 angle on light. So this session we're gonna focus on outreach and communication and we have some really exciting talks. People are gonna introduce some of their projects and talk a little bit also about career and science communication. Our first speaker today is Steve Pompey. He works in astronomy public engagement and he's from the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and he's come a long way to be here with us today. We're really pleased to have you with us Steve. Thank you. Thank you very much for the nice introduction and thank you also for inviting me to come to this very famous place. As John described earlier there are some very impressive numbers connected with the International Year of Light, the International Day of Light. You heard about the 13,000 events in 147 countries. Very impressive numbers and maybe even more impressive is the number 100 million people that may have been affected by these different programs. So these are very fine examples and I know many of you here have been involved in creating these programs. So thank you very much for your dedication and your willingness to put yourself out there to to reach people. I'd like to tell you about how these activities have formed a very solid foundation for some new activities connected with the International Astronomical Union's 100th anniversary. So I'll tell you a little bit about the connections between these past events and the IEU's 100th anniversary which is this year and I'd like to tell you about three important lessons that I think have come out of all of these programs for the public, these programs for students, these activities for teachers that I think will be of value to you as you're planning new activities for the International Day of Light and for all of your educational activities. So first of all, I'd like to make a distinction between outreach and engagement. Engagement has a much better feel for it and in particular, since I work for a major observatory, I have to be careful about the idea that we are conducting outreach versus coming down from the mountaintop. We literally are on a mountaintop and our headquarters looks a little bit like a fortress. So the distinction I'd like to make is are we offering something that we think is of value to the people outside of our fortress or down from the mountain or are we actually spending some effort to find out who we want to be engaged with, which community we want to be engaged with and what we want to offer each of these communities. So for example, if we're just coming down from the castle several times a year, putting out the drawbridge, crossing the moat, going down to the town and we're distributing what we think is of value to the people down in the town, then we have very much of an attitude that I think is rather weak. It's here's what we have for you. We had some great posters, for example. We think you might like this. We hope it was useful. We don't know whether it was exactly because we're not even quite sure who we handed them out to. But since you haven't complained, and of course we actually know you're very polite, so you wouldn't complain, and maybe you're hoping for more anyway in the future, then we must have done a pretty good job. So that's a very weak position. A much stronger position is who do we want to engage with? What audiences are of value to us? What do they want? Know that we're listening to them and then try to figure out a way to engage with them. And that could be, for example, in this bottom picture, it's a group of teachers who wanted to have an opportunity to use telescopes. So they're at David Levy's Observatory near Tucson, and they're trying to learn how to use telescopes for their classes. The second lesson that I think is very important for all of our projects is to actually know where we're going. So in particular, we'll know when we're getting there. We might even know if we're going in the right direction. So that's very important to have some reflection on our own institutions, what we want to accomplish, what we have to accomplish, who's funding us to accomplish that. And then after that, to really do a very sincere and honest self-assessment of what we have to offer, and what our weaknesses are, what our strengths are, and then figure out where we can do some good. And are we going to be in a role where we are the top dog? Are we going to be in a role where we have high leverage? Or are we going to maybe be the catalytic or lubrication role where we make things happen? We grease the wheels and help something to happen. As we do this, we also have to consider opportunity cost and educational aton-due. Opportunity cost means if we're doing something, we cannot do something else. So which thing is more important? Educational aton-due is the equivalent of optical aton-due. We can spread ourselves very thin and try to reach the whole world, or we can concentrate on a very small audience and try to go in much, much deeper. And then finally, the third lesson I wanted to mention is, is to try to create a bit of a logic model for your project. And the logic model is simply saying, we think that we can accomplish something fantastic by doing this. It's really a sequence, a logical sequence. So for example, the previous talk may have had as its goal, I think it did, to inspire us to get us realizing the complexity of these different phenomena, encourage us to go outside and look at these things and bring our own polarizing film on the train and so on. And that's a great, a great model. And that is a model and our own projects could have similar models. So we can test that out, we can create a bit of a flowchart of what we think we're going to accomplish. We can make the goals and results be inspirational, we can make them be about feelings, attitude, and that's great. It doesn't have to be content knowledge or doesn't have to be a particular thing, it can be inspiration. And I was very much inspired by the words of Francis Bacon about knowledge and wonder, which I think is what a lot of us are aspiring to, is the pleasure of looking at optical phenomena. In fact, there was a book written by this name by Victor Weisskopf, and I read it as an eighth grader and it was greatly inspiring to me. So let's, let's take those lessons and then we just a few of the projects that might be inspiring to you. And a few of these will be also related to the International Astronomical Union's 100th anniversary. Project I've been involved with is called Colors of Nature, has a very fancy title called Project STEAM. But it's an NSF National Science Foundation sponsored project with Alaska and Washington. And this is about the, it's a very concentrated project, there's a reason I mentioned this, has very specific goals to try to understand what is interesting to young women in science, and what are some of the barriers that may keep them from pursuing a scientific career. And it's going after in particular, young women who have a very