Welcome!
Fourth Joint Helmholtz-Rosatom School for
young scientists at FAIR.
Report: Fourth International FAIR School:
From September 6-13, 2015 the Fourth International FAIR School (the successor of the Joint Helmholtz-Rosatom School) took place in Castiglione della Pescaia, Italy. The school was supported by the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF), the Helmholtz Graduate School for Hadron and Ion Research (HGS-HIRe for FAIR) and the FAIR Russia Research Center (FRRC). The BMBF support was realized via the BMBF-FSP 212 “NUSTAR.de”.
The scope of the school was to bring together young scientists working on the physics of the Facility of Antiproton and Ion Research, especially from the two biggest shareholders Russia and Germany.
Here, the German side was represented by students from BMBF funded groups all across Germany, the Russian side was represented mostly by students connected to the FRRC program funded by GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung and Kurchatov Institute.
Additionally several Polish and Indian students attended the Lecture Week. In total students from 12 nationalities participated in the 4th International FAIR School.
The program covered all scientific pillars of the FAIR program, especially focussing on the large collaborations, i.e. APPA, CBM, NUSTAR and PANDA. Each topic was covered in one day, highlighting the experimental as well as the theoretical issues. Two additional days covered the accelerator complex itself and the IT infrastructure of FAIR.
Group picture of the 4th International FAIR School
The day started with two lectures by internationally renowned experts. Due to the experience and the input from the HGS-HIRe program coordinator excellent lecturers could be found, who did not just use old presentations, but rather created presentations especially suited for the audience. This was very important due to the very diverse research backgrounds of the audience. Whenever possible, lectures were offered both on the experimental side and also on the underlying theory stressing the importance of both parts.
The afternoon was then devoted to a prolonged discussion session and group work. Given the experience with previous lecture weeks, it is quite hard to make sure that students from different countries get to know each other and discuss
outside their usual peer group. Thus they were mixed up (by country, gender and research topic) to make sure they use the opportunity and build connections over the course of the week. This was even more stressed than in previous editions of the FAIR School, by mixing the student groups during the week. During these group projects in the afternoon they worked on exercises and projects handed out by the lecturers of the day. Given the variety of scientific backgrounds some students could handle the questions of the respective day better than others, however due to the mixing of the groups each group had the needed expertise to go through the exercises and projects. Since the topics changed during the course of the school each student could contribute at some point of the school. The projects ranged from knowledge based questions, literature work, calculations to small programming projects and ensured a vibrant and stimulating learning environment. The size of the groups was set to five to six students, which has proven to be a good group size for such activities in previous schools.
Students listening to the lectures.
During the evening the answers of the different groups were collected and discussed with the lecturers of the day. Since the students were eager
to present their results and asked many more questions than anticipated this session regularly ran overtime. The resulting discussions were of a very high scientific level, which was noted by the lecturers at several occasions. Usually the discussions then went on over dinner.
Students discussing with one of the lecturers
The projects ranged from knowledge based questions, literature work, calculations to small programming projects and ensured a vital and stimulating learning environment.
The size of the groups was set to six to seven students, which has proven to be a good group size for such activities in previous courses in the HGS-HIRe schedule.
During the evening the answers of the different groups were collected and discussed with the lecturers of the day. Since the students were eager to present their results and asked much more questions than anticipated this session regularly ran overtime.
It should be noted that the resulting discussions were of a very high scientific level, which was noted by the lecturers at several occasions. Usually the discussions then went on over dinner.
Student working during the group work session
In order to improve further lecture week the students were asked to evaluate the program afterwards. In an anonymous online survey the students were asked to rate the week according to four criteria: Impact of the course, Course content, Organization and Quality of the lectures.
The possible answers were:
- Very Poor (1)
- Poor (2)
- Fair (3)
- Good (4)
- Very Good (5)
Above the numerical answers of the online survey. Overall the students rated the lecture week to be excellent, which also can be seen in the comments which have been made.
Quotes from the online student survey:
“It was my first summer school, so I don't have any comparison. The organizers were very helpful, kind and friendly. Whole school was really good prepared, lectures were interesting even for people who hadn't any contact with FAIR and GSI before. Activities prepared for students were very thought-provoking and provoked very lively discussion. Place of school and hotel were beautiful, we had free time to rest, meeting and discussions with other participants. With many people who I met at this school, we plan a meet, even if every of us live in other country. We still keep in touch. It will be for me a great pleasure to take part in such school again. I highly recommend to everyone.”
“The School was really nice, especially the group discussion session was very useful. Even though I shall be working on a particular aspect of the FAIR project, I had a fair idea of all the other aspects of the FAIR project too.”
