Physics Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting through my binoculars
Last year in September 2015 the Centre for Quantum Photonics (CQP), received an email from the European
Commission (EC) inviting them to nominate a Marie Sklodowska-Curie fellow for a
limited number of places to participate at the 66th Lindau Physics Nobel
Laureate meeting. I was nominated by Jeremy O’Brien and Mark Thompson as an experienced researcher
under the Marie-Curie ITN in Photonic Integrated Compound Quantum Encoding (PICQUE) project directed by Fabio Sciarrino (Uni Roma).
The selection process was two-fold, after my nomination by CQP1 I
submitted my supporting application to the EC and by the end of October first
evaluations were positive. The EC forwarded my application to the Lindau Nobel
meeting selection committee and on the 1st of March 2016, I was emailed by
the Lindau committee to confirm that my application was successful. I was one
of 400 applicants from over 80 different countries to attend the
66th Physics Nobel Laureate meeting in Lindau with ~30 distinguished
laureates. Three of the participants were current and/or former CQP members
which was a great achievement for CQP2.
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Picture 1: Former and current Centre for Quantum Photonics
representatives at 66th Lindau Physics Nobel Laureate meeting. (From
left to right) Jasmine Meinecke, Döndü Sahin and Jacques Carolan
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When I received the news, I was
aware that it was a great achievement, however I didn't fully understand the
significance of being one of the participants until the end of the week when I
left. The meeting was nothing similar to any conferences or events that I have
ever been to. Countess Bernadotte emphasised from
the very first day at her opening speech that “Lindau spirit” is only
accessible by physically being there. That became clearer to me every day and
by the end of the week I understood what she meant. For me, it was the
inspiration of the Nobel Laureates; being with them and talking to them during
discussion sessions. And the city, which has seen many Nobel Laureates, signs
of which you could see as soon as you left the train station.
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Picture 2: The street sign in front of train station reads
Alfred Nobel Plats (Alfred Nobel plaza) and no entry sign with exceptions to
bike and Nobel Laureates.
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Science discussions weren't just for the Nobel Laureates but also the
young scientists too. Everyone was keen to exchange knowledge and culture, and
make new friends and collaborations with other attendees. The meeting was more
than a scientific conference, it was 400 young scientists dining together,
going to the same lectures and participating in multiple social events. Events,
such as science breakfast and Bavarian dinner, were the perfect occasions for
networking. If the aim of the meeting was to transfer the knowledge and the
enthusiasm of Nobel Laureates then it definitely achieved that and more.
Each science day, of which there were four in total, began with a science
breakfast that we had either chosen in advance or were assigned according to
our, or our sponsors', field of interest. Only a small portion of the
participation cost is covered by our nominator, in my case that was the EC and
the rest was covered by a variety of industrial and government sponsors. My
first science breakfast was on Monday, hosted by one of the partners, the
Austrian Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy. The topic was Quantum
Information: From fundamentals to a New Technology. Emphasis was mostly on
encouraging fundamental science so curiosity driven research will continue.
The rest of the day involved talks from Hiroshi Amano, Takaaki Kajita, David J Gross, Carlo Rubbia, Martinus JG Veltman and Arthur B McDonald. It covered a broad range
of topics from material science to high energy and particle physics. In the
afternoon there was a panel on “Glimpses Beyond the Standard Model” in
which some scientists from CERN (ATLAS, CMS and experiments) also
participated through a video conference call. They gave an update on the
experiments, and explained that they had achieved the planned strong luminosity
(13 TeV) and are searching data for signature of heavy super-symmetric
particles. Someone asked CERN what the 750 GeV signal meant in the recent
experiments but they were unwilling to reveal anything (at 30:21 minutes.)The
day ended with a wrap up discussion session from the morning's Nobel Laureates
speakers.
On the second day, the science breakfast was about Excellence in
Science and Sports hosted by Rolex. The morning lectures were more focussed
and we listened to two Laureates who spoke about how and why they received
their prizes in 2012 for their independent experiments on measuring and
manipulating individual quantum systems. (Yes, I am talking about Serge Haroche and David Wineland -you can find
their lectures here!) Theodor W Hänsch talked about light
matter interaction and atom trapper William D Philips and Klaus von Klitzing and Gerardus ‘t Hooft were the last
peakers before the afternoon discussion sessions. Klaus von Klitzing was as
generous as always with his Nobel medal and brought it along so that we could
hold it - this was my second time!