strong interest in art, and have very strong visual spatial skills. So this is a very concentrated project. So it knows where it's going, it knows how it's getting there, and it does a lot of evaluation along the way. In the cosmic light arena, that was a whole segment of projects from the International Year of Light in 2015, we had the Galileo scope project, which again was a very focused project to build, to design and build high quality telescopes for students to use. And the primary goal of the project was let's have a telescope that kids can build themselves. And let's make it good enough to see the rings of Saturn. So that was the fundamental design criteria that I'm the official international astronomical union name for the exoplanets. The Galileo scope project is got us going and thinking about how we could connect to schools better. And the Einstein schools program, which I'm in charge of is trying to connect schools around the world in the study of gravity and astronomy. So we have over 200 schools now, in various countries around the world, and we're emphasizing gravity and modern astronomy, especially black holes, gravitational lensing and things like that. So you can sign up at einsteinschools.org. And we're actually going to do the deflection of starlight experiment that verified Einstein's general theory of relativity that was done 100 years ago. We're going to be having school groups do that in Chile during the July 2nd eclipse coming up. So just to conclude, I wanted to say thank you again for all of the engagement that you've participated in all the projects that you've gotten started or help motivated. The engagement is really to reach diverse audiences. We hope to inspire people by taking them to the edge of the universe and astronomy. And we've even had an opportunity for middle school students to go go to the White House under President Obama and spend time at the White House looking through small telescopes in the first and second White House star parties, which I was lucky enough to be a part of. So thank you very much for your attention. Great. Thank you, Steve. We do have about five minutes set aside for questions. If anybody has a specific question for Steve. Yeah. Thank you. I didn't get a point. Are you linked to International Astronomical Union? Yes, we're linked to the International Astronomical Union. I'm a member, but I'm working with the group in Leiden, the Netherlands to work on the Einstein Schools project. I'm also working with groups around the world and with my own observatory in the US and Chile to work on these projects. Okay, I'm expecting to be at the Dark Sky Zambas at that soon, if you have to go through. So I will need to get in touch with you as well. Well, thank you. So you've been selected to work as a Dark Sky Ambassador, which is wonderful. And those projects are partly out of my observatory in Tucson. And we helped develop the kits that many people will be getting. So we love to work with you. Thank you. Great. Any other questions? I wanted to just quickly ask if people can still purchase those kits that you were showing if they want to do any local outreach? Right. The the Galileo Scope kits are still available. We actually have some hands on optics kits that were developed with SPI and OSA. So if anybody is looking for more materials, we have some hands on optics kits that are available. And the Dark Sky's teaching kits are also available under the the auspices of laser classroom now on the the new kits that are that they've developed with us. So yes, everything, everything we try to develop as a program, we try to provide the materials for teachers and give them everything they need to actually go from a workshop on a weekend to the classroom on Monday to implement what they've learned. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you for taking time to come talk to us. Thank you. And our next one more question. We have a couple more minutes. So we'll we'll run over here and Thanks very much. Excellent presentation. Are you finding that all of the the advertising and and outreach about dark skies is beginning to get traction? I mean, are you finding that places are starting to shut their lights off and responding? Cities and communities and so on? Certainly, there's more awareness going on. And again, the goal isn't to to shut all the lights off, but it's to conserve energy. And if there are places in town where you can do stargazing, that's great. We also want to protect the resources around our major observatories because those are now billion dollar investments. So we have only a few places on earth that are really, really dark and have great seeing and good infrared transparency. So those are very special places we need to protect in Chile, for example, Hawaii, for example, South Africa, Canary Islands. But we are getting traction where people are realizing that good lighting quality lighting is the right amount of light in the right place for the right reason. And when it's not needed, we can turn it off or keep it from shining up in the sky and lighting up the bottom of birds. So I think we're getting some good some good awareness and and the lighting industry is very aware of the possibilities of a better quality lighting as well and energy conserving lighting. Great, thank you very much. Alright, I think we need to move on to our next speaker. She's flooding. Rachel Juan is the international editor for Nature magazine. And she's had a really interesting career. I've seen her do a couple of talks before about her career path and how she blended her passion for science and communication. So let me introduce Rachel here. She's getting her speaker on her microphone. Thank you so much. Thank you, Christina. Okay, good. Very good morning to all of you. So first of all, I would like to thank the organizer for inviting me today to give a talk for this International Day of Light and also to meet a very beautiful community like you here. And I was in Paris, UNESCO for the International Year of Lights in 2015. And then I was in the International Day of Lights last year as well in UNESCO last year. And I'm very excited that today I'm here for the international, the second International Day of Lights. And it actually brings me to ICTP in this beautiful Trieste. Yeah. And to give you a little bit of a background of myself, I originally come from Malaysia. And I studied in Malaysia, Singapore and the UK. And before I joined the journal Nature Photonics as an editor, I worked as an optics engineer for Philips. And then a medicine fellow commercializing photonics technology of my university in Birmingham, United Kingdom. And before I became an editor of Nature Photonics. So today I would like to talk about this talk. But one thing that I would like to say as well is my birthday is actually 14th of May. So I was quite disappointed that Thierry Meinman didn't publish his work two days earlier. You know, so for me to spend this beautiful day with all of you with the enthusiast of photonics every year of my birthday. But it's good. But I'm here today. Yes. Okay. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I was actually quite in a rush. I didn't really have a very nice birthday celebration two days ago. So but I'm glad that I'm here today to be with you. Yes. Thank you. So the title of today is career in science and communications. And I just want to share with you my profession as an editor and also my experience as well, you know, working for the journal and also for working for Springer Nature. So the outline is very simple. So basically just to introduce science publishing and then my the journal that I'm working on Nature Photonics and to tell you a little bit about life as an editor and for those who are interested how you can be an editor for a journal. So science publishing. So basically publishing is about everything but science publishing is a subfield of publishing which distributes scientific research and news. So it's a specific field of publishing science only. And normally you'll find that science publishing publishes articles like journal in journals, in books, in thesis. And it relies on some form of peer review or editorial refereeing to qualify text for publication. So as you know, if you submit a paper, there'll be a peer review process followed by decision making to publish your work or not. And nowadays we witness a very big transition in science publishing which is transforming from print copy to online access. And also another thing is from subscription based science publishing to hybrid based or open access based science publishing. So I'm sure this is not foreign to you. So the roles of science publishing actually there are many, many. Not just to communicate science but also to add value to a publication by providing editing services, copy editing services, graphic design, production, distribution and marketing services to a publication. So basically it provides a kind of a guarantee of quality through peer review, shifting and decision making before your research work is being published. So there are many kinds of editors in science publishing. So the first one is a topical editor. So these are the people who, these are the editors who are working for society based journals such as from, journals from OSA, SPIE and IEEE journals or AIP APS. And they're mainly researchers from universities, research institutes, companies working on selecting papers for publication. There are also another type of editor which is called news editor. So they are more or less like journalists or reporters. So of science magazines such as Physics World, Physics Today, Electro, Optics and Lasers, Optics.org and IEEE spectrum. So they are full-time editors working on reporting news about anything. So if it is in photonics, they'll be photonics news. And there's another type of editor that we call science editor, which is the kind of editor that I am. So we are, they're working for journals or magazines such as Nature, Science or Nature Photonics. So we, they are the full-time editors working on assessing papers, writes from assessing papers to commissioning articles, editing, reporting news, interviewing and many, many more kinds of roles in science publishing. So today, the focus of my talk will be on the science editor. So another thing that I would like to share with you is the current trend of publishing. So as you, as you well know, there are many, many more new journals coming out from everywhere, not just from like Springer Nature, but also from the OSA, SBIE, IEEE, Societies and all these things. So and these journals, these new journals, they are becoming more and more selective. They are, you know, they ask for higher quality of primary research results. So that means more and more science editors with strong technical background like you, like, could be you from the floor are needed, in this case, to serve the journals. So to introduce to you just a little bit about my journal, it's a monthly journal from Springer Nature that publishes peer-reviewed top quality research in all areas of photonics and optics. And it is not just a research journal, but it also contains different kinds of contents. For example, review articles, news and views, technology, commercialization news, business news and market analysis. So it's a kind of magazine, if you would like to call it. It's not a journal, but a magazine that combines everything under one roof. Yeah. So now the editor headquarters of Nature Photonics is in London. So this is the editor's scope that we have for the Nature Photonics, the journal, my journal. So we cover all kind of optics and photonics research. As you can see from here, we like to see applied fundamental physics of optics, as well as application and also how we can make use of photonics technology for our today's life. Yeah. So it can be very technical. It can be very physics. Yeah. So we cover everything. And this is the editor team. So we are a very small team, just four editors, and we are full-time editors working on Nature Photonics. So we are quite old editors as well, even older than the journal. Of course, we're older than the journal. But the experience, the year of contribution in the journal can be longer than Nature Photonics itself. Yeah. So what do we do as editor? So it's not like this. We are quite tidy, not as messy as this. Yes. Yeah. So of course, as a science editor, our main responsibility is to select paper for publication. So we go through all the papers that we get from the submission and then we choose what to send out for review, what to be published, and then, yeah, based on what we want to see in our journal, and of course, based on that criteria of the journal. So we select them, and then for peer review process, we select external reviewers to review the papers for us, and we make decision for publication. And we make decision based on what we want to see instead of by counting the votes from the reviewers. So this is a cycle that a paper goes through right after the submission button. So at every stage of this cycle, the editor and peer review process, the role of editor is very important here because we are involved in editor assessment, sorry, editor assessment, external peer review, and making decision, editorial decision, and also deciding whether we should send out a revised version out for review. So we are very important for the whole cycle since the paper is submitted to us. So of course, you will ask a question. So you have a very specific technical background, you know, maybe just optical fiber communication. How do you know about quantum optics? How do you know about plasmonics, metal materials? So of course it's very hard for us to know everything, but we, okay, based on our technical background and based on the training that we had from our PhD degree, we are more or less trained, you know, to learn something in a very shift manner, you know, to know about a new field, to know