when I first made this page You couldn't find much out about her Actually the best resources were Local newspapers from where she lives I could only find this one document Which was government owned So it was all redacted I felt like a detective I don't know if you've seen the film In figures But I was like, ah, it's happening again Anyway, since I made this The page views for Gladys West Biography are massive It's in the thousands to two thousand a day She was nominated for BBC 100 Women So suddenly it goes up to tens of thousands To a hundred thousand a day And they nominated her twice Within this year last year And she got inducted into the US Air Force Hall of Fame Which I just think is the neatest thing So everyone now this year Was talking about Gladys West In Black History Month Which is great We've done these edit-a-thons All over the country actually With school groups, with scientists Actually we've done them all over the world At a bunch of different conferences And with so many different languages Getting involved It's really, really incredible I was just saying over lunch One of the pages that I wrote About Katie Bowman Who was one of the computer scientists Who contributed to the image of the black hole The first direct image We recently got of a black hole I made that page when I got home from work I think it was on a Wednesday afternoon When they announced the discovery And by the time I sat down for dinner It had been translated into 21 different languages And looked at over 300,000 times So it's just incredible If you want to reach people To do it on Wikipedia We're having an edit-a-thon At SPIE in August So if you're coming to SPIE in August Please do come And now more numbers Just to show impact Me and my friend Maryam here We had an edit-a-thon last October For Ada Lovelace Day We had a series actually For a week in the UK And in DC where she lives And our great editors Made about 70 pages And edited 400 But the number of page views We got for that Was about three and a half million Within a week So if you want to have a huge, huge impact Edit Wikipedia In whatever language you can Whatever language you speak in Actually so much so even If you don't want to write biographies And just write about different topics There was a great study in nature Where a chemistry professor Assigned his high school class That he was working with To write topics about Whatever chemistry they were working on On Wikipedia So they had a controlled list of things They were working on As a research group And they put that onto Wikipedia And improved the content For the next six years He monitored how those pages Were represented in scientific papers And they found that one in 300 words In a scientific research paper Came from this beginning place Of their Wikipedia pages That they've made So even if you don't want to write Biographies about women scientists Although I urge you to do it Do it about something That you're an expert in And that you're passionate about Because you improve so many people's connections And access and opportunities in science And obviously there's a whole different Bunch of Wikipedia It doesn't just have to be the words You can also upload images You can put quotes on You can put books on Anything you want The Wikimedia Foundation is massive Get involved with teaching it Go on the Wiki Education Platform But I can give you my email at the end Anyway it was so much enthusiasm And love for this project I set up a crowdfunding campaign To get a copy of this book That was so important to me Into every UK state school So all the free schools in the UK And it took us 12 days to make enough money To get it into all UK schools Which is just so incredible We're still doing it in Canada and America If you want to read more about what I do I wrote an ebook for the Institute of Physics Which is completely free and online And it's about printed electronics If you happen to be in London During June We're having a huge festival at Imperial With every single place along Exhibition Road So the Natural History Museum The Science Museum Everyone's coming together This will be as overwhelming as it is Brilliant But really Ending now, promise Collect data Work with teachers and parents Integrate careers Advice into whatever you do All the outreach and engagement we do is great But talk about what they need to do next At the end Please choose maths Please choose physics Keep emphasizing those messages Listen to the experience of people around you Nominate people for prizes Edit Wikipedia And come and visit me This is my Twitter This is Angela's other book Inferior Her next book Which is coming out next week Is on racism in science And I've just read a proof copy of it And it is absolutely terrifying As terrifying as it is Brilliant It's called Superior And that's my email If you need anything Or if you happen to be in London I have really nice labs To come and visit Thank you so much for having me Thanks very much I'm the chair, right? We have time for a question or two Anybody? Crisenda I just wanted to emphasize The importance of nominating Because oftentimes I'm on the backside of it So I see who's been nominated And I see there's no woman in the pool And I know a couple people Like Maria Zul who's here somewhere Who I can call And they'll take action But if people like that don't step up And if people aren't behind the scenes looking It doesn't happen Yeah, even if you feel like You're just a PhD student or a postdoc And that your nomination won't be taken seriously Firstly, I emailed the Royal Society And said, I'm only a postdoc I don't think anyone will read this And they were like, absolutely not We don't judge the person who's doing the nomination But work with your university There's usually people in that university Your university who'll help you Write that nomination or put it together And they're so keen It's really good for them as well To be represented in these short lists So work together But do nominate people Whatever it is, the prize Thank you Any more questions? You can find me on the internet And I'll help you I have actually one question Before you put that down So you talked about this And all of the love that you're getting For all of this and how great it's been And I'm in a Twitter sphere That is very positive about all of this But do you get hate mail? Sure, but I ignore it Oh, good You get a few nasty emails I guess that you get so much more Positive stuff than you ever do negative stuff That was the follow-up And I just think Don't read the comments That's the thing to do, okay? Don't read comments after a news article Fantastic Okay, let's thank Jessica And now I'll introduce our second speaker I'm Nabdala Muhammad Khalid Who I met last night And had dinner with And she's one of my new heroes She's going to talk to us today About the next Einstein forum And delivering on the aims And objectives of that So thank you Okay, thank you for the introduction And thank you for coming here And staying up to now Because I guess it was a long day So I just want to tell something That I'm in a career challenge But in fact, I'm not telling about the Career challenge I'm talking about Africa challenge So what we are facing in Africa in general Because when you go to a developing country You're not facing only the career But it's starting from education And the lifestyle itself So I will start With the next Einstein forum Which maybe some of you know about it Which I'm not going to explain a lot about it I just want to tell that It's launched in 2013 Which is initiative of Africa institute for Mathematical science It was in a partnership With the Robert Bush And the idea of next Einstein forum Is a platform That connects science, society And policy also in Africa And also with the rest of the world So the idea is that This is what we would like to achieve It's like doing different activity inside Africa But also connected with the rest of the world And in fact in the next Einstein forum Committee We don't have only African people We have also people from outside So the idea is like We wanted to make it a global And it's mainly scientifically This is why I'm going to talk about Community of scientists Before that I