Early Career Researchers (ECR) subcommittee
Can you feel it in the air? No, it is not spring (honestly, at this very moment in Paris it feels more like autumn than spring), it is PTCOG! And like every year, when PTCOG gets closer, PTCOG-ECR (Early Career Researchers) is blooming!
PTCOG-ECR is bringing home another exciting year of growth, stimulating initiatives and activities!
If you want to hear more about the subcommittee, our activities, and how to get involved (or if you just want to meet us), you are very welcome to join us at PTCOG-64 in the annual in-person ECR subcommittee meeting. The meeting will take place on Wednesday 10th June at 10:45 am in the Thalasso 2 room. This year, the meeting will feel emotional for us three chairs, as after three wonderful years, during which we have seen the subcommittee growing from 3 people to almost 300, with engaging activities running all year around, we are now stepping down! I know, a bit old-school for a leader to step down nowadays…but what can I say, may we be an inspiration for many political ones! During our subcommittee meeting, we will present the three new chairs who we are sure will keep and grow the ECR fire! So, don’t miss out!
If you are wondering whether the ECR-subcommittee meeting is the only ECR event at PTCOG, well…I think you should take a better look at the conference website! Let me just give you a small teaser!
The first ever PTCOG-ECR workshop will take place on Tuesday 9th June from 8:30am and for a full day. The workshop is the result of the PTCOG-grant we won last year, and will be a full day of interactive, career-focused sessions designed to help ECRs make the most of PTCOG and support their professional development. The agenda is dense, but flexible for people who also plan to attend the Educational program to come and go, as our aim is to complement what PTCOG already offers. The response to the workshop was amazing! We have reached the maximum number of attendees in just a couple of weeks with 150 registrations! We are all so very excited and we cannot wait for it to happen!
The workshop will end at 5:30pm, with the opening of the PTCOG’s Welcome Reception. Well deserved rest for us? Forget it! We’ll be up and running at the ECR booth in the exhibition area! The ECR booth will be our den, a safe space for all ECRs (and non-ECRs) to feel welcomed, to meet peers, to engage in discussions, or just to take a break from the conference. It will be a lighthouse, a reference point for ECRs. And this year, dear ECRs, no need to wander around industry booths to get a good coffee…we will have our own coffee machine! Satisfied with your coffee addiction, you will finally be able to enjoy scouting industry booth for the original purpose they are meant for.
Tuesday will be a long day, as the welcome reception will be followed by the ECR Social Event! I won’t spoil any details, but bring your flip-flops with you because (if the weather allows it) we will be on the beach! Come see us at the ECR booth for all the info!
The conference will then follow with our “classics”: two ECR lunches and the ECR plenary session!
The plenary session, “From innovation to Implementation – Mind the Gap” will ignite reflections and critical thinking to a fundamental topic in the particle therapy community: the gap between innovation and implementation, between research and clinics. The session will provide different perspectives, both from the research and clinical side. It will introduce innovative roles such as the “innovation physicist”, giving interesting insights on how different institutes respond to the challenges of clinical implementation. To maximise the engagement of the audience, interactive questions and polls will run during the session, already introduced by reflecting on the answers and experiences that the ECR community gave in a survey on the topic. Don’t miss it!
Last but not least, our exclusive ECR lunches are back! Be quick to register because only limited spots are available. Registrations will take place at the ECR booth during the Welcome Reception on Tuesday 10th June. This year we’ve changed the format a bit:
- Wednesday 11th June, we will have an ECR Connecting Lunch “How to get involved in PTCOG”, where the mentors will be selected speakers from different PTCOG subcommittees and will explain how to get involved in their work.
- Friday 13th June, we will have a traditional Mentor Lunch focused on “Unusual career paths” in proton therapy.
Following the success of last year’s one-to-one career-advice meetings, “ECRs meet IBA”, we are working closely with IBA to repeat the initiative in Deauville!
I think I gave you enough an idea of what I mean by “PTCOG-ECR is blooming”! And I don’t have enough words to write about all the ongoing activities beside the conference. Between the initiatives of our Publication & Outreach and our Webinar working groups I could fill another couple of pages! But you’ll need to wait until the next issue of Particles, I will just share a couple of important links for now:
- If you haven’t already, take our survey focused on the PhD experience in particle therapy and related fields: https://forms.fillout.com/t/rpJmtk7PcHus
We are looking for researchers who completed their PhD within the past 10 years. It will only take about 10 minutes of your time, and your anonymous feedback will help us better understand the experiences of ECRs and contribute to improving the PhD journey of the next generation of scientists. - On 28th May at 11am (CET) / 6pm (JST/KST) we will host the first “Heavy Ions in Asia” webinar! With the growing number of Heavy-ions centres and research collaborations across Asia, this webinar will bring a platform for knowledge exchange between the clinical, biological, and physics communities. Click here for more information. Don’t miss this stimulating opportunity and register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SVhwuQfwR5qeByAOpSDXtw#/registration
- Did you miss this or any other PTCOG-ECR webinar? No need to worry, you can find them all here: https://ptcog.online/tag/ptcog-ecr/
All of this would not be possible without the extraordinary enthusiasm, effort and commitment of the PTCOG-ECR Operative Group. You have all been amazing. We are so proud of what we have been achieving. We just provided the spark, you have been shining since then!
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts…and see you at PTCOG-64!
Gabri, Beth and Giorgio, the PTCOG-ECR subcommittee chairs
