We prepare an ECGD newsletter, which the LHCb secretariat kindly attaches to the Weekly News that they circulate every Friday afternoon. For ease of access, we also collect these newsletters here below.
Please contact us if you have news that you would like us to include into one of our upcoming newsletters.
2020:
2019:
First of all, we hope that all of you and your family and friends are safe. Just a small reminder that we have put in place a public mattermost channel that we hope could become a network to share advice, news, help (also to feel less alone for those that may be stuck far away from family). ECGD will also act in this period as a center of collection of urgent questions to give insights and support to our collaborators, do not hesitate to reach us at our emails olafs@physik.uzh.ch and francesca.dordei@cern.ch or lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch.
Don't miss next Tuesday meeting, 7th April 2020, where the CERN Director for Research and Computing Prof Eckhard Elsen will give a short report on how CERN is dealing with covid-19. Topics that Eckhard will briefly touch are:
- present situation at CERN doe to covid-19
- prospects for the restart of the activities
- situation of the contracts and subsistence at CERN
In particular, we invite everyone to send questions and remarks to Giovanni and/or Chris, they will make sure to convey them to Eckhard during the meeting. We think that this is a great opportunity for early career colleagues that might have lot of questions for the CERN management. In case you want to stay anonymous, you can send the question to us (Francesca and/or Olaf) and we will forward it.
To combat the feeling of isolation that some of our colleagues may be experiencing, and in addition to the various interlocutors (supervisors, colleagues, various professional and personal networks, e-resources) the HR Department is proposing additional services to support well-being. Moreover see https://hse.cern/content/faq-covid-19 for a complete list of FAQ on covid-19 (login required).
Please, as usual, find below some tele-activities that you can do at home! A big (virtual) hug to all of you!!
SOMETHING TO READ:
- What if we can learn something from this pandemic?
- HR-L&D team has created a learning catalogue Working Remotely that contains many e-resources (Articles/Blogs/Videos/E-learnings) on how to work, learn and keep well remotely. More support/learning materials will be added in the coming days/weeks (including in the French language).
- For those of you able to understand Italian (or willing to learn!) here some interesting links:
- Free download of comics related to science
- Particle land: A series of facebook directs thought especially for high school students on several physics topics, now running until the 6th of May.
- For children from 6 years old up to 13 years old you can instead have a look here.
SOMETHING TO WATCH
- TED Connects: Community and Hope is a free, live, daily conversation series featuring experts whose ideas can help us reflect and work through this uncertain time.
We hope that all of you and your family and friends are safe. Just a small reminder that we have put in place a public mattermost channel that we hope could become a network to share advice, news, help (also to feel less alone for those that may be stuck far away from family). ECGD will also act in this period as a center of collection of urgent questions to give insights and support to our collaborators, do not hesitate to reach us at our emails olafs@physik.uzh.ch and francesca.dordei@cern.ch or lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch. Please find below some tele-activities that you can do at home! A big (virtual) hug to all of you!!
Data visualizations
- Beautiful interactive data visualizations about economical inequality
- Data visualizations about educational inequality
- ...and of course about COVID-19
Learn at home
- HR-L&D team has created a learning catalogue "Working Remotely", which contains many e-resources (Articles/Blogs/Videos/E-learnings) on how to work, learn and keep well remotely. More support/learning materials will be added in the coming days/weeks (including in the French language). The other good news for some of us are that limited number of additional licences for Udemy for CERN will be available via the CERN Learning Hub as of March 23rd. Existing online offer include:
- O'Reilly - 50,000 e-books/audio books/videos on a wide range of IT/Personal Development/Managerial topics
- Bookboon - a wide range of e-books on personal and professional development topics
- CERN Library - online books, journals and databases (what will come soon is one month FREE TRIAL of the LinkedIn Learning platform; more news to follow with HR-L&D team) - Fighting COVID-19 with Epidemiology, a Johns Hopkins Teach-Out : This free Teach-Out is for anyone who has been curious about how we identify and measure outbreaks like the COVID-19 epidemic and wants to understand the epidemiology of these infections.
- National Instruments: Until at least 30th of April all NI courses are free and available.
- Academic Training (AT) Programme and the Colloquia Online: Please enjoy 24 of existing CDS lectures, from various disciplines, with subtitles, on this channel.
We hope that all of you and your family and friends are safe. Just a small reminder that we have put in place a public mattermost channel that we hope could become a network to share advice, news, help (also to feel less alone for those that may be stuck far away from family). ECGD will also act in this period as a center of collection of urgent questions to give insights and support to our collaborators, do not hesitate to reach us at our emails olafs@physik.uzh.ch and francesca.dordei@cern.ch or lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch. Please find below some tele-activities that you can do at home! A big (virtual) hug to all of you!!
Tele-Visits
- Pinacoteca di Brera - Milano
- Galleria degli Uffizi - Firenze
- Musei Vaticani - Roma
- Museo Archeologico - Atene
- Prado - Madrid
- Louvre - Parigi
- British Museum - Londra
- Metropolitan Museum - New York
- Hermitage - San Pietroburgo
- National Gallery of Art- Washington
Tele-sport
Tele-WIT events
- WIT Talk with Pippa Wells
- Interview with Pierre Gildemyn
- WIT Talk with Grace C. Young
- WIT Diversity Talk with John Ellis
A short reminder of the fact that we are all invited to vote for the next LHCb Physics Coordinator at the following web-page: https://lhcb-condorcet.web.cern.ch/lhcb-condorcet/PCelection2020/. The Vote is open between 12:00 (CET)m today and *** 11:59 on 25th March ***. We believe that this is a great opportunity to raise your opinion and express your preference.
Due to the pandemic spread of Covid-19, in an increasing amount of Countries home-working is becoming mandatory or highly suggested. Thus we would like to suggest some readings and things to watch to keep you busy. Stay safe!