would like To just give you a key message Why next Einstein forum Is initiative that We believe that it could do something in Africa Because as you know that in Africa There is a lot of organization Maybe running around A lot of initiative But we believe in next Einstein forum Because one of the starting point We have a global gathering And the global gathering It's like each two year A big event that Is starting in 2016 It was in Dakar, Senegal And there were about 1,000 people there Scientists, journalists And people coming from over the world And the idea is like to make Let's say a place where people meet But also exchange and sharing Idea and so on So we believe that this is one of the things That next Einstein forum Offers The second thing that is your centers So what we have in next Einstein forum community Is that it's more than 50% Of the community are women Okay This is what is coming in the next That this woman is breaking the wall Of a gender gap But also it's yours Because we are having like 50% are less than 42 years old As I will come later About it Which in next Einstein forum There are different program And next I just would like to show This diagram which we are working on And if you would like to read More about it You can just google You will find it is the next Einstein forum white paper It was 2018 And the idea of this diagram I want to show Is the step which can lead African countries To go to the sexual Knowledge based economy So the idea here I just want to show you I hope the pointer is working Yeah So the idea is like One of the thing we have In Africa is that There is education But the education system From country to country Is varying And also there is Country have a strong Education system But the other is not So the idea is like We need to tell people That first of all How we learn So the idea is like If you want to take people From being Let's say just education Study and that's all You need to make invention You need some investment You need some product And go to the market You need to start first of all By how we learn And you need to look also For the gender gap issue And second You need to look for the idea And the invention And the basic research This is what we are working Also on it And one of the things That here it's called Value of death And this is where All the idea is die So the idea is like You can find people Have really great idea But if this great idea You didn't make it as a product And take it to the market Then it's die And for us to have it Like more To be more positive We don't call it The value of death But you can call it The value of a hope So we are hoping that From having an idea We are going to To change it to be Product and so on If you need To know more about it You can just go As I told you in this paper It's already published last year Here I just want to tell you About this diagram Is showing the statistical From 2004 to 2019 It's just recently in May In a way That we are comparing Between science, Bavarity and innovation And you can see That the Bavarity It was really very high Around 2005 And it's getting low Which is really good sign But if you look To the science and innovation Innovation is less than 5% So it's maximum 5% But if you look To the sciences fluctuating Around 20% Which is still low So the idea is We really need to work a lot Not only having the Bavarity is going low And vanishing some point Hopefully But also we would like To have the science And innovation To be really going high With the time And for that This is what Next and a shine Forum in general do Is to enhance Science and technology In Africa in general So this is coming to The solution we are looking for So what we look for Is not the scientist Not the people In university and so on Only but the young generation Because this is the people That is going to lead In future Whatever we are doing Right now So the solution Is going to be The young people So the young generation And this picture Is took from One of our activity We have Africa Science Week I will talk about it later And the idea is that To have this young generation Well educated But at the same time To make them connected To what is going on Out as the science As technology What can be done And so on Is need a strong African scientific community And this is the time When we thought about Okay, it's the time To build a community That is work together And doing this job So this is what I am going to show Later from on I mean from From now on Is the next And a shine Forum community of scientists Which is basically A follow and ambassador So in the next shine Forum we have to program The name follow Which is basically A scientist Young scientist That is in Africa Or outside of Africa There are African Many of them Or let's say mainly And they have A good research Or a really strong Scientific background So they have been Selected to be A name follow And they are around 15 each two year Program The ambassador Are basically people Who are having Different fields And so on The ideas like These people Are coming from Different African Country And we select Each two year About 54 So we have 54 African country So we select Different ambassador With this Ambassador They run the Local activity Of next shine Forum So they run Different conference Workshop Outreach So they do All the things That need to be done In that country And then later And they discuss Sharing idea What can be done And they also Can collaborate together So we have Some projects that Are running For example in In 2015 2017 I was An ambassador Of Sudan In which I Was collaborating In a project About Book for Better education So we were Like How to say We are trying To provide School With the Books that Help them In many places They don't Able to study Because they don't Have a book to read Even the teacher Who is teaching Anyway So we go Next This is why I want To tell That why we Thought about Nef community To start with Because we realize That the Program started In 2015 To have Nef ambassador And Nef follow And each Two years There are Like 15 from Nef follow It's really Increasing Very Let's say Very high And if you Look in Let's say Less than 10 years From now You will find About 300 or 400 Scientists And people Coming from Different Not only Background And Country But also They have Different Feel, they have Different experience, Different Knowledge That they Start And the idea Is that the member We have In the Next Community of Scientists We have Nef ambassador Nef follow But also We have A person African Scientists So whoever Who are Interesting to join The community Can have A membership And join So can Drive together The activity We have And we Have In the Nef community So as you can see That there are Different Feel So the people Who are Nef ambassador Or Nef Follow They are Coming from Different Feel So they are Scientists, They are Politicians, Economists So completely Different Feel Which really Helps that Whenever you Run a project Or you have Something to Give you An example Of some of The fields That we have Around there And I Just want to Tell you the Strategical objective So how do we Work for Doing that So we Believe that The basic Things you Need to do Is the Policy, Partnership And funding Which is I mean Funding If you Have funding Definitely You can Have innovation And Entrepreneurship The idea Like the Relationship Between them Is a two way Relationship So it's not Like having education And training Is going to Need to have research And innovation Definitely you Need to go back One step And try to think About it Which has Really helped Not only For having Product But also To develop Your product And what This loop Is the funding As they say again Because funding Is a big deal Let's say And a partnership Is really important And policy So you need to Let's say The government And politicians That understand The need of This They understand The importance Of having Science and technology For Doing all This stuff So this is What we Also do Is like Influencing Policy For scientists And then I want to tell you Some of the activities As I mean I just Represent it In this way Because I am Physicist by the way So I like to Put the Statistical Sometimes