PHY Annual Symposium 2023 – Celebration of Physics was held with great success on 8 June 2023 (Thursday).
It is crucial to maintain this event every year. As it is designed to connect our students and faculty members and celebrate their achievements in the past academic year, it has become an essential and integral part of our department’s tradition. It has been CityU Physics' annual signature event since 2019. It not only provides a platform to showcase the research achievements of PHY students, but also promotes the collaborative research culture across the department.
The first event of the day was the poster presentation, which featured a total of 27 poster submissions submitted by students from different academic levels: 3 posters from undergraduate students (UG category), 9 posters from MSc students (MSc category), and 15 posters from PhD students (PhD category). This was the opportunity for students to present their research findings that they had worked on over the year to their peers and faculty members, and engage in face-to-face discussions on their topics. The attendees voted for their favourite poster among the 3 categories; 1 from UG, 2 from MSc and 3 from PhD. The Best Poster Awards were later presented at the Symposium based on the votes from all attendees (50%) and evaluations from the Selection Committee chaired by Professor Liang Dai (50%).
Professor Chun-Shing Lee (Provost and Deputy President, CityU) kicked off the Symposium with welcoming remarks after the poster session. This year was particularly special as we could have the event face-to-face for the first time since the pandemic. We were honoured to have 4 external speakers and 2 faculty members who gave inspiring talks on various topics, such as single biomolecule electronics, radiotherapy, quantum computing, and superconductors. One of the highlights was Professor Fuchun Zhang (Director, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), a condensed matter theorist, discussed the recent experiments in favour of the plain vanilla RVB scenario and commented on the recent numerical simulation results in the Keynote Talk.
Between the talks, we also celebrated the achievements of our students and faculty members. We presented 2 student awards, namely the Distinguished Final Year Project (FYP) Awards and the Best Poster Awards. Mr Tsz Him Choi & Mr Tsz Hin Hui both received the FYP Awards for their outstanding work on FYP. Moreover, Mr Tsz Him Choi also won the Best Poster Award (UG Category). The MSc category winner was Miss Xiaoshuang Zhong and the PhD category winners were Mr Weiyi Guo, Mr Ke Huang, Mr Cheuk Yiu Wong, Mr Yuzheng Wu, and Mr Sai Zhao. Professor Liang Dai and Professor Qi Liu were honoured with the Faculty Service Awards 2022/23 for their remarkable work in managing the MSc Program in Applied Physics of high quality in terms of admissions, teaching and learning in 2022/23. In addition, they took the lead in organising two topical workshops held in May 2023, and both workshops were well-received.
This year’s Annual Symposium was a special occasion, as it marked the first face-to-face Annual Symposium since the pandemic. The participants were full of energy and enthusiasm. We owe this success to the hard work and dedication of the Organising Committee, the generous support from the speakers, participating staff and students. We would like to express our sincere appreciation and gratitude to them all!
28 Jun 2023