Readings:
- Almost 90% of Men/Women Globally are biased against Women: The Gender Social Norms Index, released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), measures how social beliefs obstruct gender equality in areas like politics, work, and education, and contains data from 75 countries, covering over 80 percent of the world?s population.
- Did first female-majority legislature in US make a difference? Find out five areas Nevada legislated on in 2019 - which commentators say were helped by the fact there were more women at the table.
Things to watch:
- Where is all the antimatter? | Unsolved Mystery in Physics. This is a YouTube interview with LHCb and ALPHA researchers discussing matter-antimatter asymmetry for Dr Becky's YouTube channel. Featuring Mark Williams (LHCb), Tara Nanut (LHCb) and April Cridland (ALPHA).
The International Women's day (8th of March) is approaching and LHCb found the best way to celebrate it! After exactly 10 years from the first edition, a second version of the ?Women in LHCb? poster has been prepared to celebrate the International Women?s day (8th of March). The poster is displayed in the LHCb coffee room and you can follow below a high-resolution pdf version of the poster (public access). Thanks a lot to all the women that contributed with 115 pictures from almost 30 nationalities and to the wonderful poster team: Dana Bobulska, Paula Collins, Agnieszka Dziurda, Eva Gersabeck, Alessandra Giovent, Suzanne Klaver, Nicole Skidmore, Eluned Smith, Aleksandra Snoch and Maria Vieites Diaz!
On a similar topic, you can find the following readings for the weekend:
- A courageous and determined young woman talks about her experiences going through Female Genital Mutilation and the need to undergo a reconstructive surgery on her genitals.
- Be lady, they say (which was really viral this week)
- Practical, positive steps men can take to challenge our norms and help create a better, healthier and more inclusive culture of masculinity.
- Katherine Johnson, NASA mathematician portrayed in Hidden Figures, dies at 101
- Girls excel in STEM courses<>/a>
For the International Women's Day there are two initiatives that you cannot miss:
Events:
Readings:
- in LHCb we will make a 10 year anniversary edition of the "Women in LHCb" poster currently viewable in the LHCb coffee room (https://www.instagram.com/p/B8bH-pRpIrT/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link). All interested women can sign up in the doodle https://doodle.com/poll/35f72bw8mz478k8k and submit the picture (640x480 pixels at least) by Wednesday 4th March at the following link https://cernbox.cern.ch/index.php/s/VeA4C2TnwRihoGW with the file name
- You could also join WIT in #EachForEqual
- CERN-based meetups to discuss and solve algorithmic problems and optimizations w.r.t time and space complexity. They are held every Tuesday at 18:00 in the room 2/R-030. Mailing list to subscribe: coding-meetups@googlegroups.com. The meetings tend to be heavily attended by men; it?s up to all interested people to balance this!
- Film Screening and Debate, 09 March 2020, 18:15 - 21:00, Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Maison de la paix, Geneva. The 2020 Oscar-nominated documentary The Cave recounts the incredible work of Dr Amani Ballour and her colleagues in an underground hospital in the besieged Syrian city of Eastern Ghouta. In addition to a shortage of electricity and medical equipment, Dr Ballour tries to do her job, despite some patients refusing to be treated by a woman. For more info https://graduateinstitute.ch/communications/events/cave
For German-speaking readers of our newsletters do not miss:
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Next week there will be the 95th LHCb week (https://indico.cern.ch/event/882947/). Do not miss the ECGD session (https://indico.cern.ch/event/891251/) on Tuesday, 25th of February, at 15h00 CERN time. We will talk about successful mentoring programs and we will have a quite dense and super interesting menu, so please join and bring your ideas!
Do not forget the LHCb Startertalk, this time on "Basic practices of scientific writing", given by Eliane Epple. It will be the 26th of February, from 16h:30 to 18h (note the unusual time!) in room 13-2-005. More info here https://indico.cern.ch/event/882947/#b-363954-startertalk.
Talking about Mentoring, the WIT mentoring program is about to start! It is open to everyone with the clear motivation to work on their personal and professional development. Priority will be given to female colleagues but they will try to accommodate as many people as possible. Do not hesitate to apply! You can go to the informative session to learn more about the program on 6th March at 13h: https://indico.cern.ch/event/888854/. For more information you may also check https://women-in-technology.web.cern.ch/mentoring.
Back in November 2019 there was a one-day early career researches (ECR) debate at CERN to discuss the 2020 European Strategy Update for Particle physics. Many young researchers from LHCb participated in the debate. Recently, a document that summarises the discussion has been published on arXiv (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2002.02837.pdf) and CDS (http://cds.cern.ch/record/2708708). Stay tuned, because a report on it will happen soon in a Tuesday meeting.
This week, the 11th of February, CERN and the entire world celebrated the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (https://en.unesco.org/events/international-day-women-and-girls-science). At LHCb, on the 11th of February there was a special LHCb masterclass for women with a video-conference with LHCb female researchers at CERN, see https://physicsmasterclasses.org/index.php?cat=women_in_science.
- "Scientists and engineers with diverse backgrounds and interests are key for progress in science and technology, and for the benefit of wider society. The untapped potential of young girls not even considering technology as a possible curriculum, and of female scientists who decide to switch careers because of obstacles, represents a loss of opportunities." Read the entire joint letter to support women working in high-performance computing (HPC) in Switzerland signed by CERN openlab CTO.
From the 6th to the 15th of March there will be the 18th International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights in Geneva, see https://fifdh.org/en.
For those close to EPFL (Lausanne) the 5th of March there will be "Journée Internationale des femmes: Visons la lune?, see https://www.xing-events.com/JRDJRBE.html.
Readings for the weekend:
- Guess how high is the percentage of Women in STEM workforce! And female students? What about the ones in Engineering and technology? Have a look here (https://www.stemwomen.co.uk/blog/2019/09/women-in-stem-percentages-of-women-in-stem-statistics) to see if you got it right (UK only)!