about the breadth of the photonics research, and to be able to make a decision to send the paper out to review or not to review. And of course, we have a team of us, a team of four of us to get involved into discussion, to talk about what we don't know about and why we should send out a paper for review. So we discuss as well. And of course, with the help of Googling and Web of Science, we get to know the previous literature of a certain field. That is also how we learn what had happened before. And through conference attendance and lab visits, we also learn what kind of research are being done by the researchers, the scientists in the community. So we also learn a lot from this kind of visits and conference attendance, and we always expose to a lot of articles from other journals, for example, from the SBIE, the OSA. So we browse through all these journals every day, you know, to look for nice papers to learn from and also sometimes to highlight as well in our journal. So, and of course, based on all these kind of things that we do from day to day, we gain this knowledge from the experience and as I said before, from discussion with the team members. So more than just selecting papers for publication, we also commission and edit reviews and news and views. We interview top scientists and we also write editorial highlights and press releases. We cover news, for example, IYL 2015 and IDL. We attend conferences. We visit university and labs. So just to give you some example, these are the editorials that I wrote about International Day of Lights and International Day of Lights. So in 2012, when it was pronounced to have 2015 as International Day of Lights, we have a very nice editorial. And then in 2015 itself, no, this is the 15th itself, International 17th. Yeah, okay. International Day of Lights. And then the last year International, the first International Day of Lights. Yeah, in 2018. So what's more, we also contribute ideas in editorial contents by providing new kind of ideas about how to shape the journal. We also promote the science communication. We are always asked to be initiative, creative and innovative. So basically, we are not just a manuscript of science editor. We are also a correspondent and ambassador. So what do I mean by an ambassador? So I have these women, SBI women in optics in 2008. Yeah. And then I am also, at the moment, I'm also the SBI visiting lecturer and also OSA traveling lecturer. So I visited a lot of student chapters everywhere in the world. So yes, you can see from these pictures and noticing. And I'm also serving SBI as scholarship committee as well for 2017, 2018 and this year as well. Yeah. And I always believe that we gain a lot from the community and also it's very important to give back to the community. So this is what I do as well. For example, I give talks and I participate in career panel discussion and to also guide some young students, maybe younger than you, like secondary students, about career in their future or getting involved in science or photonics for their future study. So you will be questioned that you are no longer scientist if you are an editor because there's no more lab hours and also the deadlines are shorter and more constant because it's not like you have six months to meet targets for your results but instead you have monthly deadline or sometimes weekly deadline. And also you are working in the company environment no longer in the research lab environment so it's totally different. And you focus on clear communication and important new ideas to wide, wide audience. So it's a little bit different from being a scientist but at the same time you can also claim that you are scientist because you are always in the forefront of primary research because of conference attendance and also lab visits. So you are trained to have critical scientific thinking when you are reading through all these kind of papers and also also research from the researchers. And you are always doing networking with a scientific community so you can still call yourself scientist in another way. So there are some bad points as well to be an editor because the deadlines and schedules are shorter so you will need to work harder and also sometimes over time to meet deadlines when needed maybe at nights or sometimes even over the weekend just to meet some deadlines. So sometimes you receive complaints from the authors whose papers are rejected by you. So it's not really nice but it's okay but there are many good things you know. So just to share with you my personal view about being an editor. So I think being an editor is very intellectually stimulating because you're always exposed to the cutting edge of research through the nature of manuscript assessments, lab visits and conference attendances and also you discover not only the depth but also the breadth of research. So you are not really burying yourself into a very specific study of the wider world of photonics but the breadth of everything in photonics research. So and it's also challenging because you have to identify which type of paper or research is high quality and should be published in the journal. So it's very challenging not to make wrong decisions not to miss any good things. And at the same time I think being an editor is very satisfying because you are able to contribute to the society by driving research forward and profiling hot topics. So it's very nice and also not to forget you get to travel like for example today you know I'm here in Trieste because of being an editor to celebrate International Day of Light. Yeah so these are the good things that can be for to be an editor. So how can you become an editor? It's very very straightforward. Basically you just need to apply and sometimes you can find out some internship program offered by some journals or some societies for you to get in just to taste a little bit about how it is like to be an editor. So I would like to also share with you that in spring of nature we will have this internship program towards just a week of a week period the from the end of July to beginning of August that specific week. So for any people with any kind of background to be to be an editor to be an editor for a specific journal for a week and it is totally I mean it's totally open for any kind of application. So feel free to get in touch with me if you're interested in this internship program. It can't it cannot be it can be beyond photonics. Yeah and of course normally you will have to go through a manuscript test to be shortlisted to be the candidates for the editor. So what many of you maybe wonder may wonder so you don't have editing skills or you are not a journalist by training. You're just a physicist or an engineer by training. So how can you edit something you know out of no skill. So it's not really a problem because you know we I've been told that it's easier to teach a scientist to be an editor than teaching an editor to be a scientist. So you will be able to