Correlated Electrons GRC

I attended the Gordon Research Conference on correlated electron systems this past week, and it was my first attendance at one of the GRCs. I was very impressed with it and hope to return to more of these in the future.

Some observations and notes from the meeting:

1) The GRC is a closed meeting in the sense that no pictures of slides or posters are allowed to be taken at these meetings. This policy is meant to create the ‘Vegas Mentality’, i.e. ‘whatever happens at a GRC stays at a GRC’. I see the value of this framework in the sense that it results in a more free and open exchange of ideas than what I’ve seen in at other conferences. I will therefore eschew from discussing the more technical topics presented at the meeting and concentrate on some rather more sociological observations.

The Vegas mentality at this meeting makes discussions feel even more transient than usual. There is a sense in which this is excellent, in that attendees are permitted to communicate ideas that they don’t understand fully or are speculative without too much judgment from their peers. Feedback and discussions can often resolve these issues or result in suggestions on how to make certain moon-shot ideas tangible.

2) There was a healthy interaction between students, postdocs and professors at the conference, which is usually screened out at the day-to-day level at many universities. These interactions are useful, especially for the younger parties, whose usual interaction with faculty don’t extend too far beyond their advisers. This is accomplished at the conference by inviting a high proportion of early career scientists so that the older ones find it difficult to form cliques.

3) From speaking to many people at the conference, it seems like a common theme is solving the notorious problem of the coupled oscillator (or two-body problem), where both husband and wife are searching for academic positions. One of the attendees at the conference humorously encouraged me to refer to the problem as a ‘two-body opportunity’. It seems like universities are trying harder to address these issues (such as having offices dedicated to solving couples’ employment), but there were still a couple rather horrific anecdotes told on this front. The workforce demographic is changing rapidly, and universities should really be leading the way on addressing the pressing issues on this front.

4) There was a gas leak from some construction work at Mt Holyoke College, the site of the meeting. This resulted in the evacuation of the dining hall during dinner. Many grabbed their plates and proceeded to eat outside, resulting in a rather unique and memorable culinary experience.

5) SciPost is now in full-swing and is accepting articles for submission. One of the attendees was instrumental in turning the idea of an open-access online journal for physicists into reality. I have written on this blog about SciPost previously, and I am hugely in favor of the effort.

Aside: I was heartened by Brian’s recent post on creating a more open and accepting culture among physicists and recommend reading his views on this issue.