- Seeking symmetry among physicists https://physics.aps.org/articles/v13/13?utm_campaign=weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_source=emailalert
The 11th of February is approaching and CERN will celebrate the International Day of Women and Girls in Science (https://en.unesco.org/events/international-day-women-and-girls-science). This day is implemented by UNESCO and UN-Women to recognize the critical role women and girls play in science and technology. As LHCb, on the 11th of February there will be a special LHCb masterclass for women with a video-conference with LHCb female researchers at CERN, see https://physicsmasterclasses.org/index.php?cat=women_in_science.
You can also help promoting the role of Women in Science and inspiring the next generations! Check the videos that will be published in the next days where you can follow some of our scientists and engineers as they show you behind the scenes of the work they do at CERN. Share with your friends and family. The first one is ready: https://www.instagram.com/s/aGlnaGxpZ2h0OjE3ODY2Nzc0MDQyNjE1ODk5igshid=1qhb0x77jyka8&story_media_id=2235947011073324884_1517077572.
An interesting initiative, if you feel like a muggle at CERN not understanding Physics, is an open discussion where physicists are eager to answer everything you always wondered! The first enlightening discussion is about the Standard Model: https://indico.cern.ch/event/885865/, IdeaSquare on Tuesday 11th February at 18h.
Readings for the weekend:
- The "African Girls Can CODE" initiative uses a "spark interest" approach to attract young girls towards coding at early stages, when they are contemplating about future careers. Upon completing the program the participants receive enough knowledge, skill and competences to encourage them to have a second look at ICT as a possible career option: https://www.agcci.org/about.html.
- Switzerland has no legislation affording protection to LGBTIQ (lesbians, gays, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex) as a community. On the 9th of February people will be asked to vote about it, see https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/vote-february-9--2020_homophobia--a-crime-or-a-matter-of-opinion-/45438692.
- "Cernoises and Horrible Cernettes", an article about women at CERN from 1954 to 2017
Yesterday, 30th of January, the first meeting among ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb Early-Career representatives took place. Several topics have been discussed, we will report the outcome of this meeting at a shortcoming Tuesday Meeting dedicated to the ECGD activities.
We would also like to point your attention to this interesting initiative: "Women?s Accounting Leadership Series? for those of you that are around Geneva on the 11th of March 2020: https://www.imanet.org/events/womens-accounting-leadership-series?ssopc=1; during this event it will be possible to learn more about leadership, work/life balance, emotional intelligence, unconscious bias and much more.
The Commission on Particles and Fields (C11) of IUPAP solicits nominations of outstanding young experimental or theoretical particle physicists for the two 2020 Young Scientists Prizes. All material should be submitted before February 1, 2020 at 12:00pm CET. The prizes, each consisting of an IUPAP medal and a cash (EUR 1000) award, will be presented at the 39th International Conference on High Energy Physics, Prague, Czech Republic on July 30 - August 5, 2020. More information: http://indico.cern.ch/e/c11-ysp-2020.
Important! The talk advertised last week for Monday 27th of January on Diversity about Gender Pay Gap at CERN, recent surveys for CERN fellows and staff, CERN parental leave and the challenges of recruiting a diverse workforce in a scientific environment is POSTPONED until spring.
Finally, some readings for the weekend:
- article about biases with respect to gender and skin tone found in widely used face recognition datasets: http://proceedings.mlr.press/v81/buolamwini18a/buolamwini18a.pdf;
- All the Single Ladies: Job Promotions and the Durability of Marriage https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/iuiwop/1146.html;
- Very in-depth study on ?What puts women off ICT? http://www.audentia-gestion.fr/cisco/pdf/Women_and_ICT.pdf;
- Women replace men on Geneva road signs https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/society/gender-equality-_women-replace-men-on-geneva-road-signs-/45499454.
In case you missed the announcement sent at the last weekly news: The Department of Physics at Princeton invites top early career women (postdocs and last-year PhD students) in Physics and Astronomy who are interested in careers in academia to apply for an expenses-paid, two-day workshop on Apr 16-17, 2020. See
We would like to bring to your attention the eument-net network (European Network of Mentoring Programmes), they organise interesting workshops during the year and they share interesting documents, see http://www.eument-net.eu/.
In case you missed the announcement sent by our secretariat earlier today: The Department of Physics at Princeton invites top early career women (postdocs and last-year PhD students) in Physics and Astronomy who are interested in careers in academia to apply for an expenses-paid, two-day workshop on Apr 16-17, 2020. See
The World Economic Forum have published their annual Global Gender Gap Report
See this article
In the US, a man has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for burning an LGBTQ flag
We wish you all happy holidays and a good start into the new year.
The latest issue of the CERN bulletin http://bulletinserv.cern.ch/emails/archive/480/ had several interesting articles: one on a Workshop on Energy for Sustainable Science at Research Infrastructures (https://indico.psi.ch/event/6754/) that took place at PSI in Switzerland end of November; one on the latest edition of "Elargis tes Horizons", an event at University of Geneva to promote STEM amongst young girls (http://elargisteshorizons.ch/); one on improving the accessibility of exhibitions at CERN; and last but not least one on the results of their survey amongst CERN fellows (see a presentation of results by James Purvis, head of CERN HR here: https://indico.cern.ch/event/846682/).
WIT are organizing a Diversity Talk with James Purvis for January 27 at 12h00. Save the date, they plan to address topics such as Gender Pay Gap and parental leave.
See here https://www.mpg.de/11723196/family-and-career what German Max Planck Gesellschaft say they offer towards the "reconciliation of family and career".
A big thank you to all those who contributed to the ECGD session on Tuesday afternoon. We'll get together in the coming days to discuss the suggestions and ideas you brought up in the many interesting discussions during the meeting and over coffee and cookies after the meeting. Thank you to Amelie, Cindy and Nathalie for organizing this again!