highlighted And there's Some art around there And in the end Of the day Out of this You get That the Science Awareness Is the key In this point So what We realize Really understands The importance Of having science So you need To engage Also public And this is What we do In our Different activity The activities That we run We have Let's say Monthly We have Per year But also we have Like four times A year And you can see That Mainly you can say It's 33% Like the Monthly Activity And here We do is the Nef Africa Science Week So Nef Africa Science Week Is basically Celebrating science And technology In Africa And we did it The first time In 2017 It was A certain country In Sudan Was one of them So I organized In Sudan I was A visitor For Sudan At that time And then Last year We did it In 34 Countries And this year We are planning To have it In all African countries At the same time So the idea Of this activity Is one week Of celebration That you do Different activities So for example When I Organized 2017 I had One day It's called Women in Science So we're talking About What is the challenge As the Women have For Like Per sure Their career In science And so on But also We have People In Sudan Let's say Or in African Country And people outside So we don't have Each day A possibility to Let's say To be updated About What is going on Outside So about Africa Science Week I'm just going To show you A short video I promise It's short The Africa Science Week Is a way In which We Create Public Engagement For African Is less than 2% Of Researchers At the global level Not enough The initiative Of The next Enstein Forum Want to change this trend And Make African People Uncontournable In the Walk To progress Science Week Is An amazing Opportunity For others Who don't know Can explore And learn More About a certain topic That has A lot of Natural resources That is true Those who own The resources Are the ones Who have the knowledge The skills The technology To explore The resources And give you A small percentage In this case We are organizing The African Science Week The objective of this week Is to really Promote Science In Senegal Because in Senegal And in Africa We have a culture Very excited About The Africa Science Week I think it's About Science And broadly STEM disciplines For society And the advancement Of humankind And particularly The gaps In skills That we have In Africa Our daughters And sons Want to become Football players They want to become Singers So who will do The science That will transform Our country And for us Working with Africa Science Week We are looking at Bringing Technology And Sharing The chance Of being able To enter This fascist Interest In being able To enter We are going to teach The students The pupils And the rural community How they can Sell sanitary materials That are reusable Most of the pupils Are actually Missed schools Because During their menstrual Periods They cannot Come to school Because They do not have Pat We are Foster The social Is the job Of every person Here To pass The message You know What happens In general With governments Etc They just need To understand Why What we say Is important Is actually important And Part of our Job Is to Explain Clearly And give Enough evidence Of the importance Of The technology We are Learning It can take time But That is how Things work And it's my job It's yours Iacion I have my mind Always do And I have my eyes And my eyes And my eyes And my ears Challenge ourselves Let's do That little bit Extra To be Where Our counterparts We can do it The next Einstein Can come From Gambia Einstein forum for our ecosystem of technology, of science, of innovation in Cabo Verde. We count with you for the next edition. Okay, so the second activity we have, last year we have three minutes. Yeah, I'm already done. Okay, so one of the activities that we have is we launched, it's not launched, but established Scientific African Journal because we find that the Africa scientists, they don't have a visibility. So people don't know about what they do, and if there is a scientist doing research, except if they have a collaboration with people outside of Africa. Then they publish paper, and then you see the name of African scientists there. But you don't know that there is research going on there. And that's because the International Journal basically, they don't understand the researches have been done there because it's like African challenges, African research that needs to be done there. So this is one of the things we thought about it, and we have a Scientific African Journal, in which that is owned by a Neckestan Shine Forum, and it's running by a community of scientists, and it's with a collaboration with El Silver. So this is the last slide before we finish. So we have the key out booths that, this is, we started this community of scientists in 2017. We had a meeting in Rwanda, and I have been selected to be a co-chair of this executive committee for this community. And then from that time, we started our work. And so we planned in the beginning in two years that we do the Scientific African Journal. We established it, and we did it last year. And we have a round table, which is basically discussing the health problem, I mean, different challenges that we have in Africa. And round table, I mean, it's like making a workshop, and in this workshop, people sit together, coming out with the plan, with the actions, that something has to be done in that specific topic. And then we have a community of scientists that are based, which we are working on. And then in five years, we are planning to have a, this five years has not come yet, because in September this year, we are going to finish two years. So we still have some times. And in five years, we are going to have a policy impact, but also the curriculum impact. And in 10 years, we are planning to have the excellent centers for research, and also the Ban Africa Research Funding, because I saw, I tell from the beginning, that the funding is the key point here we have, let's say. And just I would like to thank you by showing you this one of our, this is a part of the community that we have of NEP Follow and NEP Ambassador. We met in Nairobi last month here. And thank you for your attention here. That's great. Thank you very much. Does anyone have a question for Abdallah? Thank you, Amna. I'm sorry. I'd like to know what are the procedures for becoming, I've been hearing about NEP, but I had not good attention so much into its activities, but from what you have shown, I think it's my field. Okay, so like this, if you want to join NEP, as I told you, there are two programs, NEP Follow or NEP Ambassador, but also you can be just a scientist or someone interesting to join the community. And this is what we are going to have it by the end of this year. We're going to open a membership for people coming from outside of the community. But also you can apply for being an NEP Ambassador of your country in which you are doing the activity there. If no question, no curiosity. Anyway, you can't, yes, please? Okay, go ahead. For right now we have about 100, yeah, 108. By the end of this year, we're going to select a new group because each two years we have a new group coming to the community. There is one. Each year there is one. Each two years there is one. But there is a new Ambassador coming, taking care of the activity. And the one was before is just helping. It's like working as an advisor or let's say working very close with to help. But the one is leading is the new Ambassador who are really active right now. Excellent. Okay, last question. Okay. Yes. What are your relations with African Academy of Sciences? It's a good question. In fact, if you look to our website, you will find some people from the African Academy that they are in the committee or in the community, still community. So we are working together. So the idea is like we are not initiatives that is vanishing other, but we are trying to collect everyone together and do this activity all together. And I know that I finished and maybe you don't have curiosity, but I would like to tell you that we have the Global Gathering. Next one is going to be next year in Nairobi. And if you're