Introduction
Stellenbosch, a hometown to wineries in the west of South Africa, hosted the sixth annual Inter-Continental Advanced Materials for Photonics (I-CAMP) in June 2014. This town is located 50 kilometres east of Cape Town and surrounded by Drakenstein and Stellenbosch mountains. Stellenbosch has been named after its founder, Simon van der Stel, the last Commander and first Governor of the Cape Colony, the Dutch settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa.
Stellenbosch University (Universiteit van Stellenbosch and Universiteit Stellenbosch in Afrikaans), a world-class public university located in Stellenbosch, was the venue for the I-CAMP’14, from 15 to 29 June. This university has had numerous notable alumni such as Friedel Sellschop, pioneer in the field of nuclear applied physics, and Uys Krige, famous writer, poet and playwright.
The I-CAMP is an annual school that brings together both prominent and junior scientists and allows them to combine advanced education with learning about different cultures worldwide. This summer it mainly welcomed scientists, researchers and professors working in materials science, energy, optics, photonics, biophysics, nanoscience and related fields.
Although the I-CAMP’14 took place during the winter in South Africa, the excitement of FIFA World Cup along with moderate temperature allowed attendees to have a great time during this school. The Jonkershoek Nature Reserve and Hottentots-Holland Mountain are incredible places to hike. And Stellenbosch University Botanical Garden is a great example of sightseeing destinations in this town. The social life in Stellenbosch gathers mostly in the city centre, where people enjoy walking, sitting and socialising ().
Figure 1. The I-CAMP 2014 took place in Stellenbosch, Cape Town. The photos show the top left, Sunset in Green Point; top right, panorama of Cape Town from the top of Table Mountains; middle left, panorama of Stellenbosch from the top of Hottentots-Holland mountain; middle right, a view of Hottentots-Holland mountain; bottom left, shore line in Muizenberg; and bottom right, the shore line in Simon’s Town. The photo courtesy of the authors.
The school provided accommodation for attendees at Dagbreek, the largest and second oldest hall of residency of the University of Stellenbosch. The most distinctive element in this hall of residency was its Eiffel Tower (or Die Eiffel), which residents found quite comparable with the French version.
The I-CAMP’14, similarly to previous I-CAMPs, was financially sponsored by the International Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter (ICAM-I2CAM), National Science Foundation (NSF) and University of Colorado Boulder (CU-Boulder). Because of scientific contributions from various highly regarded universities and research centres from different countries across the world, it has established itself as one of the world's best summer schools in terms of technology and scientific techniques.
In addition to the aforementioned sponsors, local sponsors contribute support as well. These have in previous years included the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the only federal laboratory dedicated to the research, development, commercialisation and deployment of renewable energy and energy efficiency, in 2012, and Isaac Newton Institute of University of Cambridge, a very well-known international research institute for mathematics and theoretical physics, in 2013. This year, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), a tertiary education and research institute in Muizenberg, South Africa, sponsored and hosted this event for the last 2 days.
Figure 2. The I-CAMP’14 participants in front of Physics Department of University of Stellenbosch.
In 2014, the I-CAMP convened more than 40 undergraduate and graduate students, postdoc fellows and lecturers, from all across the world (). The typical educational background of the students was physics; however, chemists, engineers and a few mathematicians attended this event. Although the registration fee was reasonably affordable, thanks to the bountiful support of the sponsors, a considerable number of the participants also received fellowships that included the lodging with complementary breakfast meals as well as conference receptions and school tours for the entire duration of the I-CAMP.
Technological advances in the education system are a remarkable characteristic of I-CAMP. The real-time webcast of the lectures gave the opportunity to follow the summer school online for those who could not attend in person. Moreover, the records of the presentations are now archived; thus, they can be watched and downloaded, anytime of the year, from any part of the world. This archive is available online at http://spot.colorado.edu/~smalyukh/icamp2014/ICAMP2014_Program.html.
The scientific program
Thanks to the organising efforts of Prof. Ivan Smalyukh, Professor of Physics at University of Colorado Boulder, Kristian Müller-Nedebock, Professor of Physics at University of Stellenbosch, and Mark Bowick, Professor in Physics at Syracuse University, the school kicked off on Sunday 15 June.