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Picture 3: Nobel medal of Klaus von Klitzing. Left picture shows a
side with Alfred Nobel with his birth and death years (right, roman
numerals), and on the right picture hopefully you can read von Klitzing’s
name on other side of the medal.
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The third scientific breakfast organised by Mars Inc, was on Why does
soft matter, matter? Talks were on gravitational waves by George F Smooth, followed by microscopy and
biophysics talks by Samuel Ting, Kurt Wüthrich, Steven Chu, Hartmut Michel, Johann Deisenhofer and Robert Huber. At the end of the day, there
were master classes chaired by one Nobel Laureate and 3-4 young scientists who
discussed their research. I also attended the Quantum Information and
Quantum Measurement session chaired by David J Wineland and we had a
lecture from Vinton G Cerf (ACM AM Turing Award
recipient in 2004, and also one of the “Fathers of the Internet”) on The
Origins and Evolution of the Internet.
The last science day breakfast
was hosted by McKinsey&Company Inc, on Decoding Science Leadership.
Widespread topics were covered by the first two speakers, Stefan W Hell and Dan Shechtman, who talked about
optical microscopy and the science of soap bubbles. Afterwards there were more
biophysics lectures by Ada E Yonath and Martin Karplus. The morning talks ended
with a lecture on the scientific approach to teaching physics by Carl E Wieman, a state of universe
talk by Brian P Schmidt and a talk on the
recollection of Las Alamos and the nuclear era by Roy J Glauber.
The afternoon session started with a panel discussion on Quantum
Technology, namely Is Quantum Technology the Future of the 21st Century?
The message was yes, there are already quantum technologies in use (such
as atomic clocks) and it was unanimously agreed that this is an important task
for this century. It was decided that the closest applications were in quantum
sensing and it was agreed that big scale technologies, such as quantum
computers will be difficult tasks to build. William D Philips said that it is
important that we don’t decide on a single platform too quickly. Everybody’s
contribution is important as a final platform for a quantum computer may well
be a coupling of two or more ideas. I personally believe photons are precious
particles for coupling but as Philips’ later discussions suggested, we do not
know much about coupling two different platforms yet.
This was the end of the scientific days and the last day was a gateway
to another nearby island, Mainau, where we had a panel discussion on The future of education in science. It was
interesting to hear that in Israel, Dan Shechtman has initiated a programme for
preschool kids to start talking about science. It is not so they understand the
world as it is but is a good way to make kids look at everyday events from a
different perspective and excite and interest them in STEM at an early age.
Brian P Schmidt mentioned that he lost one of his favourite students as she
found the University system to be un-collaborative while private companies
provided better infrastructures to help develop new partnerships. Carl E Wieman
is a keen advocate of science education and he discussed his research findings
on science education and their efforts in changing the curriculum to make it
more engaging for young people.
If I had not mentioned it before, Nobel Laureates were everywhere. The
young scientists could talk to them and have a picture with them either after a
discussion talk or even at the end of long tiring day after the social
dinner or event. Here are some of the pictures I collected during my Lindau
meeting:
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Picture 4: Pictures with Nobel Laureates. (Top line) I am standing
next to Hiroshi Amano, Dan Shechtman and Theodor W Hänsch (from left to
right). (Bottom line) Serge Horoche, David Wineland and Klaus von Klitzing
(left to right.)
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I am sure I could write another few pages at least but I think it is
time to stop here. If you are reading this blog as a potential participant of
the Lindau meeting, please get in touch. As a Lindau alumnus I would be very
pleased to help with any process.
You can find all the lectures by Laureates and panel discussions at the
66th Lindau Physics Nobel Laureate meeting here.
Thanks for reading!
Döndü
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#LiNo16
#NobelMeeting16
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1. It seems every country has different procedure for the application
process but this was my personal experience from University of Bristol, here in
the UK.
2. You can find more details on the meeting following this
link where they also explain in details application and the selection
process.