be you will be able to learn how to be an editor with your very strong technical background. So there's not a problem at all and also we will provide this kind of on the job training to train you as a science editor. So there are many opportunities out there. You just need to look out you know from this job search engine or at the magazines a website like science physics today is IOP publishing and also you can also go to the direct search through the direct search on journals websites like APL PLL to look for the opportunities to be an editor. And of course in my company as Waspinger Nature website you can also find out some vacancies. Yeah and also yeah to check out yeah and ask the editors don't wait you know when you see editors ask if there's any opportunity from the company within the company or from the journal to to give you this kind of opportunity to apply. So these are the criteria for nature editors. You may think that oh no I don't have postdoctoral research experience how can I be you know an editor without this. So basically we only ask for a PhD in a relevant field of journals. So it can be photonics it can be chemistry it can be materials science it can be energy. So all sorts of science background so you just need to have a PhD. You do not need to have postdoctoral experience and you need to have a passion in science and a thirst to learn more. Yeah because you will need to learn a lot. You will get to learn a lot by being an editor and you need to have a breath of scientific interest to learn more enthusiasm in science or communication is important. You need to be dynamic outgoing motivated and with good interpersonal skills and of course we request you to speak fluent English to be able to communicate to the community and journalistic writing ability is desirable but it's not essential so it's not needed. Don't worry that you don't have journalism degree with you or you don't have any postdoctoral experience with you and you need to have a desire to travel and to meet scientists worldwide. So basically very simple straightforward. You are here today you are qualified for this. Yes, yes. So we have this nature talent poll yeah nature talent poll. So if you would like to register your interest to be a nature editor you can always go to the website. I have the leaflets here to to to give out if you're interested. So go to the website to register your interest to tell us about you and when there's a vacancy coming out and we think that you are the suitable candidates we will get in touch with you to ask you to apply or to come for the interview. So we will keep you posted as opportunity arise. So if you bring a passion for science we will develop your editor and publishing expertise. So science and I appreciate that most of you will think that being an editor is an unconventional route for scientists because normally what you think of after having your PhD degree is to be a scientist and then to be a PI and then to be an associate professor assistant professor followed by professor. So normally this is the common route for a PhD holder but I think you are nervous about you know taking the risk to change your career path to to be an editor. So and there are not so many formal routes into science communication so maybe it's not it's very rare for you a very rare route for you to take on it. So but I would encourage you to think outside the box you know open up your horizon to open up the opportunities that you can have as a PhD holder in any kind of science training can be photonics can be anything. Yeah so just try to think outside the box and you will see lots of opportunities are waiting for you and of course you need to be able to take risk but not any kind of risk but intelligent risk to move to jump to jump to another field or to jump to another profession or to move to another another country or continent yeah for your career so and always it's good to consult with a former mentors or colleagues who have also struggled through this transition so it will help a lot by listening to them and of course you can't just wait there you know wait for opportunity to come to you if you are not prepared to take on the opportunity so I would say that it is always helpful if you proactively reinvest and read as I mean your career and try to expand your professional networks like today there are people from many kind of with different kind of backgrounds so talk to them get to know them and also maybe get some context for future possible opportunity so sometimes you need to sacrifice some free time to learn new skills beyond the bench but it's always worthy and be volunteer to take on more work and I think this kind of event is a very good opportunity you learn more you see a lot of people from different world different kind different different place of the world and try to constantly find and create opportunities and you will be ready when it comes when opportunities come to you so that's it thank you for your attention so this is my email address it's my my twitter account so if you have any question you can always get in touch with me thank you so much yeah thank you Rachel that was very exciting so we did save a couple of minutes for questions if anybody has some questions for Rachel or anything about her career path yeah hi I'm John from OSA my question is as an editor how do you choose articles to promote to the press and reach the general public you mean from the publication already publish a paper or from submission probably from submissions what's the process of deciding that this paper should maybe have a press release or should be promoted yeah okay so if we talk about from submission to publication so as an editor we always assess the paper based on some criteria for example whether it has a very high novelty reported in the paper with new ideas or new concepts that haven't been thought of before previously by other people other groups and and if and also if it is going to be with very very nice technological performance maybe giving us a quantum leap of in terms of technology performance and also we need to make sure that the paper is going to be interesting to a broad audience ship not just a specific community but you know the whole wide community a photonics community or any kind of community and we need to make sure that a paper is the paper is providing convincing data to support the claims made to make sure that it's not just hyping but it actually has evident has has evidence to support what it says and so the formula to the publication is very easy you just need to have a new idea or a very good performance yeah you know just one of these advance technological advance or technological advance and then make sure that it is interesting to a broad audience it will lead to these three ingredients will lead to a publication and in terms of how to select a paper for press release or highlights and noticing so for press releases it has a little bit of different criteria because you