We'd like to remind you of the newly launched Laura Bassi initiative. Have a look at the slides presented by Eluned
Coming week is the LHCb collaboration week and we hope to see you at the plenary ECGD session at 14h on Tuesday. This time, we have invited the recently appointed Diversity officers of the ALICE experiment to introduce themselves; we have a presentation on the newly founded "Laura Bassi initiative" (see our mail from earlier today) and Francesca is going to present an interesting first look at the results of our survey. Please join us in the Filtration plant or on Vidyo and contribute to lively discussions. Other recommended events are an informal meeting with Barbara Sciascia, organized by the Laura-Bassi initiative at 12h20 on Wednesday (again, see our earlier message), and the Starter-Talk with Marianna Fontana at 17:00 on Wednesday (see Vitalii's mail earlier this week).
Monday, the "International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women" (
The first of WIT's "Best Ally" Christmas challenges is out at
CERN's Diversity and Inclusion office have issued a 1-page flyer summarizing support channels available in the event of experiencing or witnessing inappropriate behaviour, misconduct or harassment at CERN, see
On Tuesday, we had the LHC career event, with rather interesting presentations by and discussions with alumni, who made it in the real world. A particularly big thanks to LHCb alumni Alexandra Sanchez (now at EDF) and Barbara Storaci (now at UEFA). The organizers are still checking with the speakers if it is okay to make recordings of the live webcasts available on cds.
CERN's WIT have announced their "Best Ally Christmas Challenge", with which they would like to "contribute to raise awareness on sexual harassment in the working place". To participate, register at wit-matters via e-group. Also see their related article
Just found this 2014 study on parental leave:
Not exactly ECGD, but maybe worth mentioning anway, EPS have published a report on "The Importance of Physics to the Economies of Europe", see
We are looking forward to the LHC Career networking event, starting on Tuesday at 17h00 Geneva time. See https://indico.cern.ch/event/843605/ for the agenda and
The "Commission on Particles and Fields of IUPAP (International Union of Pure and Applied Physics)" have opened the call for nominations for their 2020 Young Scientist Prize, see
Ongoing in Geneva, "Les Creatives - festival pluridisciplinaire, feminin et feministe" ("par femmes, nous entendons toute personne se definissant comme femme, cisgenre ou trans"). See
You probably saw the announcement that our secretariat sent earlier today: registration for this year's LHC Career networking event closes on Thursday, November 14. So quickly visit
Earlier this week, Zurich's "Tagi" carried an article on Queer*z, a group of transgender students at University of Zuerich and ETHZ:
The ATLAS Early Career Scientists Board (ECSB) are organizing a cycle of networking events about key subjects for the future of young researchers, such as grant writing, cv, interviewing for a job, etc. The first of these is going to take place on November 6 and the topic is grant writing. See
A quick reminder also that registration is still open for the LHC career networking event on November 19, your chance to meet and discuss with people who left academia for the "real world". Visit
Two links to advice on how to make your poster or power-point presentation accessible:
Did we already mention that ALICE also have a diversity office now? Their first three officers are Ejiro Umaka, Adriana Telesca and Anders Knospe.
At the upcoming Tuesday meeting (Oct 29), you should have the opportunity to meet, and ask questions to, our remaining two spokesperson candidates, Tim Gershon and Chris Parkes. Don't be shy to make use of this, it is a great opportunity to voice your concerns to our next spokesperson. If you cannot attend or would like to ask a question anonymously, you can send it to Val Gibson or to one of your trusted ECGD officers and we will be happy to ask it on your behalf.
The BNL Physics Department are inviting applications for the "Leona Woods Distinguished Postdoctoral Lectureship", which they sponsor to "celebrate the scientific accomplishments of outstanding female physicists, physicists from under-represented minority groups, and LGBTQ physicists". Visit
Today's collection of links compiled by CERN's WIT (Women in Technology) group has this link: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/10/15/women-have-about-half-followers-men-twitter-and-otherwise-diminished-influence to an article discussing gender imbalance on Twitter.
And from Abhijit Mathad comes the pointer to this "Early Career Conference":
In case you missed the invitation by CERN HR: On October 29, Professor Vicki Culpin is going to give a presentation on "Sleep: The Wake Up Call" in the CERN Council Chamber. See the Indico page https://indico.cern.ch/event/852676/. There is going to be a webcast.
From last week's WIT newsletter: EPWS have published a book gathering articles from last year's conference on ?#WeTooInScience- Sexual Harassement in Higher Education Institutions and Research Organizations?, see https://epws.org/pisa-conference-book-donne-scienza-epws/.
A quick reminder of the LHC Career Networking Event on Nov 19, featuring (amongst other speakers) our former LHCb colleagues Christian Elsasser (now at SwissRe), Alexandra Martin Sanchez (now at EDF) and Barbara Storaci (now at UEFA). Visit https://indico.cern.ch/event/843605/overview to see the full programme and to register (registration is obligatory). We also try to organize a webcast for those who cannot be at CERN.
The ECFA "Working Group for Social and Career Aspects for the Next Generation" (and some of you think "ECGD" was an awkward name ;-)) have prepared a brief questionnaire on the topic of the attractiveness of HEP for young scientists. You are invited to fill in this survey at https://forms.gle/AKjHdPdqB2HMfG9t9.
Francesca started her term as ECGD officer on Tuesday and our as efficient as ever team at the secretariat have already updated the information on the ECGD webpage. Many thanks for this! To remind everyone, for general messages and suggestions you can write to us at lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch. Both ECGD officers have access to this email account as will have our successors. If you want to send us confidential messages, please use our personal email addresses,
Francesca is going to give an introduction to the ECGD at the upcoming StarterKit on October 23, have a look at https://indico.cern.ch/event/679791/ for the agenda and registration.
