Plastic Electronics Winter School 2019

In the magnificent village of Bergun, deep in the Swiss Alps, students and academics spent a fabulous week of lectures, talks, sports and activities.

Students at this year's Plastic Electronics Winter School were in the privileged position of being isolated in the splendid village of Bergün deep in the Swiss Alps, with two external invited speakers, seven PE-CDT academics and plenty of free time for adventure and cohort building activities.

Along with talks from the academic delegation, we also heard PhD talks from 12 students and were treated to a fast-paced, stimulating session of flash talks from the remaining students.

In total, 26 PhD students, 1 post doc, 7 PE-CDT academics, 2 external invited speakers and 2 members of the PE-CDT admin team took part in this year's Winter School.

Attendees came from five different universities, from three countries. We were delighted to welcome Prof Anna Köhler (University of Bayreuth, Germany) and Dr Isabel Alonso (ICAMB, Spain) who each gave two tutorial talks on their research: "Absorption and luminescence from charge transfer states" and "From charge transfer states to separated charges" from Anna and "Ellipsometry Studies of Optical Properties and Stability of Hybrid Perovskites” and “Relationship between Morphology and Optical Properties of Conjugated Polymers” from Isabel.

This year the group project brief was to create a simple, easy-to understand video tutorial (maximum 5 minutes long), on a subject that will be useful to fellow researchers who may not already be experts in the area. Congratulations to the winning team: Alice Smith, Ryley Ratnasingham, Sally Luong, Saurav Limbu and Nicholas Siemons! For their video "

" explaining the importance of grounding. Luis Lanzetta-Lopez, Tom Hodsden, Helen Bristow and Gihan Ryu won second prize.

There were also prizes for the best student talks.

Congratulations to Jack Herrington who won the Best PhD Talk prize and to Ellasia Tan who took the runner up prize.

Brian Tam won the Audience Choice Award for the best flash talk.

Winter school 2019 was a very memorable experience for me. As a CPE affiliate PhD student in my first year, I only knew a few of the other CPE students prior to going to the winter school. It was a pleasure to get to know cohort 7 and cohort 9 and the other CPE affiliates through the group video project as well as the mixed seating plan each dinner. I am now more aware of the vast array of projects and expertise present in the CPE.

Highlights of the week at Bergun for me involve enjoying the natural beauty of the town with new friends. I will always remember the scenic sledging from Preda to Bergun, teeth chattering sledging down the fast mountain track, digging a snow maze in the meadow at night, and hiking up to Latsch on the hill above Bergun to take in the breath-taking mountain-valley views.

--Brian Tam

Winter school was a fantastic opportunity for me to build my academic network. By attending lectures from both academics and students within the CPE I could learn more about the many advancing areas within the field, whilst also discovering new avenues for collaboration in the future.

I found it particularly beneficial to have the opportunity to give a talk during the course, as I was able to improve on my ability to communicate my ideas and findings to a wider audience, whilst the familiar atmosphere allowed for quick and honest feedback.

Oh – and the snow was pretty magical!

--Jack Herrington