Tag Archives: conferences

Come check out these excellent early career scientist-focused sessions at the APS March Meeting

We’re super excited for the 2022 March Meeting and we at FECS have prepared a program of some excellent events focusing on the unique interests of early career scientists. Also keep an eye out for our table somewhere in the hallways. I hope to see you there!

Monday

B13. (Invited) Policies and Postdocs: Early-Career Perspectives on How Public Policy Affects Scientists and How Scientists Can Affect Public Policy
11:30am – 2:30pm CT
McCormick Place W-183A (and live stream)
Early career scientists don’t live in a vacuum; we interact with policies made everywhere from APS to universities to federal agencies and even Congress. These interactions go both ways: we can influence these policies and even become the policymakers. Join us to hear from an NSF program director, the recent chair of the APS Ethics Committee, an author of the APS TEAM-UP report, APS government affairs and the acting Chief of Staff for the Dept. of Energy Office of Science. 

FECS Postdoctoral Poster Prize Competition
2:00pm – 5:00 pm 
McCormick Place Exhibit Hall F1 (abstracts G71-107)
Every March Meeting, FECS hosts a competition for the best postdoc prize with cash prizes of up to $500 (more info here). Come check out the competitors and their excellent work! The poster session is in the main exhibit hall abstracts G71-107. 

Tuesday

K13. (Invited) What Do Early-Career Physicists Do?    (Cosponsored with FIAP)
3:00pm – 6:00pm CT
McCormick Place W-183A (and live stream)
   Not all scientists work in labs! Join FECS and FIAP (the Forum on Industrial and Applied Physics) as we learn about careers in scientific publishing, data science, entrepreneurship and public engagement from early-career scientists working directly in those fields. 

FECS Reception
6:15pm CT – ???
McCormick Place W-185BC 
    Now that we are finally back to in-person meetings, we can enjoy the magic of free snacks and chatting with fellow physicists without screens or breakout rooms or mute buttons. Join FECS for an informal meetup of scientists from all career stages. Individually packaged refreshments will be provided. All March Meeting attendees are welcome, but unfortunately for our virtual colleagues, this is an in-person only event. 

Wednesday

N32. (Invited) Distinguished International Early Career Scientists in Quantum Physics (Cosponsored with FIP) 
11:30am – 2:30pm CT 
McCormick Place W-192B (and live stream)
    FECS and FIP (the Forum on International Physics) come together to sponsor an invited session highlighting the work of international early career scientists in quantum physics. 


All this information is available on our public facing website if you want to share.

March Meeting 2019

I’m about to set off to Boston for the APS March Meeting 2019 (March 4-8). I’ll be presenting my newest work on using infinite boundary conditions are current reservoirs for measuring steady-state currents in quantum wires using tensor network methods. My talk is at Wednesday 6 March at 8:48am in room 156C. If you want to chat with me at the March Meeting drop me a line.

After the March Meeting I’ll be visiting the Sandvik group at Boston University 11-20 March. I’m really looking forward to seeing all my old friends and colleagues at BU.

Photo of Nanyuan garden

ICAM-NCTS Workshop

Last week I attended the NCTS-ICAM Annual Meeting and Workshop at National Tsing-Hua University (清華大學) in Hsinchu (新竹), Taiwan. It was a delightful week of presentations and discussions with condensed matter physicists from all over the world and an excellent opportunity to build my professional network here in Taiwan. 

I presented my poster “Direct numerical observation of Bose-Einstein condensation of deconfined spinons” in which I use a magnetic field to induce a finite density of magnetic excitations at a deconfined quantum critical point and use thermodynamics to show that they must be deconfined spinons (an extension of Ch. 4 of my dissertation). I received some excellent feedback on my poster that will help improve my manuscript. 

There were fascinating talks including David Campbell, Duncan Haldane, Nic Shannon and Suchitra Sebastian. ICAM also made the wise decision to include a panel discussion on women in physics as part of the main schedule (rather than in a parallel session or as an extra event). It was a great opportunity to hear from women physicists about the challenges they face and to get some updated data from Laura Greene (former president of APS). 

Part of the conference was an excursion to 南圓 (Nanyuan), a beautiful resort in the foggy mountains near Hsinchu. We had a tour of the beautiful Chinese garden and partook in a tea ceremony.

2nd Annual Asia Pacific Workshop on Quantum Magnetism at ICTS

I present my poster. 

I’m back from almost two weeks of discussions on quantum magnetism at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS, a branch of TIFR). I presented a poster on my latest findings on my study of the field-induced spinons at the deconfined quantum critical point and received some useful feedback that will help me put the finishing touches on the manuscript.

In addition to some great tutorials and research talks, I had some productive discussions with old collaborators, like Kedar Damle, and a chance to meet a number of new people in my field and talk physics. It was a really productive 8 days and I am now back in Taipei with renewed focus.

I couldn’t have nicer things to say about ICTS. Located an hour drive outside of Bengaluru, India, ICTS is essentially a little resort for physicists. Bengaluru is apparently blessed with perfect weather year-round, and ICTS makes the most of that weather with open-air courtyards and hallways. The campus is beautiful, modern, immaculately clean, and meticulously landscaped. The guest house was basically a hotel, and the cafeteria serves up delicious Indian cuisine.  My thanks to the organizers (Subhro Bhattacharjee, Gang Chen, Zenji Hiroi, Ying-Jer Kao, SungBin Lee, Arnab Sen and Nic Shannon) as well as the ICTS staff who did such an excellent job with all the logistics. I hope to be back again for another workshop soon.


uni10 Hackathon

I had a great time at the uni10 hackathon at National Tsing-Hua University last weekend. Members of the Ying-Jer Kao (NTU) and Pochung Chen (NTHU) groups presented the updates on the development of the uni10 tensor network library. Also in attendance were developers from industry (and SOLVCON) and the local python user community.