On Tuesday, we opened registration for this year's edition of the LHC Career Networking Event, which is going to take place on November 19. It is organized together with the other LHC experiments and the number of places is limited, so go to
The week of November 18-24 is also "global entrepreneurship week" https://www.genglobal.org/gew . The agenda for events in Geneva should become available at https://liberezvosidees.ch/ soon. Well-informed sources tell us that there are going to be sessions from and at CERN. Many thanks to Victor Coco for alerting us to this event.
Also related to career options, the CERN Yellow Report on "Study on the career trajectories of people with a working experience at CERN" has just been published at https://cds.cern.ch/record/2689210?ln=en. Barbara Sciascia is one of the authors.
Arantza's term on the ECGD is ending on Monday. A very big thank you to Arantza and a warm welcome to Francesca Dordei who takes over for two years on October 1st.
Our ECGD survey closed on Monday, thank you to everyone who filled it in. We hope to present results from the analysis during the ECGD session in December.
Elsewhere, CERN alumni is organizing their fourth "Moving out of academia to entrepreneurship" event on October 11; see
Finally, we hope you didn't miss Martha's reminder of the LHCb Starterkit on October 21-25.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the ECGD session on Tuesday: Chris Parkes for suggesting the topic and for his great help in organizing the speakers; the speakers, Allen Myles, Veronique Boisvert and Jonas, for their interesting and stimulating contributions; and all of you who contributed to the lively discussions. As was stressed several times during the session, we will be forced to worry about our impact on climate-change related issues sooner rather than later, so we'd better start adapting and developing strategies now.
Our ECGD survey is going into its very last days, so go to
The biggest news of the week, however, comes from last night's CB, where Francesca Dordei has been approved as the new ECGD officer, to succeed Arantza on October 1st. A big welcome and thank you to Francesca and many congratulations to all of us!
LHCb week is coming up and we'll have our plenary ECGD session on Tuesday, starting at 13h45. The topic this time is "Climate change and sustainability in particle physics". The agenda is available now on
Also in Oxford, the "autumn edition" of the LHCb startertalk will take place at 16h on Thursday. See Fabrice's announcement earlier this week and
Our ECGD survey is going into its last ten days now, we're planning to close it on September 23. Please participate at
Elsewhere, watch
Hasbro are launching a special edition of Monopoly, where players invest in women-created innovations rather than real estate and where the gender pay gap is reversed. Hasbro say that "the message is indeed a feminist one" but reactions are mixed, see for example
We just learned that ECFA are organising "a full-day event ... at CERN on 15 November 2019, to enable early-career scientists to debate the [next update of the European] Strategy [of Particle Physics]" (see page 4 of the ECFA newsletter circulated this week
Thanks, once again, to CERN's WIT newsletter we discovered
NASA are looking to hire a full-time Equal Employment Manager (Director, Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity)
And finally, of course, a reminder to please participate in our survey at
As announced on Monday, the 2019 ECGD survey is finally underway. Please go to https://lhcb-ecgd-survey.web.cern.ch/ and sign in with the anonymous account to participate. Deadline is SEPTEMBER 22, but there is no need for you to wait until the last minute ;-). Please contact us at lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch in case you encounter any technical issues or have general questions or feedback on the survey. Please contact us at our personal emails, oyangur@ific.uv.es and olafs@physik.uzh.ch, for any potentially sensitive questions.
Elsewhere, the Spring 2019 edition of n+1 magazine has an interesting essay on "Sexism in the Academy", including a long list of references: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/sexism-in-the-academy/.
Quick reminder of this year's Ice Cream event coming Wednesday https://indico.cern.ch/event/838486/. While Flavours of Neutrinos will be discussed in the presentations, flavours of ice cream will include Magnum milk, white, almond, and gluten free. The organisers will try to provide also sugar-free and lactose-free varieties.
As already announced by Martha earlier this week, the next LHCb StarterKit will take place at CERN from 21st - 25th October. To participate, please register at https://indico.cern.ch/event/679791/. The organizers are also looking for volunteers to help with the preparation and teaching. Please sign up at https://doodle.com/poll/xw57rbkbctswgkmh for teaching and at https://doodle.com/poll/zf8iziicmpduepes for helping. It's great to see that some 15 people have already signed up since Tuesday, but I m sure a few more would be welcome.
Thanks a lot to CERN's WIT group for alerting us to Josephine Baker and her "personal particle accelerator kit": https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/awesometech1/personal-particle-accelerator-advanced-stem-kit. For 300 USD, this could be your Christmas present this year. Don't miss the comparison with the LHC ;-).
On a much less happy note, see this article in Germany's ZEIT magazine on discrimination at the workplace: https://www.zeit.de/arbeit/2019-08/diskriminierung-ungleichheit-arbeitsplatz-sexuelle-belaestigung-gender-pay-gap-elternzeit. It's in German, but deepl.com will provide very reasonable translations. Just two of the many testimonials: "At the employment office I was advised: Maybe you should take the children and the doctorate from your CV" ; "Superior: I can hire a real man for such a salary".
It is time for holidays!... In case you missed them, you can have a look to our LHCb talks and other very interesting ones at the Summer conferences:
- EPS 2019, July 2019: Outreach, Education, and Diversity https://indico.cern.ch/event/577856/sessions/291387/#20190712
- DPF 2019, July 2019: Diversity and Inclusion https://indico.cern.ch/event/782953/sessions/302486/#20190801
A conversation over ice cream will be held at CERN on 21st August: Which flavour do you want your neutrino? https://indico.cern.ch/event/838486/overview
The ECGD session at the 93rd LHCb week in Oxford will be on Tuesday, 17th September. We have a special subject this time: the Climate Change. Please, don't hesitate to contact us to give any feedback.
And the ECGD query is almost ready... it will be available in the coming week.