know people who select who read press releases they would like to relate to their daily life so normally it is the kind of paper that will be highlighted in the press release is the kind of paper that will deliver more or less immediately the kind of impact in daily life so it has to be something quite matured in terms of a device or technology that can be deployed in the near future not so much about physics because it's quite hard to relate to the public about how important the work is so it's more towards the maturity of the deployment yeah for press release but for highlights in the journal it can be anything as long as we think conceptually it is important or technologically it is important it will be highlighted in the journal one more okay really quick I wish to thank you for your talk and my question is this how worth is I mean a a reference report in your decision making since it might happen in some cases in nature that a reference report are almost positive but the final decision is a rejection oh okay yep it's possible so as I mentioned just now in my talk we are the professionals full-time editors working for the journal we make decision based on the criteria of the journal so the referee reports are only taken as as a guidance during the decision making process so we do not count votes in this time at that stage when we decide to publish a paper or not so for example if we have a two positive two negative reports with one positive report it really depends on how positive how negative are the negative reports are if the reviewers are actually providing enough statements or enough explanation about their negative recommendation and of course for the two positive reports and one negative reports case is based on the same kind of thinking so how positive are the positive reports and if the referees are actually providing enough convincing explanation to support their recommendation so if a negative report is actually providing very good scientific reasons to tell us that the paper is with technical force and can't be published it's going to be confusing it's going to lead the community to the wrong direction and if it is a very detailed and very thorough reports compared with the other two positive reports may be only with two three two paragraphs or a few sentences we will make a decision to reject that paper yeah so really we have to judge based on the whole I mean the whole the how to say the the the the accumulative accumulative recommendation from the review reports and also the criteria of the journal before we decide to publish a paper yeah great thank you very much Rachel that was a great talk good reminder that there's alternatives to academia thank you so much you're very welcome our next speaker is here from Iqfo in Spain Frederica Badouini is the outreach and science communicator for Iqfo and she's going to talk a little bit about participatory science and many of you've probably heard already about the big bell test project and she's going to talk to us a little bit about that activity thanks a lot for this opportunity of being here and to talk a little bit about participatory science so the example of the big bell test that was a worldwide quantum physics experiment that took place in 2016 and then involved more than 100,000 people all around the world and it was coordinated and organized by Iqfo did which is the research center where I come from and it's a relatively young research center compared to ICTP because it was born just in 2002 but it grew up quite much let's say because now we are more than 400 people coming from all around the world let's think that more than 70% of the people there are not from Spain because I didn't mention that Iqfo is in Barcelona near Barcelona in Spain and as I said Iqfo grew pretty much in the last few years and we now have 26 research groups that explore like photonics in many different topics with more than with 60 research labs and we like of course the one of the main mission of Iqfo is doing research because it's a research center but also we believe a lot in grad education and also in transferring the technology and the knowledge that is generated there and bringing it back to the society so we have like of course like a tech transfer program for example we have seven spin-off companies but also we have a strong outreach program especially to spread the passion of photonics and bring it out to the society as if you are in this room of course you know that light is a versatile and ubiquitous tool that is a key enabling technology that can improve our lives and improve our society but this is not something that everybody knows or like people on the street even me before I reached before I started my pins the photonics I didn't think of all the things that we that we use every day that are light based technology or at least connected to light and so that's why it is important in days like this celebrated and remember it and try to spread the voice about all the importance that the light has in our lives and that's why also Iqfo has a very important and strong believe in the outreach programs to promote the importance and potential and provisional and ubiquity of all the light-based technology and when we do outreach at Iqfo we try always to think like in a thing that we could resume mark locally and think globally so of course we do a lot of local activities connecting with students teachers and institution that are like near Barcelona because I mean it's where we can have an easier impact but also we try to think globally because we want to maximize the impact of what we do so we also concentrate in on digital platforms on European projects also citizen science experiments what I want to talk you about and also trying to build alliances with other centers like Iqfo which is the European Centers for Outreach and Photonics with Iqfo is one of the founders and also members which is an alliance between different centers spread all around Europe that are research centering photonics but also want to join forces when they do outreach actions so that they can spread things that are working well in all the rest of Europe and we also this alliance worked well also in different European projects like a photon like 2015 that were associated to the International Year of Light for example and also there's one ongoing right now that is called Fab Labs and as I said we have a large portfolio of outreach programs and activities from visits to our institute talks conferences for students collaboration for example with Science Museum we do all of kinds of activities for very diverse publics and one of the things that are really dear to us and I want you to talk about our community experiments because community experiments or citizen science experiments are very nice way to reach out to the public but also they are very important for scientists to sometimes go out of the lab and not just thinking about what they're doing of their like very deep field of