“The whole school was astonishingly great! I believe it really inspired and interested every participant with the FAIR project.”
“This school gave me great opportunity to talk with people from different countries about FAIR :) Overall impression - perfect school. I learnt more about future FAIR experiments and modern fields of physics. I'm not sure that the school was useful in my scientific field, but it was useful to make contacts with people interested in physics.”
It should be noted that the Fourth International FAIR School was a huge success and led to many fruitful collaborations and connections between the students themselves and between the students and the lecturers. We believe that these kind of schools are an important aspect of a truly international PhD education. It is crucial to continue these events, however due to their large scale they are not possible to finance without additional funding from e.g. BMBF, Kurchatov or Rosatom.
The directors of the school, Frankfurt am Main,
Sascha Vogel
Hans Gutbrod
The list below above the participating students and their home institutions alphabetically. Positions 47-62 (in bold) are lecturers and organizers.
| 1 | Valentin Agababaev | St. Petersburg State University |
| 2 | Oleg Andreev | St. Petersburg State University |
| 3 | Evgeny Anikin | Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology |
| 4 | Anastasia Bakhmutova | Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow |
| 5 | Sayani Biswas | Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai |
| 6 | Daria Bochek | Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk |
| 7 | Sofia Bukreeva | nstitute for High Energy Physics, Protvino |
| 8 | Mario Cappellazzo | Universität Köln |
| 9 | Konstantin Cistakov | Universität Frankfurt |
| 10 | Santwana Dubey | Universität Mainz |
| 11 | Eduard Friske | University Tübingen |
| 12 | Bo Fu | Universität Köln |
| 13 | Andres Gomez | Universität Frankfurt |
| 14 | Ivan Gorelyshev | Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna |
| 15 | Jens Harzheim | TU Darmstadt |
| 16 | Sebastian Heil | TU Darmstadt |
| 17 | Gabriele Inghirami | Universität Frankfurt |
| 18 | Lukasz Iskra | Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Krakow |
| 19 | Irina Ivanova | St. Petersburg State University |
| 20 | Pavel Kisel | Universität Frankfurt |
| 21 | Pavlos Koseoglou | TU Darmstadt |
| 22 | Yury Kozhedub | St. Petersburg State University |
| 23 | Grigory Kozlov | Universität Frankfurt |
| 24 | Janina Krieg | TU Darmstadt |
| 25 | Bo Ram Lee | Universität Köln |
| 26 | Konstantin Lyachchenko | Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk |
| 27 | Aleksei Malyshev | St. Petersburg State University |
| 28 | Karina Martin | Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk |
| 29 | Ievgeniia Momot | Universität Frankfurt |
| 30 | Aleksandr Nikolaev | Far Eastern Federal University |
| 31 | Mykhailo Pugach | Universität Frankfurt |
| 32 | Stefan Reinicke | Universität Dresden |
| 33 | Yury Rogovskiy | Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk |
| 34 | Pratap Roy | VECC, Kolkota |
| 35 | Sofya Rymzhanova | Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna |
| 36 | Sergey Ryzhikov | Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino |
| 37 | Martin Schmidt | Universität Tübingen |
| 38 | David Schneiders | Universität Köln |
| 39 | Alexander Senchenko | Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk |
| 40 | Nikolay Shurkno | Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna |
| 41 | Zuzana Slavkovska | Universität Frankfurt |
| 42 | Anne Spende | TU Darmstadt |
| 43 | Vinzent Steinberg | Universität Frankfurt |
| 44 | Ina Syndikus | TU Darmstadt |
| 45 | Milad Tanha | Universität Frankfurt |
| 46 | Kamila Zelga | Jagiellonian University, Krakow |
| 47 | Mohammad Al-Turany | GSI |
| 48 | Dima Anuchin | FRRC |
| 49 | Marcus Bleicher | FIAS, University of Frankfurt |
| 50 | Christian Fischer | University of Giessen |
| 51 | Hans Gutbrod | FRRC, GSI |
| 52 | Andreas Heinz | Chalmers University |
| 53 | Dieter Hofmann | TU Darmstadt |
| 54 | Mariya Kosolapova | FRRC |
| 55 | Alessandro Marchioro | CERN |
| 56 | Paul Neumayer | GSI, University Frankfurt |
| 57 | Elisabetta Prencipe | FZ Jülich |
| 58 | Boris Sharkov | FAIR |
| 59 | Rüdiger Schmidt | CERN |
| 60 | Markus Steck | GSI |
| 61 | Christian Sturm | GSI |
| 62 | Sascha Vogel | FIAS, HGS-HIRe |