Prof. Bowick started off his lectures which he entitled ‘The hard science of soft matter’ with a quick overview on the history of soft matter. He concluded this lecture by saying that soft matter is interesting because of easy deformability, the possibility of multiple phases, extreme responses to small changes and the entropic dominance exhibited in soft matter. Next came the ‘amazing idea of the last century’ which was the idea of symmetry breaking. This discussion started with a challenge to the audience to solve the ‘opaque square problem’. The solution was one which broke the symmetry maximally.
Being a theorist it was now necessary to abstract, and so a theory with a certain symmetry group G and ground-state symmetry H was discussed. The ground-state space here is M = GH which can be thought of as a manifold. Interesting questions arose on the connectedness of this manifold, and he ended up giving two examples. The following lecture consisted of examples ranging from ferromagnets and liquid crystals to causally disconnected domains in the early universe. A highlight was the knot arising from crossing arms, folding hands and then trying to disentangle this when the index fingers clamp the nose.
Jonathan Selinger is Professor of Chemical Physics and Ohio Eminent Scholar at Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute. His research interests include the theory of liquid crystals, nanoparticle suspensions and other topics, connected with soft materials. In the course of his scientific work, he develops technological applications for fundamental statistical mechanics. During the I-CAMP Summer School, he conducted a series of four 1-hour-long lectures, titled ‘Statistical Mechanics of Liquid Crystals’. These lectures revealed to the audience the complexity of the mathematical description of liquid crystals properties. During his talks, Prof. Selinger touched on many topics. These included: basics, nematic director, coarse-grained description, optical properties, behaviour between crossed polarisers, nematic order parameter, interpretation of tensor, magnitude, Ising model, Maier–Saupe theory for phase formation and many others, all connected with liquid crystal mechanics. Moreover, whenever it was possible, Prof. Selinger showed to the audience computer simulations of the presented problems. Prof. Selinger is not only a world-renowned specialist in the field of liquid crystals, but also a very talented and dedicated teacher. He has a huge knowledge of the discussed issues, and he knows how to share this knowledge with other people. He is the type of person who is very involved in his research, and his enthusiasm for learning and science infects other people. By asking questions, Prof. Selinger involved the audience in his lectures, making them even more interesting. Before the beginning of summer school, he sent a message to all participants to find out how familiar they are with different liquid crystal problems, to be able to prepare more understandable presentations.
Robin Selinger is a Professor of Liquid Crystal at Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute, where she does computational and theoretical studies in liquid crystals and other soft materials. During her research, she examines topological defects and their role in transport and microstructure. During I-CAMP, she conducted a series of four lectures, titled ‘Topological Defects in Soft Matter: Simulation Models and Applications’. After the first minutes of the first lecture, it became apparent that Prof. Selinger was an exceptional lecturer and, moreover, that she could spread her passion for science all around the classroom. During her talks, she touched on many topics. She talked about computer simulations using XY model, Monte Carlo method, one way to make a random mesh, Gauss–Bonnet Theorem, ‘egg crate’ and torus models, baseball texture, etc. Once, she presented ‘boogie board’, a polymer-based device, which a user can write something on and then remove the inscription with a single button – it was a very interesting example of application of the discussed issues. Her lectures included interactive videos and simulations, making the material easier to understand and to remember.
Prof. Selinger was very socially open while interacting with I-CAMP participants. She spoke very intelligently and with passion. During these discussions, she often helped interlocutors with useful advice. Moreover, Prof. Selinger is involved in an outreach program at Kent State’s Liquid Crystal Institute, and she talked about this with pleasure revealing a lot of interesting information to the audience.
