BPS Young Speaker Contest

On the occasion of the annual General Scientific meeting of the Belgian Physical Society (BPS), a prize will be awarded for the best oral presentation given by a young scientist. This contest aims at younger colleagues, especially those in their final years of a Ph.D. program or post-doctoral researchers with no more than 3 years of professional experience after their Ph.D. The presentation has to focus on the own scientific work of the candidate.

The prize will be awarded to the best oral contribution in the framework of a special, plenary competition, during the yearly BPS Scientific Meeting organized this year on Wednesday May 17th 2023 in the University of Namur, There will be three finalists giving a talk competing for the final Prize. The prize for the best oral contribution, the "Young Scientist Award", consists of a prize money of 300 EUR and a certificate. Second and third prizes are 200 EUR and 100 EUR respectively.

Each presentation should last at most 15 minutes and will be followed by a 5-minute question-andanswer session.

A jury will pre-select the candidates for the final contest, according to the scientific value of their work, their oral skills, and their technical and pedagogical quality. If the number of candidates is too large, a first selection based on the abstract and CV of the applicant could occur before the preselection, for deciding the ones who would be invited to present a talk to the jury. The oral preselection will occur on Thursday 6 April 2023 at the Department of Physics of the Royal Military Academy in Brussels.

In order to participate in the Young Speaker Contest, the candidates must submit the abstract of their talk (max. 1 A4 page), a CV, and a list of publications, to the following email address: fabrice [dot] louche [at] rma [dot] ac [dot] be (fabrice[dot]louche[at]rma[dot]ac[dot]be). The deadline for application is March 28th, 2023. The participant must be a member of the Belgian Physical Society and should never have been selected for the final session of the contest before.

The outcome will be announced at the closing ceremony of the BPS General Scientific meeting, unless no suitable candidate is found. The prize cannot be split and will only be awarded to the first author of the presentation.

Winners agree to write a paper on the subject of their thesis for the BPS journal before receiving the prize money. This article is intended for a broad audience of physicists and therefore should not be too technical. The paper will be reviewed by the BPS board before being published. It should meet standard quality criteria for scientific publication. If modifications are deemed necessary, the winner has one month to provide the BPS with an appropriately revised version of the manuscript, in order to receive the prize. The deadline for submission of this paper is November 1st, 2023. Extensions of this deadline can be exceptionally granted on request, but any paper submitted later than end of February 2024 will no longer be considered, and the prize will be lost.