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Read the report: Big Data Zone Report – November 2019 [PDF] The Big Data Zone was a themed zone supported by the Institute of Physics. It featured five scientists: Sreejita Ghosh is a PhD student developing a machine learning program which can identify rare diseases of the adrenal gland. Sam Lawrence is a space scientist looking at patterns of galaxies to try and understand the physical laws that govern the universe. Kate Winfield is an environmental data scientist archiving and preserving data from weather reports. Anastasia Aliferi is a PhD student in forensic genetics, working on methods to find out how old someone is by looking at drops of their blood. Adam Wootton is teaching AI systems to search through data and find damage, in order to repair roads and bridges.

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The Time Zone was a themed physics zone supported by the Institute of Physics. In the zone were:

• Zoe Wimshurst, the zone winner, who works with athletes to help them improve their vision, see things more quickly and increase the amount of time they have to make a decision based on their sight.
• Hamid Ohadi, an experimental physicist who works with mirrors and lasers to test new theories.
• Kai Guo, who works with satellites to find the position of objects on the ground.
• Claire Greenwell, a PhD student researching super massive black holes.
• Jose Eliel Camargo Molina, who tests different particle theories and how they link to the collapse of the universe.
• Hannah Collingwood, who works on time issues in various large projects such as the Square Kilometre Array.

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Read the full report The Gravity Zone was a themed zone, funded by the Institute of Physics. In this zone, students met five scientists including Scott, a PhD student researching theoretical physics and Ryan, who is studying explosions caused by black holes and neutron stars. Maggie is a researcher at the European Space Agency mapping out dark matter, Hannah is a PhD student studying gravitational waves and black holes and Daniel studies the data from gravitational wave detectors and simulations. Students in this Zone were very engaged with theme of gravity and space in general, with a mix of both factual and conceptual questions. All of the scientists were great at explaining sometimes quite complicated topics in a way that younger students could understand, especially within the fast paced Live Chats. The topic seemed to really capture the students’ imaginations and the Chats were lively with lots of positive reactions … Continue reading →

Read the full report The Medical Physics Zone was a themed zone funded by The Institute of Physics and The Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine. Sarah is a trainee medical physicist specialising in radiotherapy physics, Mohan is a clinical scientist helping put radioactive drugs inside patients for diagnosis and treatment and Jen is also a clinical scientist who focuses on processing images of patients who have taken radioactive drugs. Dan, the winner of the zone, is a postdoctoral researcher using sound waves to detect diseases like cancer and Christopher is a PhD student looking at how to design more advanced MRI scanners. Students connected with the topic and discussed some of the issues rising from using the technology needed in medical physics. There were some personal conversations on how medical physics relates to cancer and cancer patients, including members of the students or scientists’ families. Students were also … Continue reading →

READ THE FULL REPORT The Medical Physics Zone was funded by the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine of which Paul, Mobeen, Jennifer and Greg were members and the Institute of Physics. Mobeen and Jennifer were members. Paul researches new ways of using light to treat skin diseases, Mobeen is working on ways of imaging the brain to pick out age related diseases, Laura is a clinical vascular scientist who studies arteries and veins, Jen is a radiotherapy physicist and Greg is researching new ways to detect cancer. The zone was quite busy with a higher than average amount of questions approved and answers given, although just 70% of students who logged in were active throughout the event. There was a lot of interest in health and disease, especially in the cancer research focus of the scientists.

READ THE FULL REPORT The Osmium Zone was funded by the Institute of Physics. It was a general science zone where some of the scientists taking part had all previously studied physics but were now in roles outside of traditional academia and research that still required the science skills they had learnt. For example, Aaron, who has an undergraduate degree in physics, is a communications officer for the Royal Academy of Engineering, Keith now works for the National Nuclear Laboratory as a diplomat at the British Embassy in Tokyo, and Abbey is a mechanical engineer at Renishaw PLC. Popular themes with students were the varied careers of the scientists, and different areas of physics, both related to these careers and on broader topics. The live chats were often busy and Natalie did particularly well in them, contributing 1,178 lines in total, the most of any scientist in November’s zones. Both Natalie … Continue reading →