interested, you can just go to nef.org and join later. So thank you. That's fantastic. Okay. Please join me in thanking both of our speakers for a really excellent session. Okay, so it's my pleasure now to chair the last session. Before I do, we just have some quick logistical announcements. We're running about half an hour late, which isn't a surprise for a conference. But we have a fixed timetable that we must be at the Adriatico reception at 7.30. And it's about a 10-minute walk. So this means we have to be finished and out of here by about 7.15. Would that be fair enough? Okay. So this unfortunately means that I have to ask all the speakers in the next session to try to save about one minute and 13 seconds, right, per talk. Okay? So you have to save one minute 13 seconds per talk. I'm gonna have to be quite strict on time somehow. I don't know. So I'll alert you because otherwise there'll be a disaster and there'll be nothing to eat when we get there. But it's a pleasure anyway to now start the session. One of the things that these events often do is we talk about the need to get young people and students involved. And we talk about the need to get women involved. And when you look at the program of these conferences, it doesn't happen very often. So we try to make an effort with the help of the society's OSASPE, the IEEE Photonic Society, the European Physical Society, and the International Association of Physics students to really give a forum for students to talk about their experience of outreach. So I will now shut up and I'll let them do the talking from here. They'll introduce themselves one by one but I've got the pleasure to introduce Pele Gonzales, who's representing SPIE and she's going to chair internally the organization of the session. So please welcome all the students to the last session of the day. Hi, well, thank you. Our first speaker will be Roberta Caruso from the European Physics Society. Thank you, Pele, for the introduction. Thank you, John, for the introduction. This will be as fast as possible as requested. So just let me give you a brief introduction of who I am. So I'm a university research fellow in Naples. I work in the field of experimental solid-state physics. So I'm kind of an intruder here. But let me say from an outsider the talks were amazing. So I work mostly on just some junctions and superconductors and hybrid devices. And this is half of my life. The other half of my life, I work with EPS Young Minds. I'm a member since 2010 when the project started. I was the founder of one of the very first sections and this is me, actually here, doing, oops, sorry. Some kind of very careful experiment. And, oh, this is important. Okay, here in the low-temperature physics lab and then this is me a few years ago, actually. Much younger without this. In one of the very first activities that we organized in Naples. Okay, so let me just give you a brief overview of the project just to let you know who we are and what we do. So first of all, what is EPS? Well, I think most of you know that EPS is the European Physical Society and the main scope of EPS is to strengthen the European cultural unity through making scientists, physicists actually, collaborate as close as possible. So EPS all in all represents more than 100,000 European physicists. So Young Minds is actually a project started in 2010 by EPS and it's meant to be a platform for students and early career researchers in physics. The building blocks of Young Minds are the Young Minds sections which are small local groups or even large local groups if you wish. With the aim of encouraging the leadership in young researchers in physics to foster physics among local communities through these young students, members of the sections and most of all, one of the aims of Young Minds project is to connect young scientists all over Europe. So a typical Young Minds section is made by an undergraduate, other graduate students, PhD students and even some postdocs just like I am. Principal investigators and professor are not actually part of this section but they are involved in the activities as advisors and faculty staff. So let me just speak briefly about the activities. So we have three main pillars in Young Minds activities. We have outreach activities, professional development activities and networking activities. If you take a look at the numbers, actually these are numbers for 2018 but it's more or less the same for every year since 2010. The largest component of the activity is outreach activities. This gives you a measure of the importance of outreach in local communities. So just a few examples to show you some real activities of Young Minds. I just speak very few like a couple of activities over 100 that we finance every year. So this first one is from the Yervan Young Minds section and yet very, very active. So basically what I did was to organize some kind of tour in several schools in Armenia preparing some tool kits with the materials which are easy to find, go there and demonstrate the use, have some one-to-one talk with the young students to make them understand why this is important and what kind of perspectives you are once you are involved in physics or in engineering and that was a very successful activity with like a couple of hundred of kits involved. Another activity here is a conference another example of activity performed by the Vilnius section so this conference open readings here is one of the largest conferences in the Baltic countries actually and you know, Vilnius section is one of the first sections that have been founded and they learned a very, very nice lesson that if you think big you do big. This conference is huge with a lot of renowned speakers as you can see here you have Jocelyn Bell-Burner which has been nominated several times today we have no prizes, we have worldwide renowned scientists and this has been done with the support of EPS together with a lot of other societies of course. Okay last few things one of the the main activities every year is the leadership meeting so it's the unknown meeting of young minds one representative per section is invited to attend we have been in several locations here as you can see the nice thing about this meeting is that in the last few years since 2016 it's been organized by sections so there's a challenge we decide would it best and they organize the leadership meeting and so I mean two ways on one side you have the chance to meet people that share your passion for science you can exchange ideas you can have new ideas and new perspectives on your project and on the other side you have the chance to acquire some organizational skills you know in organization of events that can be useful for your career okay I'm done these are my contacts if you are interested to know more about young minds do not hesitate to contact me this is my email address this is my laboratory in Naples University so if you if you come in Naples please remember to visit me here we have very nice cryostats we go down to 20 million K I know your opticians but you know believe me it's very very cool thank you so much Roberta and now our next speaker will be Zabo Barone from the IEEE Photonic Society Good evening as Pala said my name is Zabo Barone I'm representing IEEE Photonic Society and I'm from Uganda we have quite a number of science outreach activities as you can see one of them is of course I took this picture from a book because I don't have the picture of the activity this is a demonstration of late refraction activity where there is sorry you can see a bottle there you can pay your pass light rays through obstacles and you create a hole when they hit the bottle there is a refraction happening somewhere that is just using local materials it can be done anywhere here are high school students who designed automated infrared egg incubators as we had presentations here on the photonics in agriculture were using infrared lights to design to automate egg incubators this is a famous agriculture technology in real practice we use infrared lamps which produce a lot of heat so you don't need the chicken to be there in the poultry too poultry houses to always hatch the eggs instead use light the other chickens will go out