Prof. Ivan Smalyukh lectures focused on summarising the experimental techniques for generating and characterising field configurations in soft condensed matter systems and their interactions with light and topology of embedded surfaces. In the first part of the series of lectures, key concepts and experimental techniques that enable understanding and imaging topological defects in liquid crystalline phases were presented. Liquid crystalline phases are rich in bulk and surface point defects, and imaging the director field around these point singularities in a three-dimensional space is an essential component to understanding these topological defects. To this purpose, multimodal optical non-linear imaging processes such as coherent anti-stokes Raman scattering (CARS) and simulated Raman scattering (SRS) spectroscopy that enable label-free chemical-specific orientation-sensitive 3D imaging of director field were presented. Optical tweezers and magnetic trapping techniques that can generate forces strong enough to manipulate micron size particles/quasi-particles in the liquid crystalline phases were introduced. Applications of these techniques to image topological defects and non-trivial three-dimensional director field configurations were presented. A ground-breaking application of generating a stable toron, a Hopf fibration, using Laguerre–Gaussian (LG) laser beams in chiral nematic liquid crystals was demonstrated. At high powers of LG beams (>70 mW), these torons can be fixed in the space, and at relatively lower powers (30–70 mW), these torons behave like quasi-particles and exhibit Brownian motion and repulsively interact with each other, leading to formation of dense toron array and periodic ordering of torons. These torons are the first proof of physical existence of S3 in four-dimensional spaces. These experimental techniques were also used to demonstrate colloid–defect interactions in chiral nematic liquid crystals.
To understand the role of topology of the embedded surfaces on the type of defects nucleated, experimental director field structures in chiral nematic liquid crystals with embedded colloidal particles of different topologies such as spheres, spirals, handlebodies and knots were presented. It is important to note that the topological rules derived based on these experimental studies in liquid crystalline phases are not confined to the field of soft condensed matter systems, but have universal importance such as understanding cosmic strings and other topological defects in the universe in cosmology, vortices in super fluids and knots in light fields. This series of well-devised lectures presented efficient experimental techniques and demonstrated their applications as a valuable tool to generate desired non-trivial field configurations and characterise them in soft condensed matter phases.
Although the main topic of the I-CAMP 2014 was liquid crystals, there were also other subjects presented. One of them was mechanics of DNA molecules presented by Prof. Jean-François Allemand from École Normale Supérieure in Paris.
During his four speeches, Prof. Allemand introduced a lot of interesting problems – from basics about chemical structure and characteristic features of DNA to much more sophisticated topics such as DNA molecules mechanics. The first part of his lectures focused, in particular, on the comparison of models of entropic polymer chain elasticity (e.g. DNA). The next issue raised at I-CAMP by Prof. Allemand was supercoiling of DNA and the forces that appear in it. He also showed how they could be measured. Last but not least, he introduced us to the magnetic tweezers technique. All of the aforementioned subjects were a ‘prelude’ to this last, most interesting part of his lectures, which included Prof. Allemand’s inspiring scientific research about DNA micromanipulation techniques. These techniques, developed by him and his colleagues, can be applied in measuring forces that appear between strands of DNA and, surprisingly, can be used to recognise its bases sequences.
Despite the fact that Prof. Allemand is a well-known specialist, he is amazing as a person and an inspiring teacher. He always tried to involve students in his lectures with, in my opinion, a positive result.
Prof. Uroš Tkalec, from the University of Maribor and J. Stefan Institute, Slovenia, introduced us to liquid crystal colloids: suspensions of nematics and colloidal particles. When the particles are introduced into the liquid crystal, they induce topological defects in the director field. The particle surface can be prepared so that perpendicular or parallel alignment of the molecules is preferred. He showed us, depending on this preference, different defect configurations can form in the director field near the particles. In the case of preferred perpendicular alignment on the surface, the resulting elastic distortions in the liquid crystal director field cause the particles to interact with attractive dipolar or quadrupolar interactions, which enables to self-assemble. They can spontaneously order into chains and 2D lattice structures. This makes them interesting materials for photonic applications. Later on Prof. Tkalec lectured about entanglement in liquid crystal colloids. By melting the nematic phase around the colloidal particle(s) and then quickly cooling the system down, defect loops are formed. Most of them are quickly annihilated, but some stay. In the case of single particles, the defect loops will either encircle the particles as Saturn rings or shrink into point defects. In the case where there are several particles close together, they will get entangled by one or more defect loops that can make interesting knotted structures. Prof. Tkalec wrapped up his series of colourful lectures at AIMS with a talk on knots in liquid crystal director fields. During his four lectures, he took us into the world of liquid crystal colloids, showing us their physical properties as obtained through theory and experiment and their possible applications.
