26th Annual Student Conference
Week of Doctoral Students 2017 focused on physical study branches June 6–8, 2017
Charles University in Prague Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Troja, Prague 8

Charles University

The oldest university in central Europe, Charles University was founded on April 7, 1348 by Charles IV, later the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Bohemia. From its foundation it was devoted to studia generalia and it was endowed by the emperor with all the privileges enjoyed by older European universities. The university still bears his name and still strives to fulfil the vocation, which its founder so wisely intended for it: to be a place which opens the way to education, wisdom, and knowledge. Since its foundation, however, Charles University has also been an international institution, welcoming in its lecture halls students and distinguished academics from all over the world, contributing to creation of European and world science and becoming mother or sister to many other European universities in neighbouring areas.

At present, Charles University consists of seventeen faculties and educates more than 45,000 students a year. The faculties are centres not only for teaching, but also for research and scholarship.

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics

The Faculty of Mathematics and Physics is one of the seventeen faculties of Charles University. Mathematics, physics, and astronomy which today belong among the exact or natural sciences, were lectured at the university almost from the very beginning. Among the scholars who have worked at and/or cooperated with Charles University and its faculties while staying in Prague were Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, Bernard Bolzano, Ernst Mach, Albert Einstein, Rudolf Carnap and Jaroslav Heyrovský. Mathematics and physics were traditionally taught within the frame of the Philosophical Faculty (Faculty of Arts) until 1920 when the independent Faculty of Natural Sciences came into existence. Nowadays, it is the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics established in 1952, which provides education in all fields of computer science (informatics), mathematics, physics in BSc, MSc and PhD courses, and offers training for those that intend to graduate as school teachers of these subjects. A characteristic feature of the Faculty is the close interconnection of teaching activities and a wide spectrum of research work.

At this Faculty, students benefit from being taught by those at the forefront of scholarship and research in their fields. At present, teaching is provided by 295 teachers (including 70 full- and 121 associate professors) in 28 departments and Faculty Institutes (representing three sections: the School of Computer Science, the School of Mathematics and the School of Physics). The scientific reputation of the Faculty is reflected in the high success rate of domestic and international grant proposals: in 2012 scientists of the Faculty have participated in 393 projects of Czech grant agencies including 31 international projects. The same year the staff of the Faculty published 11 monographs, 12 textbooks and 1118 papers, 933 of which are original works. Together with research workers from the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, the committed staff of the Faculty supervised 773 postgraduate students in 27 fields of study and 77 PhD theses were successfully defended in 2012.

Week of Doctoral Students

The Faculty organizes an international student conference every year as a part of the education of postgraduate students. In this year, the activities are focused on the postgraduate students of physical study branches, only. In order to give the students an opportunity to prepare for their future participation in international conferences, the structure and regime of the WDS resemble strongly such a conference: near branches of study are grouped into symposia, and particular sessions of symposia are lead by experienced chair, time-schedule for contributions is firm, language of the conference is English and the written contributions are published in reviewed Proceedings.

WDS Welcomes Active Participants

WDS conferences are open: besides students enrolled at the Faculty, the staff of the Faculty and co-operating academic institutions, students, and experts of other Czech and foreign universities have always taken part. These latter participants come from universities with research activities in fields similar to the study branches of the doctoral education at the Faculty and with some degree of co-operation with our departments. Their active presence allows the students, the supervisors, and the members of the Doctoral Study Branch Committees to make an objective evaluation of the results of their own work.

Staff members of the Faculty, of the institutes of the Academy of Sciences, and of other co-operating institutions are cordially invited to come. WDS offers them a rare opportunity to get fresh information about the today's research activities of the departments of the Faculty and of other co-operating institutions.

A history of WDS documents a short survey of previous activities presented in following diagrams that show the numbers of participants and published papers in the WDS Proceedings.

Notes to the registration process

top of the page

1. The conference is free-of-charge.
2. Students from Faculty of Mathematics and Physics specify so at the beginning of the registration form. [Registration FORM]
3. Students from other Universities indicate if they would like to apply:
   • To book the accommodation during the conference (free of charge or not).[--- CLOSED ---]
   • To receive the support on living expenses (2000 CZK). [--- CLOSED ---]
   • To obtain the official invitation for the visa application. [--- CLOSED ---]
     In these cases, the applicant may fill the corresponding form(s) just after his registration. Foreign participants that apply for Visa need to be registered before April 18. After this date, we cannot handle individual applications because the official invitations will be sent to Czech consulates in one stack on April 20, 2017. Each applicant will receive her/his copy of the invitation that should be enclosed to the application for Visa.