Marina is going to present an ECGD talk at the 2019 DPF meeting in Boston next week. Many thanks Marina! We'll post the slides on our web page soon. It's encouraging to see that more and more big conferences have sessions dedicated to diversity and inclusion.
The 2019 edition of the "LHC Ice Cream Event - Come for the ice cream, stay for the physics", organized by the ATLAS Early Career Scientists Board together with the early-career representatives of CMS, ALICE, and us, is going to take place at CERN on August 21. The topic this year is neutrinos, the agenda is still evolving. We hope to have more news on this soon.
We just discovered that Switzerland of all places is the best country for women's rights - at least according to the OECD. See a news article here http://news.trust.org/item/20190308172235-ihwjl/> and the ranking here https://www.genderindex.org/ranking/. See this page https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-health/society-at-a-glance-2019_c64c3d3f-en for an OECD report on the situation for LGBT people.
Finally, the WIT Unconscious Bias Summer Challenge is in its 3rd round, https://women-in-technology.web.cern.ch/UCBSC19-3, deadline is Monday morning.
Various newspaper articles these days discuss the immensely important contributions by female programmers to the success of the Apollo 11 mission, 50 years ago. For an example, see https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/13/margaret-hamilton-computer-scientist-interview-software-apollo-missions-1969-moon-landing-nasa-women.
At University of Zurich, the "Who cares? Researchers with kids" discussion group, https://www.gleichstellung.uzh.ch/de/veranstaltungen/whocares.html are organizing a lunch meeting on October 25. See also their "Best practice" recommendations, https://www.gleichstellung.uzh.ch/dam/jcr:b8e42af1-5316-44d8-b94f-906c9ca1b444/190715_WHO%20CARES_Best%20Practices_en_final_tbf.pdf. Please let us know if you are aware of similar initiatives at your institute.
CERN's WIT have launched the 2nd of their Unsconscious Bias Summer Challenges, see https://women-in-technology.web.cern.ch/UCBSC19-2. Their first challenge last week had 188 replies. The vast majority, 162, chose option B, which was also the WIT choice of action. If you are interested in the detailed answers, subscribe to the WIT mailing list, wit-matters@cern.ch.
Vitalii is presenting his ECGD talk at EPS-HEP at 17h30 tonight, see https://indico.cern.ch/event/577856/contributions/3419432/attachments/1879616/3096402/EPS_ECGD.pdf for his slides. Good luck and many thanks, Vitalii.
Most of the remainder of this newsletter is stolen from CERN's WIT (Women in Technology). WIT have launched an "unconscious bias challenge": each week during summer they will present us with a situation where unconscious biases are challenged and we can choose from a few possible options describing what we would do in such situation. For the first challenge, see https://women-in-technology.web.cern.ch/UCBSC19-1.
They also have an Instagram channel now: wit.at.cern.
A special issue of the International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology http://genderandset.open.ac.uk/ has been published with articles on gender and intersectionality in engineering.
While the Women's Football World Cup has finished (many congratulations to Megan Rapinoe and her team!), the CERN Women?s football team will be meeting regularly on Tuesday evenings to practice and play friendly games. For more information you can contact Ana Miarnau https://phonebook.cern.ch/phonebook/#search/?query=756663.
You probably saw the earlier message(s) regarding LGBTSTEM day and the ENORMOUS SCIENCE CAKE. Other news are that Vitalii Lisovskyi has agreed to give the ECGD talk at EPS-HEP. Thanks a lot to Vitalii. We'll have a rehearsal on Monday, it would be nice if we were not alone ;-). Many thanks also to Katharina, who pointed us to another interesting article in Nature, on the mental health & wellbeing of postgraduate researchers https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01492-0. See also the links to "related articles" on that page.
EPS-HEP in Ghent begins in less than two weeks and we have still not been able to fix a speaker for the ECGD talk. Please contact us as soon as possible if you are able and willing to help us out. It would be a real shame if we had to cancel this talk.
Elsewhere, CERN is advertising a fellowsip for a "Diversity and Inclusion Analyst" https://jobs.smartrecruiters.com/CERN/743999690188462-fellowship-diversity-and-inclusion-analyst.
Nature have published a UK study on discrimination against sexual and gender minorities in the physical sciences https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02013-9.
CERN has published an "English Language Style Guide" https://translation-council-support-group.web.cern.ch/sites/translation-council-support-group.web.cern.ch/files/styles/CERN%20TM%20English%20language%20style%20guide.pdf, which includes a section on non-discriminatory language with specific examples how to avoid gender bias in the use of pronouns.
Many thanks to everyone who contributed to the ECGD session on Early Career initiatives on Tuesday afternoon. The very nice presentations by Martha and Eluned and the ensuing discussions brought up some interesting ideas, some of which we are already working on implementing.
More on this soon. The next ECGD plenary session is going to be in Oxford and we tentatively envisage climate change as our topic.
As mentioned earlier, July 5 is going to be the second annual LGBTQ+STEM day. The LGBTQ CERN community together with the CERN Diversity and Inclusion Office, organize a talk "No sexuality please, we're scientists" by Dr. Ben Britton. See https://indico.cern.ch/event/828989/ for an abstract and details on time and location.
Finally, many thanks to Giovanni and Mike Sokoloff for pointing us to this interesting article in the NY Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/12/health/collins-male-science-panels.html.
Oh, and a university in the Netherlands have decided to take "quite drastic measures" to increase their fraction of female engineers. Read more in https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2019/06/eindhoven-university-opens-academic-jobs-to-women-only/ and https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/19/female-academics-job-applications-men-engineers.
A quick reminder that the CERN's Women in IT (WIT) group and Diversity and Inclusion Office are screening the movie "Miss Representation" in the Council Chamber at 12h on Monday. You should still be able to register at https://indico.cern.ch/event/819666/.
On Tuesday at 12h, a "WIT Talk" with Achana Sharma is going to take place in 40-S2-B01 (Salle Bohr). Details and registration at https://indico.cern.ch/event/818764/.