Prof. Muller-Nedebock, from University of Stellenbosch, introduced the conference attendees to ways of mathematically describing networks of polymers. He started off by showing very insightful animations of polymer chains of different excitabilities and gave us an alternative way of thinking about why a polymer will contract on being heated, namely because of the increase in the number of collisions of the particles in the surrounding medium with the polymer cause it to become more bent. His lectures then continued using chalk as he challenged the audience to think about how the introduction of a fixed cross-link to a simple system of two polymer chains would change the elasticity of the system. This was simple enough, but of course in nature there are various types of cross-links that can occur, and so it was necessary to think about active cross-linkers or cross-links like a ‘slipping link’. The question any physicist would want to ask at this point is what sort of partition function would describe a polymer network that has constraints due to cross-links or is knotted in a particular way, and so he went on to outline the basic methods to do this. The theme of knots was the topic of the last of the lectures in his series, which was given by Dr. Christian Rohwer. Dr. Rohwer explained the basic ideas of knot theory and gave us an overview of an alternative way of thinking about the classification of knots which involved deciding whether two knots are the same based on if it is possible to transform the one into the other using the Reidemeister moves.
During the second week of the I-CAMP, Prof. Tjaart Krüger, from the Department of Physics of the University of Pretoria, provided lectures on ‘Design principles in photosynthetic light harvesting’. Photosynthesis is at the root of all life on Earth. By converting light, water and CO2 into energy, nature can produce more than 100 TW a year. In comparison, humans produce 17 TW a year, from all sources of energy combined. Photosynthesis does not only occur on the surface of the earth but also deep down in the ocean. Some kinds of algae living at the bottom of the ocean, for instance, must be very efficient since only few photons penetrate to that depth. These species are a source of inspiration to create highly efficient materials able to harvest solar energy.
Complexes must have such organisation that can capture, convert and store the photon energy. All those steps occur in a very short time scale (<10 ns). High efficiency and light harvesting complexes should have a broad absorption profile and they must be efficient towards excitation and electron transfer, etc.
Prof. Krüger explained how to enhance the conversion by, for instance, using some pigment such as chlorophyll in order to achieve ultrafast energy transfer. He also put an emphasis on the role and mechanism of excitations. Later on, he explained a way to measure ultrafast kinetics using femtosecond pump-probe spectroscopy. Another powerful method to study the photosynthesis and its mechanism is the use of single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy. This is a sensitive tool to study complex biological problems and give information about the conformational states and their dynamics. Finally, he showed that energy regulation is an important point to take into consideration to improve crop efficiencies and bio-solar cell technologies.
Prof. Greg Grason, from the University of Massachusetts, delivered four talks related to ‘Order and frustration in filamentous matter’. Condensed matters are often described using simple geometrical models of matter. A simple geometry usually used is the hard spheres model. By packing them in a certain fashion, high density, low density (cluster) or even random packing, it is possible to estimate the physical properties of materials.
Based on this old theory, Prof. Grason described filamentous matters in a parallel way. In this case, geometrical objects are not more spheres but cylinder objects, in a ‘rod-like’ model. Filamentous matters are of interest because they can be found everywhere at a lot of different scales ranging from textiles to biological systems such as cells, DNA, and proteins.
During his set of lectures, he demonstrated how the properties of a material can be understood from the simplest geometrical models and how the packing geometry greatly influences the final properties of the system.
To achieve this, he introduced the topic by explaining the properties and behaviour of a filament in its individual state ‘worm-like chain model’ and how these single elements can couple to each other. Then, he emphasised the importance of understanding how orientation is related to position in structures and discussed how these geometrical connections lead to very generic and non-trivial properties. In the second part of his talks, Prof. Grason introduced the notion of chirality to the system. Chiral materials exhibit a twist, or screw, structure. He explained how the chiral order fits with the ideal 2D dense packing. He showed that different geometries can be obtained, such as simple twist, double twist, columnar twist, and that these structures will have different properties in terms of energy and elasticity.
Prof. Marchetti, from Syracuse University, focused her lectures on dynamics and non-equilibrium systems, recently referred to as active matter, as opposed to the equilibrium properties described in previous lectures.
