Looking back onto a successful Condensed Matter Physics in the City.
On Friday we have concluded this year’s edition of the annual Condensed Matter Physics in the City meeting, that members of PQM organise jointly in collaboration with other members of the Hubbard Theory Consortium. This year, we have taken the meeting online under the heading “Condensed Matter Physics in All the Cities”. The meeting has been a great success, and by and large, we have successfully reproduced the casual discursive style of the in-person meeting. However, we have also taken our impact to a global scale. We have had 21 talks from 14 speakers from three continents, most of whom were originally scheduled to speak at a topical Summer School organised by our UCL hub. Thanks to the online format, we have counted 677 participants from 36 countries, with over 500 logged in at peak times. Student involvement has been central, with daily discussion sessions led by one of the students, including by our own Leon Schoonderwoerd. Students also had the opportunity to submit pre-recorded talks, and we received 22 student submission available at https://research.kent.ac.uk/pqm/condensed-matter-physics-in-the-cities-2020/condensed-matter-physics-in-all-the-cities-prerecorded-video-talks/. A prize was awarded to Alexandra Ziolkowska from Oxford for the best student talk. Recordings of most talks are publicly available at https://research.kent.ac.uk/pqm/condensed-matter-physics-in-the-cities-2020/schedule/. PQM has hosted the event webpages, which were originally designed by Gunnar Möller and maintained jointly with Sam Carr. Gunnar also managed the registration, conference mailing list and twitter account, while Sam acted as a moderator for questions throughout most talks during the conference. Both have chaired a full day of talks during the meeting.