research but also try to think how the other people outside the lab perceive their science and so try to merge these two words that sometimes are separate and putting them together but it is not only a very already like this it's a very important effort because you're like putting together two words that sometimes are too separate and I'm not accusing scientists because when I was a PhD I was always sometimes forgetting about what was outside the lab but now another very important fix is that merging these two words you can produce some kind of science that you cannot generate just in a lab environment with the participatory experiment you can really reach some results that you could never imagine to do just being a few people in a lab like we usually do and so well Iqfo participated started its experience in participatory science in the during the international day of year of light in 2015 we participated in a in an experiment called iSpec.cu that was a European project and the idea was to measure with a smartphone and a small addon the idea was the people just had to take photos with their smartphone on the of the sky in their cities and then scientists could infer from that information information about atmospheric aerosols and we really liked the experience and so when the occasion came the following year from an idea of this guy on the right that is Carlos Aveyan who was at the time PhD student and Iqfo and his supervisor Professor Maga Mica we we tried to organize another community science experiment but this idea was completely different we it was to use human randomness in cutting-edge quantum physics experiments it was done only during one day on the 30th of November 2016 and it took place all around the world and I will explain you more a little bit about the details but to explain to understand what the big belt test was you have to understand what a small belt test is like a normal belt test is and so I'll try to do it very very fast we have to go in the field of quantum physics and think about what happens when you are at the scale of very very tiny elements like for example photos and that's where the light enters in the belt test because the first belt test and many of the belt tests that were done during the 30th of November 2016 involved the measurement of light and so I will use one of the video that we prepared for digital platform about quantum technologies that it's called Quantum Tour that try to explain what is a belt test through an animation and they are depicted like particles the photons forgive us okay so the idea is you have to take a laser and a beam splitter there is a thing that splits the light into two parts and if you reduce you turn on the knob of your laser and you deem the light till just photon by photon the light comes out then what happens then you still have that half of the photons go to one detector and half of the photon go to the other detector but the premise that you cannot see where the photon goes but you can just see when the detector fire randomly half of the time so you can say it's what usually we say in quantum physics that the photon is in a quantum superposition and so it just when it reaches the detector that it kind of decides in which of the detectors has gone on there's no way to predict it because this collapse of the superposition is totally random but maybe there is another explanation and it's if you don't like randomness maybe you can think that there are two kind of photons the one that is designed to go to the right and the one that is designed to go to the other detector this what we call usually in physics hidden variable theory that's what for example Einstein prefer this kind of theories and I mean in this view of the things the photon has already like written in it which way it will go when it reaches the detector and it's completely different to the other one because in the other way you're thinking the decision is made let's say when the photon reaches the detector so you have two interpretations for the same experiments that are equally valid because they explain the data that you see so it's kind of a philosophical question that has been there since the starting of quantum physics we like more randomness in our theory or we like more determinism that was a philosophical problem till the 60s when John Bell designed an experiment when you could decide let's say the result of the experiment could rule out the hidden variable theories so the experiment is more complex it's just one being splittered into detectors you need at least two photons and then I want to explain here how the bell test is going on but the idea is that you send the two photons to two identical laboratories you perform measurement in the way that Bell designed and there are also some other version and the idea is that you repeat this experiment go on and on and on and on till you collect some statistics sufficient statistics to discriminate between the two possibilities the let's say the local realism that is what we call the determinant or the random what is the actual interpretation of quantum physics and so we've seen with many bell tests that has been performed all around the world since the 80s that we have to accept the randomness intrinsically written in the quantum physics so one important thing in a bell test is that when you do you send the two photons to the two different labs you have to the two, let's say here the two guys the girl and the guy in the labs have to make a choice in their experiment they can choose between two different measurements and the important thing for a bell test to work is that the two choices have to be independent usually what they do is they just flip a coin or they do a like a more technological version of flipping a coin so they just do a random decision and that's what it that's been done usually but what Carlos Avellana Mogamichel thought if what it could be interesting if the two independent choice came from people because you cannot really describe them with with physics it's something more complex and so it's kind of escape some possible explanation that could say that even random generator could be some kind involved in this hidden variables that's why we designed the big bell test and the the weight work it was pretty easy people created random sequences of one and zero through a video game and these bits went real time to the labs that were spread all around the world to help scientists to control the experiments and everyone with just an internet connection could participate looks easy, right? yeah I mean for the people it was very easy to participate for us it was a very big bell challenge because it first of all it was a worldwide experiments we had 15 research centers involved with 12 laboratories spread all across the world and if anybody has worked in a lab knows that it's not easy to make a cutting edge experiment that is the frontier of technology work the day that you decide and all day long but we had to