We regret but we can grant the accommodation and financial support to limited amount of participants. We already run out of a capacity for both supports and accommodations.

Click here for a "List of already registered participants".

Interactive registration forms (the registration will open on April 3, 2017)

• REGISTRATION and abstract submission form
• CLOSED – request for the invitation letter
• CLOSED – booking of the accommodation, request for the accommodation and/or financial supports

Plenary lectures

top of the page

We are planning several plenary lectures interesting for all participants (a list of the general lectures presented in previous years); some of them will present B. Bolzano Foundation prize winners or other interesting results.

Dr. Bretislav Smid:
High Surface Area Graphenic Foam and Its Application in Electrochemistry

Abstract.   The mechanism of sodium ethoxide decomposition, as one of the critical synthetic steps, has been thoroughly studied in this research to produce graphenic foam with controlled properties. Optimization of the decomposition process yields production of graphenic foam with extremely high surface area approaching theoretical calculation. The morphology and H₂ adsorption characteristics of optimized porous graphenic foam network was further investigated as hydrogen storage material. This optimized material is capable of more than 4 wt% H₂ storage at 77 K and 10 bar, ranking as the highest hydrogen uptake capacity ever reported for graphitic carbons. Highly porous graphenic foam with large surface area was further decorated with different metal oxide nanoparticles for electrochemical conversion applications.

Dr. Gilbert Pi:
The Radial IMF Structure and Its Influence on the Magnetosphere

Abstract.   A long-duration radial interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) is one of the special solar wind condition when the orientation of the IMF is aligned with the solar wind velocity. In this presentation, we will introduce the characteristics of long intervals of the radial IMF, its influence on the bow shock and the magnetopause, and further implications for the magnetospheric system under these specific conditions.

The invited lectures, oral contributions, and poster presentations from 13 physical study branches will be divided into the symposia in accordance with their topics. The number of the symposia depends on the number of the contributions and will be determined in course of the programme preparation.

The applicants outside of the Faculty are asked to indicate the code of the study branch which is relevant to the topic of their contributions.

Types of contributions

top of the page

• Oral contributions of doctoral students finishing their first year of study. In 20 minutes, students report on the state-of-art in their research branches (as they understand it after a year studying the literature) and on their own research plans and, maybe, their first scientific results.
• Posters (connected with 5-minute oral presentation) or oral presentations (20 minutes) of older students which show their own original scientific results.
  Dimensions of poster boards are: 150×100 cm (portrait).
• Invited lectures of professors (35 minutes long) bringing broad and deep surveys of the research in fields related to the particular study branches.

Information for speakers

top of the page

Oral session meeting halls T1 and T2 and smaller presentation rooms T7, T8, and T9 are equipped with overhead projectors and computers with data projectors (Windows 7, standard sw: IE / MS Office-PowerPoint / Acrobat Reader / GhostView, for more details refer HERE, other sw: ask WDS 2017 Organizing Committee, media: USB-stick / CD-ROM / LAN). Speakers must load and check their presentations before their particular half-day session starts via Technical Support Center (located in the Room T5) or via FTP (instructions will be emailed to all participants).

Proceedings

top of the page

The Faculty plans to issue the Proceedings of contributed and invited papers. You can visit www pages with contents of proceedings of WDS'95, WDS'96, WDS'97, WDS'98, WDS'99, WDS'00, WDS'01, WDS'02, WDS'03, WDS'04, WDS'05, WDS'06, WDS'07, WDS'08, WDS'09, WDS'10, WDS'11, WDS'12, WDS'13, WDS'14, WDS'15, and WDS'16.

Suggested reference examples:

Novak A., Squares and triangles, in WDS'12 Proceedings of Contributed Papers: Part I - Mathematics and Computer Sciences (eds. J. Safrankova and J. Pavlu), Prague, Matfyzpress, pp. 134-137, 2012.
Novak B. et al., Ions and molecules, in WDS'12 Proceedings of Contributed Papers: Part II - Physics of Plasmas and Ionized Media (eds. J. Safrankova and J. Pavlu), Prague, Matfyzpress, pp. 334-337, 2012.
Novak C. and Novotny D., Electrons in Matter, in WDS'12 Proceedings of Contributed Papers: Part III - Physics (eds. J. Safrankova and J. Pavlu), Prague, Matfyzpress, pp. 634-637, 2012.

