The Casimir Spring School took place from 12 - 14 June in Arnemuiden, Zeeland. On the first day around noon, 2 busses arrived with a total 120 PhD students and postdocs. Part of the participants presented their poster or gave a talk about their scientific research work. The posterprize was won by Fei Pei for his poster "Valley-spin blockade and spin resonance in carbon nanotubes". The best presentation was given by Akira Endo "DESHIMA: On-chip Filterbank Spectrometer for Submillimeter Wave Cosmology". The invited speakers Karl Berggren (MIT), Dieter Braun (LMU), Niek Lopes Cardozo (TUE) and Jean-Noël Fuchs (Univeristy Paris-Sud) presented their work and joined the spring school. Diederik Jekel gave an interactive workshop on "Science and Media". Of course there was also time to get to know new people from other research groups (Delft/Leiden) during Sailing for example. The program was organized by the Casimir PhD Platform especially for PhD's and postdocs.

Here's how Vincent Mourik, one of our PhD students, experienced the school:

" The biennial Casimir Spring School was held this year in Arnemuiden from 12 till 14th of June. After a transfer of ~120 young scientists (phD's and postdocs exclusively) by bus from Delft/Leiden the scientific program started with a talk by Dieter Braun about the relation between biomolecules and thermal gradients. After a welcome by Jan van Ruitenbeek the first session with various speakers from Leiden and Delft followed. During the after dinner session, Diederik Jekel gave an enthousiastic and entertaining workshop on science and media. So many talks in one day makes you feel thirsty: it was party time! The next day started with a theory talk by Jean-Noel Fuchs on the properties of graphene, followed by a session of talks from the participants. Luckily the sun started shining just in time to enjoy the nice wind in a sail boat and we enjoyed sailing on 'het Veerse meer'. The last talk of the day was by Karl Berggren on single photon detectors. After a disastrous soccer match we were in desperate need for another good party. Thursday morning started with the 3th and last session of talks from Delft/Leiden people and the final talk was by Niek Lopes-Cardozo on nuclear fusion. Then it was time to reflect: the prize for best talk was earned by Akira Endo (Physics of nanoelectronics group, TU Delft) and Fei Pei (Quantum Transport Group) got the prize for the best poster. In general, this springschool was a great opportunity to share your research with people with various backgrounds from within our universities and of course to have lots of fun together during the various social activities. We're looking forward to the next one!"