Young Photonics Congress 2024

If you’re a high school student (grade 7-12), you can present your research project to other students or to scientists from ICFO.

We accept projects by individuals or teams of up to 5 members.

The topic of the project should be related to photonics and/or ICFO research topics, like for example:

• light and its applications;
• advanced materials (like, for example, graphene);
• microscopy;
• nanotechnology;
• quantum science and technology;
• light applications for health and life sciences;
• light applications for information and communications;
• light applications for energy and the environment.

If you’re not sure if your project fits into the Young Photonics Congress, contact us at outreach@icfo.eu.

To submit a project, you must fill in this form with the following information before January 29, 2024:

• personal information (name, surname, email) of the person who is going to present the project and of the teacher who supervised the project. If it’s a group project, each member of the team shall fill in a registration form;
• a short abstract of the project in English. It must have less than 300 characters and briefly explain the objectives, methods and results of the project.

In addition to that, you must send us the following files via email before February 19, 2024:

• a poster describing the project in pdf format (check the Instructions for the posters section);
• an imatge that represents your projecte in landscape orientation (900×500 pixels).

We’ll contact you a few weeks before the congress to confirm your participation and provide you with more details.

Curious and inquisitive people that are eager to discover more about photonics and learn from other students are a fundamental ingredient to the success of the Young Photonics Congress.

According to the participants of past editions, the Young Photonics Congress is the ideal place to get some inspiration, so don’t miss this opportunity even if you don’t have a project! If you’re a teacher, you can apply to participate with as many students as you wish.

The Young Photonics Congress has limited places: we’ll give priority access to people presenting a project. Sign up through this online form before February 19: you’ll join the waiting list and we’ll confirm you your place during February 2024.

Language

The poster can be either in English, Catalan or Spanish. Take into account that ICFO is a very international place,  so it’s possible to find people here that understand English better than the other proposed languages.

Format

We’ll need a digital version of the poster: we’ll take care of the printing and you’ll find your poster waiting for you in the conference hall on the day of the congress.

Please prepare your poster in pdf format with an A0 (841×1189 mm) page size in portrait orientation.

An easy trick to check in advance if people will be able to see everything correctly is to print your file on a A4 paper. If you can read easily with the A4 paper in your hand, then most likely it will be easy to read on a larger paper from a couple of meters of distance.

Basic information

Don’t forget to put these things:

• Title of the project
• Name of the authors
• Name of the supervisor of the project
• Name/logo of the school

Content

A poster is like a visual summary of your work: use the graphical elements to help the reader to understand your project.

Remember to explain:

• the motivation
  (i.e. why the topic is interesting and relevant)
• the objectives of the project
• the materials and methods used for the research
• The results of the work
• Conclusions

Text and fonts

• Avoid long paragraphs and long lists.
• Don’t mix many fonts: you can play with the size and use larger fonts for titles and smaller text for less important information.

Colors

• Avoid using too many colors.
• You can find the perfect color scheme using a palette generator from the web.

Images

• Try to use visual tools (graphs, illustrations, graphical elements) instead of text whenever you can.
• There are several free icons or photos repositories on the web if you need them (e.g. Flaticon, Wikicommons, Unsplash, Pxhere, …).
• If you put an image that is not yours, remember to check if you have the license to use it and to credit correctly the author.
• For plots, check that all labels are easy to read.