Physics@FOM Veldhoven 2013 inspires Dutch physics
On Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 January, 1.900 physicists came together during the Physics@FOM Veldhoven congress. Researchers presented and discussed the latest developments in physics during more than 200 inspiring lectures and 435 poster presentations. Eminent international professors Sibylle Günter, Anette (Peko) Hosoi, Leo Kouwenhoven and Stan Bentvelsen gave this year's plenary lectures. State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, Sander Dekker, presented FOM's annual scientific prizes.
Hundreds of young researchers had a foretaste of the conference on the Monday evening: a masterclass by one of four well-known foreign top physicists. Next morning Physics@FOM Veldhoven officially started with a lecture by Günter about the current developments and future challenges in the area of fusion energy. After that delegates could choose from a wide range of sessions with lectures in specific research areas. Between sessions there was plenty of time to network or to take a look at the posters, watch the live experiments or view the winning films from the FOM Film Challenge. This year the jury chose Thomas Huisman's poster as the best: he received the Physics@FOM Veldhoven Poster Prize 2013. He turned out to be the brother of the winner from 2012.
After the dinner on Tuesday evening, State Secretary for Education, Culture and Science, Sander Dekker presented the three FOM Prizes for 2012. Dr. Anton Akhmerov received the FOM Physics Thesis Prize. The FOM Valorisation Chapter Prize and FOM Valorisation Prize for application-oriented research went to Dr. Ernst Jan Vesseur and professor Joost Frenken respectively.
Kouwenhoven and Bentvelsen closed the evening with lectures on the breakthroughs of 2012: the creation of Majorana fermions and the discovery of the Higgs particle. Kouwenhoven called the Majorana fermion 'three times nothing': no energy, no charge and no magnetic moment. Next Bentvelsen recounted to search for the Higgs particle, which he compares with 'searching for a needle in 10,000 haystacks'. That is because the large number of collisions needed to create the particle yielded enormous quantities of data.
On the second day of the Congress the three winners of FOM prizes presented their research and then the lectures and poster sessions continued. Hosoi closed the congress by describing how much we can still learn from nature in order to improve technology. She investigated both the movement of snails and the liquid properties of their slime. After that she developed a robot that can move across a wide range of substrates just like a snail.
Next year Physics@FOM will be held on 21 and 22 January 2014.
Glimpses from the congress on Twitter:
- "Higgs vs Majorana. Brilliant presentations from Bentvelsen and Kouwenhoven respectively at #FOMveldhoven. Future Nobel Prize winners?" (@SanderDekker)
- "Valorisation lunch tries to improve contact industry-FOM. Its already yielded me a new idea #fomveldhoven" (@MarcodeBaar)
- "Look back to inspiring meeting with almost 2000 NL physicists, other scientists and representatives from industry. #FOMVeldhoven." (@JoostWMFrenken)
Additional information
- Further information about the congress can be found at www.fom.nl/veldhoven
- Further information about the FOM Prizes can be found at www.fom.nl/prijzen
- All plenary lectures and masterclasses can be viewed here.
- Photos (credits Bram Saeys)