do it I mean not only us I mean also the other people in the lab so that was very and also it was one day but actually it was a day all across the time zones from Australia to Chile so it was more than 24 hour running experiments so that was a challenge the other challenge is that we calculated that to reach the sufficient statistics to make the decisive bell test so that it made sense from the scientific point of view that it was the main objective of the big bell test not just making people understand quantum physics but to really have a scientific result we needed at least 30,000 people if we thought that they were playing 10 minutes so it was a lot and we had only one day we couldn't do it for long because the labs couldn't promise to run for more than one day that was already a big promise for them and so yeah as a coordinator designed many of the aspects of the experiment we designed the video game platform the websites contents also the technical part of distributing the random numbers real time of course we had to design a dissemination and engagement strategy because we had to reach like a lot of people and also it was important we had coordinated the communication with all the partners again we had to think globally and act locally so think globally because the platform was had to be easy to use everywhere all around the world also we had to communicate with the 15 research center that were collaborating directly with the experiment as scientific partners but also we had to build up connections with other dissemination partners like for example EECOP or many societies of physics and photonics all around the world and then each one of these partners had to act locally with their own networks to reach out to the people so it was kind of a big effort we couldn't have done it alone not only because we didn't have 12 labs but also we couldn't have all these networks to reach out to so many people and what happened is that we had a very big participation more the free fold of what we expected in the end we had more than 100,000 participants spread all around the world and you can see in the plot I mean most of the people came of course from the countries where the worst some of the scientific partners but in the end it was very global because you can see that there were more than 119 countries participants in total and as I say we had a lot of participants a lot of visits to our web and a lot of visits connecting real time to the screening event that we had in Barcelona on the 30th of November but also as I said from the beginning a participatory science it's also a way to producing new science and so this result of course every lab around the world had a very had a very nice I mean not surprising result because they they violated the bell inequality as we expected in all of the experiment and all this after was published by the big bill test collaboration in nature in 2018 so last year and also we had as I said the big challenge of making all these experiments working with a lot of bits received more than 80 science involved with on more than 24 hours work a very nice bit rate so we could all the experiment could really stay live practically the old during the day and so big the big bell test was a very nice way to put together the general public and the scientists to produce new science with an engaging web platform out of the material dissemination campaign and a very important network of dissemination partner but also at the same time we had the scientists think about the people bring out to them trying to explain all their cutting edge technology that we're using and try to connect to their local connector for dissemination to the dissemination to have a very nice output even in the science part not only in the outreach part and for me that's all and I mean if you're interested more in what we do I think for especially in the outreach part you can contact and look at our website thank you very much that was a great project it was really fun to hear about do we have any questions for Frederica yes just a second thank you very much Frederica and I would like to say that I am here the chair of the Spanish committee for the International Day of Light and Iqfo is a very active member of this committee as you have seen here so I would like to express my thanks on behalf of the committee to the work you are doing in Iqfo Towns thanks thanks a lot thank you do we have any other questions yeah that was great thanks what's next we're thinking we're working on another citizen science experiment the thing is that since so here the science the science part was on the scientists so we were it was pretty fast because we didn't have to do a pilot I mean we just just trusted these people that were able to do a belt test now we want to do something with smartphones these smartphones are taking data and probably about light pollution or something like this but I don't want to talk so much about it because before we want to do a pilot in our town in Castel de Fels and if it works you will hear about it and I hope you participate great any other questions I was curious actually if anything got picked up in the popular media sorry in the popular media in the news media yeah yeah I mean we had like contacts and people were interested about it I mean because I mean of course we tried to contact we tried to contact before this thing happened to try to contact newspapers or TV shows or something like this but in the end also we received contact and we were very surprised afterwards for example when the nature paper came out to us there was even a I think a video game platform or net I don't remember if it was a journal or a website that asked us to comment because if they were interested in the video game part that's a great yeah it seems like something of that scale might draw some of the outside community's interest right any other questions no great I'll go ahead and pass it over to Joe then we're going to go ahead and break for lunch here and have a networking time and do you want to tell people a little bit about the lunch plans yeah well the plans are you need to go up one flight of stairs to your left over here so go to your left go up on flight and that's the that's the that's the lunch the cafeteria if you want you can go up two flights also to your left and there's the bar it's a smaller venue but they also have food the other thing I want to mention so that that's lunch and and we'll reconvene here at two o'clock if I got that right okay the other other thing I want to mention and please tell your students that might have walked out to go study that we'll have a reception tonight seven o'clock down at the Adriatico Guest House that's going to be a real hoot I mean it's really going to be exciting so anyway there's there's plenty of food tonight and we have we also have some beverages from Bolska cellars both with alcohol and without so anyway so lunch is just up here left up on flight okay and see you at two