She started off by explaining what motivated this field from the very beginning, which was interestingly the behaviour of shoals of fish along with the phenomena of flocking of birds. Prof. Marchetti showed some exciting movies illustrating several examples of different systems at different scales from the living and non-living world, including cells, bacteria and even recently fabricated synthetic systems which were built and designed to mimic some of the functions and capabilities of living systems. This generic introduction was followed by specific examples of how these materials can be described theoretically, or, in other words, how to model these systems.
The first model she presented was the Vicsek model, used for modelling the flocking transition, followed by its corresponding continuum model, the Hydrodynamic model of flocking, also known as the Toner-Tu model. Finally, she described the model of active colloids, modelled by self-propelled (SP) particles, which is very useful to gain a simple understanding of what makes active systems so particular from equilibrium systems.
In the last couple of lectures, Prof. Marchetti described the hydrodynamics of active liquid crystals and spent a significant amount of time explaining their topological defects, due to the special and interesting behaviour they exhibit. Many examples of occurring instabilities in active nematics were also given along with the description of this behaviour in terms of dynamics of topological defects.
Prof. Halina Rubinsztein-Dunlop, director of the Quantum Science Laboratory at the University of Queensland Brisbane, Australia, gave a great series of lectures on optical vortices and optical tweezers. She explained how powerful this tool can be and how versatile the applications are.
Optical tweezers are used to trap and manipulate particles ranging from nanometre to micrometre size in a controlled way. It is possible to displace and align them in a precise manner in 3D. To create those optical tweezers, Gaussian laser beams are mainly used. In the narrowest part of the beam, also called the waist, there is an intensity gradient force. By controlling the intensity of the gradient, the power of the laser beam and the shape and size of the particles, it is possible to trap particles into the optical vortices. The particle will then move to the most intense part of the beam which is the centre.
Later, Prof. Rubinsztein-Dunlop explained that this technic has been further developed and has found many more uses. Optical vortices can be used as optical stretchers, used for instance to study the viscoelastic properties of dielectric materials. They can also be used to measure molecular bounding forces, to study picolitre rheology of gaseous media or even to measure orbital angular momentum. Along with those theoretical studies, optical vortices are used in the creation of micromachines. Prof. Rubinsztein-Dunlop has shown that it is also possible to induce rotation to elements. This can lead to light-induced micromotors, for instance. Furthermore, optical tweezers can easily be integrated into microscopes and in microfluidic devices.
During the I-CAMP’14, each participant had a chance to present their work. Two poster sessions were held in order to showcase the areas of expertise and active projects of the attendees. In addition, eight researchers were selected to give short oral presentations during the I-CAMP.
Social activities
During I-CAMP’14, various exciting social activities were organised to give time and opportunity for the participants to get together to establish new friendships. The vast diversity of attendees from all over the world, with different educational and cultural backgrounds, was a valuable source of experience that could broaden the perspective of everyone. Mainly, the timing of FIFA World Cup 2014 gave a unique environment to this I-CAMP.
African culture and foods were a large part of the participation experience. The excellent nature and beautiful mountains around Stellenbosch motivated the I-CAMP’14 participants to explore new pathways to the peak on a daily basis.
The location of AIMS, Muizenberg, also provided a great chance to see one of the most amazing shore lines of South Africa.
Most of the participants also visited Cape Town and the Cape peninsula, Durban and Johannesburg. Some of the many unforgettable experiences included visiting Cape Point, where two oceans meet, hanging out with penguins in Simon’s Town, viewing Cape Town from the top of Table Mountain, spending some time with sharks during shark diving, greeting cheetahs and lions on safaris, a fantastic sunset at Green Point, and watching baboons and seals in the Cape of Good Hope ().
Figure 3. The pictures taken during social activities. The photo courtesy of the authors.
Anne, a PhD Candidate at Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, the Netherlands, found the social activities during the weekends exciting, even though she suggested that some of the activities should have been planned by locals so that attendees could experience an even wider range of people. This way attendees might have reached a bigger group of people. During the week, social activities in the evening were quite limited, but this might be due to the night coming early.
She liked the city tour and mountain climbing the most, mainly because a big group of people joined, and it was a great opportunity to talk about work and cultural difference in a nice atmosphere.
