On Thursday 6 June, ten international MSc students arrived in Delft for the Casimir Open Days, where they were welcomed by Casimir Director Christophe Danelon and Casimir coordinator Marije Boonstra. The two-day program started with an introductory presentation about the Casimir Research School, and information about what life is like when doing PhD research in the Netherlands. Next, the visitors spoke with several PhD students and postdocs about their research in the Bionanoscience department. After that, PhD student Nicole Imholz and PI Marie-Eve Aubin-Tam showed them the state-of-the-art labs. Next item on the program was the lunch with the former participants of the Open Days, who are now running their PhD project in Delft, Sonaksi Aurora and Kostas Tsoukalas. In the afternoon, the group visited several labs at QuTech and in the Quantum Nanoscience department, where they also had two talks from PIs about the research that they do in Delft. Hereafter, the students had several individual interviews with PIs on their program. In the evening, the group traveled to Leiden for a short walking tour through the historical city center, followed by a nice dinner in one of Leiden's restaurants. Two Leiden PhD students joined the group for dinner, and afterwards they took them to another bar to meet and have a couple of drinks with 2019 Leiden Lorentz Professor Seth Lloyd.   

The following morning, Friday 7 June, the group was welcomed at the Leiden Institute of Physics, by scientific director Jan Aarts. After his talk, three PIs introduced the work they do in Leiden. After lunch, the group visited the Kamerlingh Onnes Laboratories, the new measurement hall, and several labs in the Huygens building. At 14:00 hrs, the students had several interviews with our Leiden PIs. Towards the end of the afternoon, Marije Boonstra briefly presented the recent data on the career paths of our former PhD students and there was some time for questions.

We look back at two enjoyable days! We would like to the students for visiting us. We are also very grateful for our own PhD students, postdocs and PIs for contributing to our program - without you the Casimir Open Days would not have been as successful!

More information
Please contact us if you would like to receive more information about the Casimir Open Days 2019 or if you would like to be informed about the next edition.