to eat here it's automatic so the poultry incubator is automatic then we have electronic automation control system that we use to do that which is designed by the students also optical egg sorting system which is automated high school students as you can see here you can use let me say laser lights to detect which eggs are spoiled and others those which are working very well those which are spoiled they are mechanical automatic systems driven by motors that open gates for good eggs to come when they pass through those laser detectors they can be spoiled eggs can be sorted with bad eggs in case it's a big farm you don't need a human labor to do that let the machine do it so this what our high school students do here we have also automated poultry feeder system as you can see there inside here there are a lot of activities that humans do that the automation system do what you can see here is the water feeding technology but we have feed for food and all that inside there we have automated high school students in Uganda we also in robotics as you know photonics is the key vision for robotics of course always we embed below here below this part photo sensors like light dependence resistance or detectors to create intelligence around this mobile robot our students are involved in East African robot competitions so these are self voting autonomous robots they use photonics as their motion sensors these are we are creating line follower robots those line follower robots use photonics they use light dependence resistors to to gather intelligence wherever if they happen to move into the darker space they are supposed to follow a white line so when they decide to go off the line the light intensity reduces so you create they use the software to instruct the motors that are driving the wheels to move towards where there is high light intensity through these activities we have been doing I was able to receive IEEE optical fiber communication conference our last year where I emerged the number one the whole of Uganda and they attended the a new optical fiber communication conference in San Diego and that's how I got to be able to reach here and I was able to network with Nokia and many other companies so Pala I have a clip okay fine thank you so much for listening thank you so much and our next speaker is Kitingi Muringe also from the IEEE Photonic Society good evening I will be doing much of what I do and what IEEE photonics does especially those who don't know what IEEE is and event that IEEE photonics has so majorly my model of doing my work based on four principles that is academic excellence as you may listen all of you especially those who come from Europe this may not be a challenge but for the few who are from Africa they understand what we are facing there in terms of academics and of course with what our politicians are doing we need to bring in some concept of transformative leadership and because of the corruption and everything that is happening we cannot sustain our education systems without a value centered kind of a life and in everything that you do if you are not giving back to society I think you are doing nothing that you normally do all this is put together in continuous learning of course when we are dealing with a kid who doesn't know what a photonic is you need to understand you need to put him or her to a process of learning so that he or she is able to understand that and all those until now and in any way that you are talking to that kid you need to lead by example by leading by example I mean at any point you are telling that kid engineering is supposed to be done like this he doesn't understand what engineering is he doesn't understand what photonics is he doesn't understand what engineering is or all those things you need to lead by an example and by all that these are some of the things that are initiative that IEEE photonics has in Africa and I will focus deeply in maybe trying to show you the mentor mentee programs because as a key for someone who doesn't understand what education is you need to mentor him first before even doing anything to that kid and apart from that I will also try to bring in the concept of STEM kids that we are using back in Africa to make those kids understand what science really is and what engineering really is basically what I normally does is I go to talk to kids I listen to them especially most of those kids are orphans and straight kids when you listen to that kid you get to understand and get to feel that kid before you start pumping in the science concept in him he or she has to be in the same level of you so that he can be able whatever you are saying he can understand and after talking to the kid you get to bring him an activity maybe a simple experiment and something like that so that he is able to understand whatever you are telling him and with high school kids or high school pupils for them it's a bit easier most of these high schools in Africa majorly we don't have like labs or computer labs or something like that so most of the things that you can see doing here we are at the field and you talk to them mentor them first before even going back to showing them what it's supposed to be done and after high school now with university what you normally does this is my room here you can see we have a couple of students there so we design solutions here and take them to the high school and primary school kids what normally happens we settle in such a room we design simple electronic devices simple systems simple experiments at the time you are going to the high school or primary kids you are showing them something that they can actually relate through mentorship that we normally do with my fellow student there and it's actually something that personally it has worked for the period of three four years that I've done I have seen and I've had quite nice stuff that several pupils and several students have actually managed to do great stuff there's some videos somewhere I don't know if thank you very much that's the match and the little that we had for you thank you so much our next speakers are Artemis Simperi and Duarte Grasa from the International Association of Physical Students so first of all we want to thank you for the invitation to participate in this roundtable so my name is Artemis Simperi and I represent the NC Greece and I'm the secretary of IAPS I am Duarte Grasa I'm from Portugal and I am the general member in the IAPS Executive Committee so first we are students IAPS wants to meet students what is IAPS? the National Association of Physical Students is an association of physical students and student societies from around the globe working to promote peace so our members are represented by national local committees and individual members as you can see IAPS founded on 12th of September 1987 it's a non-profit and non-governmental our head office is EPS and IAPS governance by an executive committee of nine members and respective sub-committees which is our mission we want to support young physicists we want we want to build international bridges we want to encourage peaceful international collaboration and we want to promote professional and social network but let the numbers talk we have 18 national committees 29 local committees and over 100 individual members, members from over 50 countries here you can see some of our members so IAPS IAPS is the International Association it's the international conference of physics students it is the main event of IAPS organized yearly by one of its member committees the purpose of this conference is to create an opportunity for physics students from all around the world to come together to talk about science and life to practice presenting the research with and all in all to have a good time so to participate in IAPS you have to become a member of IAPS this year IAPS will take place in Cologne in Germany and next year IAPS will travel outside Europe and we will go to Puebla, Mexico here are some memories of last year ICPS in Finland ok so now to talk about one of our main events which is planks which means physics league across numerous countries for KICS students and it's basically a physics related competition where teams of three to