After more than a year of work, the student-led OPSP conference took place on April 13th and 14th. OPSP featured two days of online talks, networking and workshops with top researchers in optics and students from all around the world. The event was organised by the OSA Student Chapters at Kent (us) and at Surrey.
Optics and Photonics for Scientific Progress originated from the desire to organise a one-day event focused on employability and career development for students. We contacted several other Student Chapters in the South of the UK to collaborate on such project. Thanks to Yann Amouroux, president of OSA (now Optica) Europe, a connection was made with Gavrielle Untracht, president of the Chapter at the University of Surrey. Unfortunately, the project had to be put on hold when the pandemic started.
The OPSP journey properly started a few months later when we came across a SEPnet (the UK South-East Physics Network) grant application offering funding for the organisation of a 2-day student-led conference.
With secured funding a few weeks later and started a fruitful collaboration with Cristobel Soarez, SEPnet Graduate Network Manager. We started to work on the event, aiming to bring the optics and photonics research community together for talks, workshops and a poster session.
As time progressed, the overhanging pandemic continued in its potency and the organisers eventually made the decision to begin planning for a virtual conference. The task before them was challenging, how to orchestrate an engaging, enjoyable, and informative conference for attendees who would ultimately be staring at a screen for the whole time? The solution was to create a virtual conference space, to simulate a real conference and not just host another series of zoom meetings! This was possible using ‘gather.town’, an online resource that enabled them to create a virtual world in which to host the event.
Conference was opened on April 13th 2021 by Professor David Sampson, Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Research & Innovation at University of Surrey and by Professor Shane Weller, Deputy Vice-Chancellor - Research and Innovation at the University of Kent that introduced the two universities, their traditional links and congratulated the organizers.
The event comprised 10 talks, 6 workshops and a student poster session. The talks covered a wide range of optics topics, including Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT), integrated photonics, Brillouin spectroscopy, eye imaging, transition from academia to industry, and the other way around. The workshops, in smaller groups, provided students knowledge and skills in topics like science communication, computing and navigating the job market. The talks covered several fields of optics/photonics. The detailed schedule and list of speakers is available here: OPSP2021 - Speakers.
The SEPnet student-led conferences are an annual series of networking events created and -organized by postgraduate students from SEPnet universities. The scheme awards students with the funding and guidance necessary to create a 2-day conference on a subject of their own liking. The event accumulated a total number of 99 visitors throughout, and a concurrent peak of 41.
The result, “was amazing”, said an attendee. Another one has remarked that the “environment was very informal and laidback, which made everything very enjoyable.” The use of ‘gather.town’ was particularly popular, with one guest saying it was a “brilliant way to make virtual conferences not to be boring.”
Screenshot of Gabrielle Thomas' talk
