ICPS 2007 Venue
All lectures, workshops and the AGM will take place on campus, as well as some of the evening events. Meals will be in the UCL refectory. All locations on campus are no more than 5 minutes walking distance apart. There will hopefully also be some tours of the research facilities in the Physics & Astronomy department.
The UCL campus is about 10-15 minutes walking distance away from the conference accommodation. Some evening events will take place at the University of London Union (ULU), which again is only 5-10 minutes away from both the main campus and the accommodation.
Background
UCL was founded in 1826 as only the third university in England after Oxford and Cambridge. It was the first university to admit students of any race, class or religion, and the first to admit women in 1878. The first student union of England was also established at UCL in 1893. Furthermore, a number of subjects were first taught systematically at UCL, amongst them modern foreign languages, law, architecture and medicine.
Today, 19,000 students from more than 140 countries study at UCL in 72 departments, with over 4000 academic and research staff employed. Famous alumni of UCL include Alexander Graham Bell (inventor of the telephone), Mahatma Gandhi (Indian political and spiritual leader), Ito Hirobumi (the first Prime Minister of Japan) and Junichiro Koizumi (Prime Minister of Japan until recently). The founding father of UCL, Jeremy Bentham, whose ideas inspired the campaign to build the university, still sits in the main building inside a wooden case, it having been his wish to be conserved and displayed there. According to rumours he still attends meetings from time to time...
The department of Physics & Astronomy has existed in some form since the university was founded. It was the first department at UCL together with Chemistry to allow women to attend classes in 1869. One of the most famous alumni of the department is William Bragg (Nobel Prize 1915, X-ray diffraction in crystals); furthermore John Ambrose Fleming, professor of electrical engineering at UCL, invented the first thermionic valve, making radio possible and marking the birth of modern electronics.
The department comprises four main research groups:
- Atomic, Molecular, Optical and Positron Physics, including several high performance laser labs and the world's only positronium beam
- High Energy Particle Physics, including collaborations at most of the major particle accelerators around the world, very topically of course CERN
- Condensed Matter and Materials Physics, which includes a collaboration with Imperial College in the recently opened London Centre of Nanotechnology, just adjacent to the physics department