four students either masters or bachelor students get together for a weekend of competitions symposium, social events and exchange and cultural activities too and this is the final stage but before that the committee that applied to organize to take teams to planks organized national preliminaries so two teams from each of the countries that participate get to go to the final competition which this year is in Odense, Denmark it starts tomorrow actually and next year is in London in the UK so to talk about IAPS outreach across the globe so we because we think outreach is very important we organize every year in November the IAPS school day which is basically a day of interaction between physics students and their communities basically to promote science particularly physics with lectures, experiments, activities based on a topic which is chosen at the annual general meeting which is basically the general assembly of IAPS members last year it was particle physics and this year mostly because it's the international year of the periodic table it's elements and materials so these are a few photos two of them for some reason do not appear but you can see that we had the school day was organized by member committees either local or national committees in Nepal, the Czech Republic Portugal, Mexico, Ghana and Italy so basically IAPS because it is important for an association like IAPS to have some kind of publication we have IAPS which is the journal of IAPS an annual volume issued since 1996 which basically contains reports about IAPS events and projects organized by IAPS members and events by member committees scientific articles by students so because it's very important for students themselves to have a platform that is directed for students so they can start exposing their work to their peers and of course we have the IAPS article contest which has been done for several years so somebody can go they can present a publication to be issued in the IAPS for the year where they run and they get to go to the international conference of physics students supported by IAPS and this year we started the IAPS creative competition so we start bringing some art to science let's say in our activity and students can show science through artistic expression and here you can see other activities that are done by our members we have the IAPS to CERN which is our trip to CERN and several other events that you can also check in our website and basically you have here our presence in several social media platforms Facebook Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn we also have our website if you want to learn more about IAPS and of course our members get to be a part of the IAPS in one of the IAPS subcommittees so they can learn about the process of IAPS management so thank you very much for this opportunity thank you our next speaker is Shan Dai also known as Dino from the optical society you are still here and listen to my presentation I am Daixiang a senior student from Changchun University of Science and Technology in Changchun China I will tell you a little bit about our science outreach work I feel great honor to be here as a student representative for OSA a global forum for light and science and technology to support this mission the society is committed to following set of core values known as the fourth power of I innovation, integrity, inclusivity and impact I like being affiliated with OSA in particular because the organization is so committed to inclusivity and works to make sure all have access to its services and knowledge based in optics and photonics for me, they are also an important turning point to my science outreach work and university life our chapter was used to focus on academic so the chapter was mainly consisted by graduate students that's someone who works in the lab whole day and try to public more English papers and do this stuff so the problem is the impact of the society is limited in the physics department but we want more, we want more impact so we changed our priorities the first priority is planning and recruitment so we not only recruit graduate students but also the undergraduate students like me and the students from other disciplines even the finance majors English majors and design majors and more also because their development will make the science more interesting and the kids will like it then we did a lot of use education outreach works we received a very positive feedback and good comments from our local community then we still keep the professional development like this student seminar and lectures given by professors it helps us to keep in touch with cutting each research in our in our days this helped us make a great impact in our local community and our university this is the poster we designed for the leadership conference it's designed by our member which is a design major students I think that's very cool and show our passion to everyone it's totally different from others then for outreach work we visit local schools we like to use paper to create visual illusions mach bands and so on because they are low cost and easy to find also the phenomenon of them is cool that will attract kids to study more and learn about it the optical suitcase supported by OSA is a very good choice to work with every time during outreach work we will leave some of the gadgets to kids to encourage them to show what they have learned with their friends and parents as a chapter we've established ourselves as a resource for our local community we get invitations from our schools in our local community then we it's led to a cooperation with Changchun China Optics Science and Technology from science outreach work to public popular articles science articles and one of our biggest achievement is that we are going to start a regular classes in our local community in all the primary school and middle schools I want to show you that outreach is self-fulfilling and fun this is short video that we did several days ago really like this sentence because thousands of candles can lead from a single candle and to conclude my message to you all of you is that the science of light can be inspiring to everyone and we have to make a commitment to be inclusive like my chapter has done with joining more students from other disciplines and also we have to reach out our local communities to educate them and thank you for this. Thank you so much Dino there is my turn now I am Perla from Mexico and I'm here representing the SPI the International Society for Optics and Photonics well I just finished my PhD in January so I'm freaking out already because it was so fast everything but it's okay but what is important here is that I'm SPI member since 2011 sorry and I'm also doing outreach since 2011 I think there is no coincidence about it so let me talk about it SPI I can say a lot of things about SPI but the really thing I want to share with you is that SPI is pretty cool SPI because SPI is really providing support to education, outreach with a lot of programs has scholarships, grants student chapters, visiting lecturers a lot of cool stuff and this is helping us a lot of students and volunteers around the world to make a great great labour tool to spread the word about optics, photonics and light for example it has a lot of student chapter because SPI believes the future belongs to optics and photonics and the future of this technology is in the hands of its student members so we are trying to work pretty hard about it we have a big leadership workshop every year I put two photos here one from 2018 last year and the other one from 2013 why? because I am in the big photo so I want to be there also we have the optics outreach games that is very important because all the student chapter have the chance to explain the work with a lot of with other student chapters and well I want to time so I think what's important to add here because it's a place where a lot of people can see or work and maybe people from other countries can reproduce it and we are making a lot of impact thanks to these kind of activities we have the education outreach grants that is really the most important thing I feel I have done with SPI the last years thanks to this kind of