Outreach

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MASTERCLASS

IGFAE hosts a Masterclass in particle physics in spring every year. During this activity, we invite Galician high school students to participate and become high energy physicists for one day. The students take a day off from school to analyse data of the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under the supervision of IGFAE scientists. At the end of the day, the students discuss the obtained results in a video conference other scientists at CERN or Femilab, and with other participating institutes from around the world. This gives students the experience of working in an international collaboration, which is part of CERN’s everyday life.

The Masterclass at IGFAE is part of an annual program called International Masterclasses. Scientists at about 210 universities and laboratories host Masterclasses at their home institutions. The Masterclasses this year are organized from February until April in more than 50 countries worldwide.

More information: http://igfae.usc.es/masterclass/

MASTERCLASS “Day of Women and Girls in Science”

IGFAE believes it is essential to promote the full and equitable access and participation of all people in science. Moved by this same principle of equity, the General Assembly of United Nations proclaimed February 11 as the “International Day of Women and Girls in Science”. For the second year in a row, IGFAE joins this anniversary with an event aimed at female high school students.

The objectives of the masterclass are, on the one hand, to bring female high school students closer to the work of the researchers of the institute, thus making visible the scientific work carried out by women and promoting scientific vocations in girls. A series of introductory lectures on current Particle Physics will be given. In addition, a computer training will be done in groups with real data from a CERN experiment. Later, the results will be discussed by videoconference with CERN and other European centers that partcipate in the event simultaneously.

More information: https://igfae.usc.es/masterclass_women_in_science/

STORIES AT WEATHER FORECAST TIME

In autumn 2015 a crew of the TV station VTv (grupo La Voz de Galicia), lead by Xavier Fonseca, traveled to Geneva, Bern and Berlin accompanied by IGFAE researchers to record two special series of the TV program “Historias del Tiempo”. This program gives the weather forecast every night at 9pm accompanied by a short five minute scientific report. The two video series consisted of one set of nineteen episodes to commemorate the centenary of Einsteins’ General Relativity and an special of eleven Particle Physics programs focused on CERN activities and beyond. These videos were shown on TV during spring, summer and fall of 2016 and also linked from “La Voz de Galicia” web page attaining tens of thousands of visions.

The scientific advising of the videos was done by José Edelstein, Javier Mas and Cibrán Santamarina (IGFAE) and the special was partially funded by IGFAE and Vicerreitoría de Comunicación e Coordinación of USC. Xavier Fonseca was awarded the VII CPAN outreach prize in the video modality for the CERN series of these specials. The two series of videos can be seen in his youtube channel.

SCIENTIFIC SUMMER CAMPUS

Every year, members of the Department of Particle Physics of the University of Santiago de Compostela and the Galician Institute of High Energy Physics participate in the Summer Scientific Campus  through the program “A Ponte entre o Ensino Medio a USC” of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The Summer Campus Scientific Program is organized by the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports, with the support of the Obra Social “la Caixa”. The purpose of this program is to promote the interest of students in 4th ESO and 1st year of Bachillerato in Spain for science, technology and innovation, and encourage access to scientific-technical qualifications.