I believe that this school is a great way to widen the network but also to discover what is done in universities around the world. Even though it was not my field of expertise I could find groups working on very interesting projects which might be of interest for future positions.
She explains that two major goals of hers before going to I-CAMP were:
Discovering techniques related to liquid crystals and how to control defects and understand to what extent they could affect the properties and topology of my system.
Meeting people in that field and sharing with them knowledge and ideas.
And now she is fully satisfied, having achieved both of her goals.
In addition, she remarks on the followings as strong points of the I-CAMP’14:
Multicultural
Very good lecturers scientifically talking but also open for further discussion
Topics of interest/actuality
Interesting panel discussions (when well lead)
She will attend future I-CAMPs, depending on whether the focus is relevant.
Farah, another attendee of I-CAMP’14, and a graduate student in Microelectronics and Nanotechnology Engineering at the Faculty of Science and Technology of the New University of Lisbon (FCT-UNL) believes that the social activities held at I-CAMP were one of the most fruitful events to occur during the summer school. The school gave participants the opportunity not only to get to know one another but also to develop good and long-lasting friendships.
She thinks that there were many enriching social activities during ICAMP’14, but the ones she found most enriching were the poster sessions, since they enabled great interactions amongst all participants. During these sessions, students were able to show and discuss their research projects and areas of interest and acquired new ideas and insights as well as constructive feedback.
Farah also states that besides having already benefited immensely from attending this school, she believes it will have a highly positive impact on her future career since it has given her a much clearer direction towards what she wishes to achieve, as well as good contacts and most importantly great friends with similar research interests, with whom she looks forward to working with in the near future.
The I-CAMP summer school not only opens doors to a wide range of opportunities but also provides some of the essential tools and knowledge to achieving success.
Farah’s main goals for attending this school were definitely achieved and included learning more about some of the fields of science she is most passionate about as well as experiencing learning in a different environment, surrounded by students from all over the globe and internationally renowned professors.
She found the main strengths of the school to be:
The opportunity to interact with leading researchers in your field of interest
Making great contacts and friendships
Sharing and acquiring scientific knowledge
Gaining new insights on your own research and of course exploring
Experiencing different cultures
She is confident that she will attend the following I-CAMPs for yet another unforgettable and international experience.
Janusz who is an MSc student in condensed matter physics at the University of Stellenbosch enjoyed socialising with the group, which was a lot more social than one would expect from a group of scientists.
I think that the interaction allowed for exchange of ideas above and beyond science. Ideas about how to go about starting a career in science. Personally, I found the poster session to be the greatest for hearing about each other’s research in a very relaxed environment.
He wishes to pursue his PhD in the USA. His goal for the conference was to learn about the mathematics that describes soft matter systems and to have conversations with senior researchers that could provide him with research opportunities in the future. He thinks he has reached both of these goals.
Janusz also would like to attend the I-CAMP next year depending on funding and the specific topic of the conference.
Yogesh who is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Mathematical Sciences, University of Southampton in the United Kingdom believes that social activities organised during the summer school facilitated a higher degree of interaction between the participants and the expert lecturers. Career guidance and experiences shared by the experts during these social activities are a valuable addition to the technological knowledge dissemination during the lectures.
As a Chemical Engineering graduate working on numerical simulations of continuum models for liquid crystals during my graduate studies, he lacked a formal introduction to experimental techniques and statistical mechanics of liquid crystals. He attended I-CAMP hoping to gain some knowledge in these areas. The lectures during the summer school introduced the audience to liquid crystals from experimental/theoretical/numerical simulation/application point of view. Now he is very satisfied with the summer school and his objectives for attending the summer school are fulfilled.
I have better understanding of liquid crystal physics from both experimental and theoretical points of view after attending I-CAMP. The knowledge gained and professional contacts made during this summer school will positively impact my future career.
The poster sessions and weekend outings amazed him the most. He found the right balance of well-planned lectures and social activities as the strong points of the schools.
Amir, a PhD candidate in System and Control Engineering at Case Western Reserve University, thinks that I-CAMP is a great friendly atmosphere that merges ideas from everywhere in the world. The I-CAMP, in some sense, opens a new window to the young researchers’ future by bringing them great hopes and clear visions.
