Lancaster Physics Department hosts its first Postgraduate Research (PGR) conference, showcasing and celebrating the work undertaken by the PhD and Master’s by Research students from across the Department’s research groups.

The conference – which took place on 28^th May – was organised by Physics PhD students Ella Mann-Andrews and Elisabeth Bancroft, and welcomed students at various stages of their postgraduate studies to participate in the form of short talks or posters on their ongoing research. With funding from the Department and prizes of Amazon gift cards kindly provided by Quantum Base, the event also featured a competitive element in the form of a poster and speed talk competition, as well as a plentiful supply of free food and drinks.

The day kicked off with two 15-minute talks delivered by Charlie Wells on his work within molecular-scale electronics and Tineke Salmon on the detection of dark matter, and how Lancaster’s Low Temperature Physics research is contributing to the field. Following these initial talks, the first of the speed talks began, with students presenting 4-minute quick-fire summaries of their research to be judged by their peers.

After a short break for attendees to view the posters on display near the Physics Atrium, the talks continues with four longer-format talks delivered by Hannah Alarakia-Charles, Clio Johnson, Rahul Rana and Leah Clare respectively, covering a variety of topics, from the work being undertaken with the T2K neutrino detector based in Japan, to the detection of dust and carbon monoxide in distant galaxies. After these longer talks, the speed talks resumed with ten competitors presenting in the second slot of the day on topics as diverse as the aurora on Saturn and nanoscale technologies.

The final segment of the conference featured once again a series of longer talks from Ryan McGuigan from the Accelerator Physics research group, Amy Lester on the topic of super-fluid helium vortices, and Gobinda Chakraborty with a feature on “The Quantum Freeze”.

The awards ceremony recognised the work of the participants of the conference, with the winners of the poster competition being Sam Harley (3^rd place), Dan Naylor (2^nd place), and Cerys Cooper (1^st place). Meanwhile, Sam Harley, Cerys Cooper, and George Greenyer were also voted as 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd place winners of the speed talks respectively.

The conference on the whole was a huge success and very well attended, with approximately 50 members of staff and students present over the course of the day. Organiser of the day Ella Mann-Andrews commented: “It was so much fun, for my first big event it all went to time and there were no issues! It’s been so lovely to be able to put this on and get talks from all over the Department, having 23 speakers in one day was a lot - but what fun! Thank you to everyone who helped, I couldn’t have done it without my co-organiser Elisabeth, or my MPhys volunteers, Jack Bunyan or Finn Rehal. Planning an event as a PhD student is surprisingly doable, and more people should definitely give it a go.”