Novak C. and Novotny D., Electrons don't Matter, in WDS'15 Proceedings of Contributed Papers — Physics (eds. J. Safrankova and J. Pavlu), Prague, Matfyzpress, pp. 222–226, 2015.

If you wish to publish your contribution in the book of Proceedings of WDS 2017, you are asked to answer the corresponding question in the registration form:

• I suppose to publish my contribution in the WDS proceedings (yes/no).

The contributions will be collected electronically (TEX+PS(PDF) or DOC files) via FTP and should be submitted not later than by June 12. You will receive the address of your FTP box for submission after the registration deadline.

Student's contributions can be published only under the agreement of the supervisor. Your supervisor will receive the corresponding form via the e-mail address that you have provided in your application.

All manuscripts will be reviewed by one specialist and one doctoral student appointed by the student's supervisor (she/he would fill up the "supervisor agreement form" received by e-mail) and/or by the particular session chairman/referee (taking into account the supervisor recommendation) immediately after WDS.

We will return comments, requests, and/or suggestions of reviewers to the authors during August/September. Then the authors should submit the final version of their papers (together with the Letter to the referees reflecting your changes and complements). We use electronic delivery via FTP only (the same instructions apply as for the starting version paper), in order to make necessary format corrections easy.

Instructions to authors for the preparation of electronic manuscripts

top of the page

The electronic manuscript of contributions to be published in the Proceedings are expected to be prepared in LaT_EX or MS Word. There is an option to set the basic font size of the printed article to 11 or 10 pt.

• The authors wishing to prepare their articles in LaT_EX are requested to use the prepared LaT_EX style wds11.sty (wds10.sty - 10pt version) together with the agu11.sty (agu10.sty, resp.) include file (all of them are written for LaT_EX 2.09 and can be therefore used in LaT_EX_2e compatibility mode, too). Authors can also download the sample LaT_EX file (and figures necessary for compilation):
  LaT_EX sample files

  			GZipped
  Sample file (LaTEX2e .. e.g. MikTeX)	wds2e_ex.tex	16 kB	6 kB
  Sample file (LaTEX2e for those using BibTeX - requires natbib package)	wds2e_exbib.tex	16 kB
  	egs.bst (suggested bibliography style)	37 kB
  Sample file (older LaTEX 2.09 )	wds209ex.tex	16 kB	6 kB
  Figures	gim70131.ps	101 kB	15 kB
  	dvepara2.eps	88 kB	14 kB
  	iii.ps	93 kB	30 kB
  Sample PS output	wds20ex1.ps	393 kB	114 kB

• The authors preferring MS WORD 2000 (or newer) are requested to use the template wds2000e11.dot (wds2000e10.dot - 10pt version). They can also download the example MS Word document prepared using this template wds20e11.doc (wds20e10.doc - 10pt version) (430kB) or compressed wds20e11.doc.gz (wds20e10.doc.gz, resp.) (40kB).

Both examples include the required font settings, formatting of title, authors, affiliations, abstract, references, and page headings, as well as suggested article sections. Black&white figures and caption examples are also included. All questions regarding the above style and templates should be addressed to WDS 2017 Organizing Committee.

Language of Publication: English

Maximum Length of Manuscripts

Invited paper	10 pages: A4 format
Contributed paper (students)	4–6 pages: A4 format
	(for a longer contributions contact WDS 2017 Organizing Committee)

Daily programme

top of the page

The conference will start with a general plenary session for all participants. Two lectures of recently finished PhD students provide an outstanding opportunity for students and teachers to review the latest issues affecting the physics. The daily programme will be divided into symposia according to study branches. The symposia will continue with breaks for coffee or lunch, till 6 p.m.

The poster sessions will be held after the corresponding symposium. All contributors are asked to arrange their posters before the morning session to give the possibility to other participants to see them during breaks and to remove the posters after the session. In this year, we suppose again a joint poster session of all participants accompanied by a small refreshment.

Accommodation

top of the page

The Faculty can offer a limited number of the accommodation facilities in the student campus. 17. listopadu The campus is located a walking distance (5 minutes) from the main building of the Faculty where the conference is held. An applicant will share a two-bed room with another WDS participant.

Accommodation of active participants is free of charge, however, the number of supports is limited.

Further information

Address:

Faculty of Mathematics and Physics Charles University V Holesovickach 2 180 00 Prague 8 J. Safrankova, phone: +420 221 912 301, e-mail: jana.safrankova at mff.cuni.cz