Tuesday at 14h, we are looking forward to meeting you at the plenary ECGD session in the Filtration plant. As annouced last week, the meeting is dedicated to Early Career initiatives in LHCb, with presentations by Martha and Eluned and hopefully lively discussions with all of you. You can find the agenda at https://indico.cern.ch/event/826787/. We are looking for a VOLUNTEER to take minutes of the discussions. Please contact us (lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch) if you are interested.
Speaking of Early Career initiatives, as already announced by Miriam, the next Starter Talk will take place on Wednesday at 17h in 13/2-005, see https://indico.cern.ch/event/821917/#b-337008-starter-talk.
Finally, TODAY is Women's Strike in Switzerland and this weekend is ZurichPride Festival http://zurichpridefestival.ch/.
A preliminary agenda for our ECGD session at the upcoming LHCb week is now available at https://indico.cern.ch/event/826787/. The topic is going to be "Early Career initiatives in LHCb". We'll have two presentations, by Martha Hilton on existing initiatives and by Eluned Anne Smith on some new ideas for better supporting Early Career researchers. Many thanks to our two speakers and to Vitalii Lisovskyi and Nicola Anne Skidmore for their great help in preparing the meeting. As usual, we reserve ample time for lively discussions, so please bring along your own ideas for possible improvements and initiatives. Coffee and biscuits are going to be served at the Filtration Plant so that we can continue discussions in a more informal setting. Many thanks to Giovanni and our secretariat for organizing this.
At 12h00 on the Monday of the LHCb week, CERN's Women in IT (WIT) group and Diversity and Inclusion Office are screening the movie "Miss Representation" in the Council Chamber. Please go to https://indico.cern.ch/event/819666/ to find more information on the movie and to register for the event.
We are still looking for a speaker for the ECGD talk at EPS-HEP in Ghent, Belgium, July 10-17. Please contact us (lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch) if you are interested or simply apply with the Speaker's Bureau https://lhcb-sb.web.cern.ch/lhcb-sb/sb_advertised.php.
Many thanks to Barbara Sciascia for pointing us to this interesting article in Symmetry Magazine, https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/from-physics-to-data-science, in which "Four physicists share their journeys through academia into industry and offer words of wisdom for those considering making a similar move."
Two academic training lectures, on "Self-Control, Decision Fatigue, and Energy Depletion" https://indico.cern.ch/event/752042/ and "Thinking about the Future" https://indico.cern.ch/event/752043/ are going to take place at CERN on June 13/14. For those not at CERN, a video recording is promised to appear on the Indico pages a few days after. Thanks a lot to Giovanni for making us aware of these lectures.
As a reminder, June 14 is also the day of the "Greve feministe" in Switzerland. The programme for Geneva is online: https://www.14juingeneve.ch/. You can still sign the "Academic Manifesto" at https://www.feminist-academic-manifesto.org/.
We have moved our web page http://lhcb.web.cern.ch/lhcb/ECGD_Office/ECGD-intro.html to the new version and you can find the mentioned links there as well. Please let us know of relevant news and events in your region, we'll be happy to advertise them here and through the webpage.
Please have a look at the draft for our new web page at http://lhcb.web.cern.ch/lhcb/ECGD_Office/ECGD-intro_190522.html and let us know if you have any suggestions for content or links that we could add. We'll replace the old webpage sometime next week.
If you live in the EU, don't forget to vote this weekend!
Did you miss me!? Many apologies, vacations and too many other obligations during the last few weeks ... but, we are back in business now.
As you may have seen in Katharina's announcement, we have an ECGD talk at the upcoming EPS-HEP conference in Ghent; please let us know if you are interested in this opportunity and apply with the Speakers' Bureau (https://lhcb-sb.web.cern.ch/lhcb-sb/application.php?talk=11560). The talk is rated as "subsystem" and won't affect your Speakers' Bureau score (there is also an LHCb outreach talk at EPS-HEP for which you can apply through https://lhcb-sb.web.cern.ch/lhcb-sb/application.php?talk=11559).
Marco Cattaneo pointed us to this interesting article https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000212 on "Request a woman scientist", an initiative to create a global online register of women scientists. Thanks a lot, Marco!
We have finally figured out how to edit the ECGD web page without destroying it every time (don't ask ;-)). So far, we've managed to add our new logo, see the snapshot at http://lhcb.web.cern.ch/lhcb/ECGD_Office/ECGD-intro_190515.html. Thanks again to Martino Borsato and his friends in Heidelberg, the winners of our logo competition. The work on content is starting now, please let Olaf olafs@physik.uzh.ch know if you have any suggestions for things to include.
We have our own email account now, lhcb.ecgd@cern.ch. Its main purpose is to provide a unique contact point for our external contacts, but please feel free to use it to write to us for ECGD-related matters that should not get lost when we hand over to our successors. For personal and confidential matters, please contact us directly at our personal email addresses, oyangur@ific.uv.es for Arantza and olafs@physik.uzh.ch for Olaf.
We just received this "Academic manifesto for the feminist strike, June 14 2019 in Switzerland" https://www.feminist-academic-manifesto.org/. June 14 is the Friday before the next LHCb week. If you let us know of ECGD-related events/activities in your country, we will be happy to advertise them here.
In the meantime, HAPPY EASTER to everyone.
Another interesting article in the CERN bulletin. And no, we are not refering to that "iconic" Science Gateway building, but to the article on the "evil necessity" of networking https://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2019/04/networking-necessary-evil. It reminds us a bit of our discussions at the ECGD session in Valencia, on the Importance of social events at the workplace https://indico.cern.ch/event/672226/sessions/282852/attachments/1711690/2759756/Importance_of_Social_Activities_at_Workplace.pdf. One colleague recently told us that after that discussion they introduced a regular informal get-together in their group and that this seems to be going quite well. Thanks a lot for that feedback, it's nice to hear sometimes that our efforts carry some modest fruits ;-).
