Burns conference 2022

Recently the School held its conference for students on the module PH3014 Transferable Skills for Physicists. Most of the class opted to attend the version of the Conference held a the Burn House, near Edzell. Almost 60 students spent the weekend there with around 14 staff. The Burn House and associated estate is owned by an educational charity, and has been hosting “reading parties”, “research retreats”, and the like, since the middle of the last century. Our Burn Conference runs in a similar way to many professional conferences, with four parallel sessions of talks, and time for networking and social activities. Due to the pandemic, voluntary social distancing was made possible, and all participants were required to take, follow all government guidelines and report a Covid test before departure and at the start of each day of the Conference. Fortunately none tested positive in our time there.

Talks ranged from “Treating cancers with proton beams” to “Anti-de-Sitter/Conformal-Field-Theory (AdS/CFT) Correspondence, and from “Habitability in the Trappist-1 System” to “A greener future – renewable energy systems”. Many of the talks were excellent, and there were some good discussions. Social interactions included those at a group quiz, at the table-tennis and snooker tables, during a hike in the hills, strolls in the estate, croquet and tennis, and at meals and in the bar. An updated version of Trivial Pursuits was kindly donated for a competition in large teams. Students told us that they very much appreciated the chance to get to know better other members of their class.