support we have amazing projects like the dumpster optics that is a workshop that is now also in Spanish because I am working with the three amazing ladies that create this workshop and also we have something that I call Física para Todos that is Física for Everyone that is working in a program called Optics for Everyone and well we are working since 2013 thanks to SPI and we have reached more than 75,000 people thanks to the support of SPI so it's very important to us that let the world know that we are working pretty hard every year to let the small kids learn about science, light, optics and all those sorry cool stuff I'm a little nervous and trying to hurry do it to the time thank you so much well and we are doing a lot of stuff because we really want that the kids learn that light is amazing and it's funny so we are always trying to improve our activities and make some new kids and stuff like other partners from other societies and also SPI is helping us with the International Day of Light Micrograms he is one example that is not from my country is from the University of Rochester student chapter where they have the Prismatic major laser show with middle school students so it's pretty cool to show that lasers can be fun and have that kind of work but well in Mexico we don't have that kind of stuff but we can have something like our project last year the International Day of Light where we can see the kids can be engaged seeing that light is fun and they can play with light and this was the first step to begin a group of science and a lot of stuff that we are working now we want to say thank you SPI because you are really really supporting all the students volunteers and your careers are doing right now and I think it's all for the session if anyone have any questions or something okay so we've now got ten minutes for ten minutes for a Q&A with the students which was planned maybe it wasn't clear but it's okay so Ana Maria thank you for this wonderful session I think it was very interesting to listen to these various experiences I have a question actually a question to why don't you all just come yourself down the front here and I think there's I hope there's enough cheers it should be okay yes well I see some of you are undergraduates others are graduates we already got your PhD congratulations and according to the program you were also going to talk about how you see your careers in the future you have been very much committed to and passionate about engaging others networking with other students engaging younger people kids etc what are your plans and how do you see yourselves and what future do you project to those people to engage with during your activities thank you let me take the first step most of you who have seen my presentation it was it progresses so much about automations robotics but using photonics and I'm currently pursuing bachelor in computer science specializing artificial intelligence and machine learning with the University of Goldsmith University of London so I'm still within the area of automation robotics but focusing in optical physics as well in the optical sensors anyone else want to take the I just want to make sure the questions because I'm Chinese because it's kind of difficult so if it's about the kids what we teach is how do we have engaged to them that we want to do is you know the physics kind of tough things that kids to understand it because if we are faced to some primary school students they don't have the physics classes so what I want to do is we want to open the door for them we want to let them know optics and want them to get interested in it and they could actively to study in it they can get the knowledge through our outreach work that's best but we can make every student get interested in it so the more the students interested in the more the impact we will provide so that's why we are doing a lot of outreach work and to make it high quality okay well I think we are in amazing moment to be alive because there is a lot of development in science and technology it's pretty cool but at the same time it's a very hard moment because society and politicians are not really hearing us so we are in a very crucial moment where all of us need to be together because for you the problem maybe is the youngest one don't want to hear you John for example you say that before but for us that will be the problem the society and the politician don't want to hear us so we need to make something now that this is going to happen so I see that it will be pretty great to our careers in the development but pretty hard to really make an impact if the rest of the work can really understand the importance of science and technology any other questions on other topics? I know from reading grant proposals that you've written Perla that you have some good ideas about how to make a good grant proposal I think the most important thing to think about is the impact that you want to create in your community think about what you want to be remembered for the kids or for the joes that go to your event and with that in mind you can easily develop your activity because you will be thinking about all the small details you need to prepare and to create that real impact so that you can practice with SPI proposals I would like to follow up on the question the first question I was completely overwhelmed and impressed by the level of energy the intellectual heft everything that you guys are doing to bring science to your communities to other people what do you want to be when you grow up? what do you want to do with science? thank you very much I think I was to respond to the question but the mics are not working so basically I've finished my exams two weeks ago that is bachelor's exams I'll be graduating probably by December we take long to graduate so for me we are talking about photonics but where I am we are not even close to electronics it means we are in the electrical era so if we are there we need time to grow so that we can reach to the electronics and then to the photonics basically when I grow up I'm looking forward to creating a lab to creating a research center at the mid-east of the desert come from I think I'm the only sorry to say this but I'm the only engineer I'm the only one who among the everybody that I've started with I'm the only one who is graduating with electrical and electronics engineering and in the background of engineering so for me if I die tomorrow I will I want to die tomorrow if I have challenged the community that I'm living in by showing them that science is real and science is life thank you sorry I want to respond to the question so well I've said before that I came from Greece as you know it's so difficult to come from Greece and to be in an international association so when I first joined IAPS it was something that I wanted to do to participate in this association so I want to help people so that's why I'm a medical physicist and I don't know if you read I've done a practice in a hospital back in Greece so my answer is that I want to help that's why I'm in IAPS and I want to continue this program and I want to help children people that's why I'm here thank you I really want to say about the answer you simply I want to be an entrepreneur so the reason is how to catch the interest of other people is the first thing and the second thing is how to benefit the society and the third thing is how to work chapter effectively that's why that's an extra benefit right I have a question for like in the general people here because the conference is on illuminating education I myself have a small social entrepreneurial venture with few of my friends where we go around in villages in India teaching students about physics and chemistry specifically to the students of 9th and 10th and mostly PhD students from all the premier institutes of India like IAC they are involved they make small teams and go to villages to teach but what we realize that these kind of sessions what we do even be it any education outreach be through a grant or even a one day two day session even a session over let's say a few months is not something that that much effective rather maybe we could think about some way to empower the teachers