If you are at CERN on Monday, don't miss the talk by Prof. Juliane Degner from Universitaet Hamburg: "I'm the least sexist person..." - Why It is misleading and dangerous to believe that you are free of prejudice https://indico.cern.ch/event/810386/. It takes place in the Council Chamber at 11h30, is hosted by CMS and open to everyone at CERN. If you are not at CERN and still believe you are free of prejudices, try one of the famous tests by "Project Implicit" https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. As in in physics analyses, realizing and acknowledging your biases is an important first step towards fighting them.
We are about to finalize the questions for the 2019 ECGD survey, so this is your last chance to send us (Arantza oyangur@ific.uv.es and Olaf olafs@physik.uzh.ch) your input if you have any specific topics that you would like us to address in the survey.
Have you seen the latest newsletter article by the CERN Ombuds on "Dialogue saboteurs and how to outfox them" https://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/2019/03/?
Otherwise, it's been a quiet week here at the ECGD office. Your two ECGD officers will meet at the "Connecting the Dots" workshop in Valencia next week, a great opportunity to discuss over Sangria and Paella, so we should have more news next Friday.
Last week, we had the CERN Ombudsperson, Pierre Gildemyn, at the ECGD meeting to introduce his office and role. If you were not able to join the meeting, or would like to read up on this, have a look at the latest entry in his blog https://ombuds.web.cern.ch/blog/.
We are still looking for potential speakers for the LHC career networking event in November 2019. To remind you, we are looking for LHCb alumni who work outside particle physics and would be willing to share their experience with our young colleagues to help them develop ideas about possible career options. If you can think of such people, please let us know before Wednesday next week.
Current "job offers" with the ECGD:
- Organisation of the LHC career networking event (see above)
- Revamp of the ECGD web page
Please contact us, Arantza oyangur@ific.uv.es and Olaf olafs@physik.uzh.ch, if you are interested.
Let us start with a big thanks to all of you who joined the ECGD meeting on Tuesday. We hope the new time slot and the "coffee session" at the end were okay? We'll be grateful for your feedback, in particular if you have suggestions for possible improvements. For example, discussions were dominated too much by senior colleagues. Please drop us a quick message if you have ideas how we can encourage younger colleagues in the audience (and colleagues on Vidyo!!!!) to speak up more freely during the session.
The Collaboration Board voted unanimously in favour of including the ECGD into the LHCb constitution. Also, an ECGD officer will be invited to join the Collaboration Board as a non-voting member. This might not change our daily lives, but it demonstrates the willingness of the Collaboration Board to take our issues seriously. So thanks a lot for this clear vote of support.
Today is International Women's day, a good opportunity to reflect on roles (gender and other), biases (conscious and unconscious) and what each of us can contribute towards a less unfair society.
We briefly mentioned CERN's "Women in Technology" (WIT) group in our newsletter last week. They are now adverstising the 2nd edition of their "mentoring exercise". Applications start in March. Please have a look at their website at https://women-in-technology.web.cern.ch/mentoring, which also has interesting information on the benefits of mentoring and links to guides for mentors and mentees.
Let us also remind you of our LHCb mentoring programme, which is explained at https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/LHCb/LHCbECGD#Mentoring_at_LHCb.
And it's high time to get out your pencil box and activate your creative brain cells, our logo competition is going to close on Sunday.
In case you missed it, Monday was "International Day of Women and Girls in Science". As already mentioned by Giovanni in his presentation at the Tuesday meeting, the director generals of eight large European science organisations (CERN, EMBL, ESA, ESO, ESRF, EXFEL, EUROfusion, ILL) have for the first time issued a joint statement to pay "special tribute to the contribution of women and girls" and their "critical role in science and technology". You can find a link to the statement on the EIROforum web page https://www.eiroforum.org/. We can't help but notice that six of these eight director generals look distinctly male.
At the ECGD, we had the 3rd meeting of the CERN Diversity Round Table with representatives from the CERN Diversity office, the other LHC experiments, the CERN WIT, Disability, and LGBTQ groups and the CERN staff association. Amongst other topics, we discussed gender-neutral toilets and binary gender in registration forms. If you come across registration forms for CERN-related events that ask you to specify your gender (Mr/Mrs) where you think this is not needed, then send us (oyangur@ific.uv.es, olafs@physik.uzh.ch) a quick message.
We also had the first meeting of the organisation committee for this year's edition of the CERN Career Networking Event. If you are in contact with people who left LHCb for industry (preferably more than one year ago) and might be interested in speaking at this event, please send a message to Olaf (olafs@physik.uzh.ch). The tentative date for the event is a Monday in November. We are also still looking for a "young and enthusiastic" volunteer from LHCb to join us on the organisation committee.
Finally, our logo competition is still open till February 24.
This is a new section that we try to introduce into the "weekly news" to inform you about news and activities related to the work of the Early Career, Gender and Diversity office (http://lhcb.web.cern.ch/lhcb/ECGD_Office/ECGD-intro.html).
This week, we would like to alert you to the report on the "ECFA survey on the recognition of individual achievements in large collaborations" (https://ecfa.web.cern.ch/sites/ecfa.web.cern.ch/files/ECFA-Survey-Recognition-Results.pdf), which we think might be interesting especially to our younger collaborators. We will have a presentation of the main findings by Val Gibson at the ECGD session during the upcoming LHCb week.
Please note that the ECGD session will now take place on Tuesday afternoons (14 - 16h), plan your travels accordingly ;-). We will publish a preliminary agenda for the session with the next weekly news.
Finally, a quick reminder of the ongoing ECGD logo competition (see our email from yesterday). Submit your ideas by February 24, the winner will be announced in the ECGD session at the LHCb week.