I found the I-CAMP a very unique place, so unlike almost any other school in the world. It is such a pure excitement filled with 100% positive energy to be surrounded by a number of talented and motivated people. Ever since I became part of I-CAMP, my hopes and dreams got far higher, but reachable! And every day I do my best to get a step closer to them.
He has attended three I-CAMPs, and every year there is a lot to learn for him. And he sees the I-CAMP as more than just a school. Amir calls the I-CAMP a worldwide spread family of which the members get together once a year. He hopes this annual summer school continues, and plans to attend the upcoming ones.
Konrad, the only undergraduate student, remarked that the different social activities were a very important part of the I-CAMP Summer School 2014. The school provided essential breaks and rest from everyday lectures and allowed the participants to regain strength and to be able to better participate in discussions. The participants were able to participate in many different activities, such as sightseeing Stellenbosch and Cape Town, hiking on trails located in the local mountains (Hottentots-Holland Mountain Catchment Area), learning about outreach programs in other countries, or jogging in the morning.
He, personally, was satisfied with the visit in Cape Town, which students spent 2 days in.
Aside from the knowledge that I gained during the school, I met many interesting, friendly and intelligent people. Moreover, participation in the I-CAMP motivated me to study harder, because it made him think very seriously about starting PhD studies in the future.
He is sure that attending the I-CAMP will affect his future scientific career and also pointed out the followings as strength points of the school:
Good organisation of the school
Learning many interesting and new things from the best specialists from all over the world
Developing your future career
Improving your language skills
Meeting very friendly people there
Learning the culture of other nations and visit exotic places
Marusa, a PhD student in the Soft Matter Laboratory at the J. Stefan Institute in Slovenia, loved going out to dinner and having fun with I-CAMPers and running in the morning (even though she managed to get up in time only twice) as well as the trip to Cape Town. She wishes she had time to join the crew of the ‘seeing the penguins’ tour. She did, however, expect some more social activities to be organised by the school.
She thinks that attending I-CAMP will affect her career, mostly in the sense that now she knows young people from different parts of the world working in different groups on different problems, but still in the same area of research. Through talking to some of the other attendees, she already got some new ideas regarding her current research.
We did learn a lot in the school but still I think the most important thing is the network we built.
She did not really have any specific preset goals regarding the school. However, she was very glad that she attended it, having learned much about soft matter and having made contacts with other attendees.
She found two major strength points of the school. The first one is the amount and quality of lectures on soft matter from great, well-known and respected professors. In classical physics education soft matter often does not get enough space, so it is important that an emphasis on this topic is available in a school such as I-CAMP. The second strength point is of course bringing together young and experienced scientists, which enables making worldwide scientific networks.
Mieszko, a graduate student in Physics at Wroclaw University of Technology, thinks that social activities were an essential and inseparable part of the I-CAMP.
I think social activities was even more important than scientific part of the event. It was a possibility to meet students, scientists and people from different countries and cultures which allowed us to improve our social and language skills.
One of Mieszko’s favourite activities was enjoying the FIFA World Cup in Southern African pubs and bars. Visiting Cape Town was also an unforgettable experience for him. He highlights that although he had not even considered to do his PhD before going to I-CAMP, after it he changed his mind and wants to continue his education to a higher level. Therefore, I-CAMP had a big influence on his future scientific career.
Mieszko found the followings as strength points of the I-CAMP’14:
Location of the summer school
Very good organisation
The worlds best specialists as lecturers
Opportunity to meet students and scientist from all over the world
Possibility to know different cultures and countries
And indeed, he will attend upcoming I-CAMPs.
Conclusions
The authors of this article believe that participating in the I-CAMP 2014 was a fantastic experience from both the scientific and the social perspectives. It was a good opportunity to learn, exchange ideas and meet prominent researchers with common interests as well. The priceless friendships continue, waiting for the next I-CAMPs.
The authors also would like to sincerely thank all the organisers for arranging this excellent event: Ivan Smalyukh, Kristian Müller-Nedebock, Mark Bowick, Jan Engelbrecht and Izak Snyman.
As always before, the authors suggest everyone to become an I-CAMPer who is willing to become a remarkable member of world science society and to experience a wonderful summer school.