in the schools in the very primary schools because we realize that the teachers themselves are actually not well equipped to teach them so maybe rather than just focusing on these things does anybody think that some solution could be done for doing something to empower the teachers as such using any of these grants or any of these other societies who are trying their best to have some impact in the end, thank you Thank you so much in IEEE has teacher in service training program TCIP and under TCIP they have created IEEE Education Activites Board has created a website about three of them there is www.tryengineering.org there is trycomputing.org trynano.org they have developed thousands of lesson plans which matches different countries education science education standards and what IEEE has been doing is train the trainers they train as the volunteers of IEEE how to implement it at the curriculum and also how to work with IEEE community members to develop science curriculums that are well designed to meet of course local needs so we of course IEEE has been training us to train teachers who are training the science students in high schools we also have EPICS engineering projects in community service whereby we work with IEEE volunteers of course IEEE is the one funding that we usually give up to $10,000 for any member I myself was given twice that grant and what we do is get a high school we pick up a high school students and also a very famous university or any university you work with the students for a full year on a real world project a humanitarian project which serves community challenge and one of our project was to set up a laboratory for emerging technologies robotics internet of things so it was more we worked with high school students they meet with engineering and technology university students to set up these infrastructures okay so I work with EPS mainly and in several sections as I showed in my presentation young minds work mostly with local groups and the problem of let's say teaching the teachers is a problem that has been felt in several local groups so I myself I developed some kind of experience I mean in going to school and not just teaching to the kids but teaching to the teachers how to run the experiments at some point I started giving courses at university on how to teach physics and especially optics in that case so definitely this is worth investing and I think many of the societies here are really putting a great effort in this because you know if you don't invest on training the trainers then all the efforts that you're doing are going to be lost in the next generation so it's definitely worth investing there and EPS is moving towards this and I think also SPIE and OSA okay maybe we can look for another topic just because I think there is a question a hand up okay my name is Alain Crief I'm the executive director of an NGO trying to help the world country by chemistry my president is Jean-Marie Laine Nobel Prize in Chemistry I have tried to address this problem because one of the way we have to do is to help the teacher to teach properly there are no books to teach the student the professor have to go to look at books for the student and have not been able trying with to make this community of people who can work for the other to give them free internet not only some data which they can use for their work but also at the proper place the experiment they can carry on in any place in the world so if there is a chance to do that we are not very strong in money but we are very strong in science and I'm sure that if there is this volunteer to do that we can do very difficult in science people want to publish want to get impact factor it's a shame they are not with our community to work for the other and I think it is terrible we wrote that especially in nature chemistry but there is no effect UNESCO probably understand what are the problems if we don't solve that problem we will never do better so I hope that well maybe I can just add a little comment I'm a little bit more optimistic so I've been dealing with the outreach community now for young people for six years and I think that the generation that is coming up is really inspiring and I think the best thing we can do is just get out of their way and we can take some of the I'm sure this will be on the webcam but I don't care, we can take some of the shit off their shoulders and as more senior academics we can give them the freedom we can help them, we can mentor them we can give them the opportunities that we did not have I read this thing on Twitter recently that there are two kinds of senior or seniorish academics once they've got to a certain level they can, you have a choice to do two things you can either pull the ladder up behind you to stop other people climbing or you can put a ladder down and help people climb up and I think what we have to do is just to put more ladders to a new generation we're finished we've had our careers if I never publish another paper in my life it doesn't matter and for people in that position I think we have the responsibility to help the next generation because we need them more than ever to fix the mess that we've made we probably have to stop now and I have to head over to Joe for closing remarks because we're at 7pm but I think this is also a lovely thing to see where instead of old white men and a panel discussion we have a diverse group of young people and I think we need to do this more often there were some logistics and an idea for a photograph of some sort is that right? I think we can we could do the perhaps we should do the photo maybe I'll say some closing remarks and then we do the photo so we'd like to do a photo maybe we'll just move everybody in the center and we'll take it from down here that would be easier than getting everybody down and then of course we have the reception and it's not tricky so I have to give you a few instructions about how to get down to the Adriatic so just and by way of while you're moving towards the center just by way of closing you should know that this auditorium actually this is the inaugural event of the newly remodeled Buddha Nitch Hall and so if you were here five days ago you couldn't walk in it was full of scaffolding there was nothing on the walls so the ICDP actually really put it into a higher gear and cut off about two weeks out of the remodeling time so I'm really very appreciative of all their efforts our secretary I'd like to thank but she had to go debt back down to her office but she'll be at the reception and so we'll thank her because she did a wonderful job there's a lot of logistical information to do so as we go to the reception I want to point out that that we have a sponsor and this is a this is a sponsor, it's Bosca Sellers Bosca, beyond Spimanti since 1831 but Bosca has been a very very important sponsor they understand very well the importance of light to their business which is growing grapes and making wine and so they've been very supportive of us in the year of light and also and many other activities around and so they've given us many bottles of wine so you can enjoy that also some non-alcoholic wine they produce because they know that we have a diverse group here so at any rate I'm really very appreciative also of Bosca's support for our reception and transition support also for our reception with that I think the only thing I want to say is I think they're applauding a little too enthusiastically about getting rid of John but actually I would applaud that enthusiastically, okay here's John so thanks the photograph is going to be in a frame from about here to about there okay so I won't tell you how much in Sturradians alright but so just try to go about no four got a really wide angle but we need to make it so try and position yourself as many in the centre as possible and say two or three abreast in a bit asymmetric it's okay so just if you guys come around the front here if you come around the front and go around that side it would look a little bit better and we've got okay that's perfect that's great let's see if these logos can do no, logo doesn't work okay I'm trying to do it thank you nice to take a few three four five okay thank you