Let’s Talk About Science: The Nepalese Winter School

For the first time in Nepal, the International Centre for Theoretical Physics’ Physics Without Frontiers team organized a high energy physics Winter School in partnership with Tribhuvan University. The five-day event was also supported by the US CMS collaboration and Kathmandu University together with Nepal’s Ministry of Science and Technology.

Physics Without Frontiers works to inspire, train and motivate physics and mathematics students in developing countries to build the next generation of scientists. The Winter School culminated with ‘Let’s Talk About Science’ open day showcasing events that engaged the public in discourses related to science and integral to the progress of scientific communities. The main part of the School consisted of 9 lectures ranging from Introduction to Particle Physics, Standard Model, Physics beyond the Standard Model, to careers and opportunities. Physicists from the CMS and ATLAS experiments, Ajeeta Khatiwada, Kate Shaw, and Mario Campanelli, and Sean Kuvin from Argonne National Laboratory led lecture sessions, problem and discussion sessions and a hands-on masterclass in which the students learned to analyze real LHC data.

Over 200 people attended ‘Let’s Talk About Science’ day, where students displayed posters showcasing the research work going on in the university. In parallel, two sessions were held with the first being a panel discussion on ‘Women in Science’ with panelists that included representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Tribhuvan University, Dhulikhel Hospital, Tri Chandra Campus, Women in Science and Technology, Kathmandu University, and CMS Experiment to discuss how to promote women’s involvement in science.

The second session was a Physics Slam competition where 11 participants from the Winter School took up the challenge of explaining their research work or interesting scientific questions to the public in 3 minutes or less.

The Physics Without Frontiers’ team has organized Masterclasses and interaction programs annually in Nepal since 2014, in Kathmandu and districts beyond. From previous Masterclasses, Santosh Parajuli and Mahesh Thakuri attended the CERN Summer School and Yadav Kandel attended the ICTP Summer Program in Condensed Matter Physics. Parajuli later completed his M.Sc. thesis analyzing the ATLAS data in the framework of “sandwich” M.Sc. program at TU, supported by ICTP.

The commitment shown by local institutions together with the interests of Nepali scientists led to the Nepal government signing the International Cooperation Agreement with CERN in 2017. In June that same year, Nepal became the first state to host the South Asian High Energy Physics Instrumentation workshop [1]. ICTP hopes to continue partnering with Nepal in its mission to foster the growth of advanced studies and research in physical and mathematical sciences.

Abha Eli was the coordinator of the ICTP Physics Without Frontiers 2018 – Nepal team.

Group photo of the Nepalese School

[1] http://cerncourier.com/cws/article/cern/69904