Australia Telescope National Facility

Introduction

The annual CASS/ATNF student symposium will be held on the 27th of June at the CASS/ATNF Headquarters, Sydney. This event is a forum for CASS/ATNF postgraduate students to present their research to fellow students and staff, all of whom are welcome to attend. It is expected by CASS/ATNF that students will attend, and preferably give a presentation about their work. These are not formal talks: their purpose is for students to gain experience at public speaking, and to provide staff the opportunity to see some of the excellent research they are undertaking. Students also frequently find that the feedback from these symposia is useful for their research. Interstate students are particularly encouraged to present their work and teleconference facilities will be available for those that cannot attend in person.

There will be prizes for the best talks!

Format
There are a number of ways in which a student may choose to present their work:

• Talk.
  Students are strongly encouraged to give a short talk (12 minutes, plus 3 mins of questions) about their research. This may be:
  • an introduction and description of your thesis topic (for first-year students);
  • a summary of the results you have obtained thus far in your research;
  • an in-depth description of a particularly interesting result; or
  • a description of an interesting problem you have encountered. Feel free to finish your talk early, and ask the audience to speculate about possible solutions.
• Poster.
  Posters will be displayed outside the auditorium. We recommend also giving a sparkler session, to briefly describe your research to the audience and encourage them to come and see your poster.
• Sparkler session.
  If you wish to talk about some interesting piece of science, possibly unrelated to your main project, prepare a single slide and spend a few minutes explaining it in a sparkler session. You may do this in addition to a full-length talk.

Facilities
The symposium will take place in the lecture theatre at CASS/ATNF's Marsfield headquarters in Sydney. Presenters are recommended to prepare presentations in either PDF or PowerPoint format, and bring them on a USB drive. If you instead choose to show your presentation with your own laptop, please test it well before your talk.

Catering
Morning tea and lunch will be provided. All attendees are welcome to come to a symposium dinner afterwards, at a restaurant yet to be selected.

Accommodation
Accommodation is the responsibility of the participant. Some accommodation has been reserved for interstate CASS/ATNF students in the Marsfield Lodge, and can be booked via the online form with "Student Symposium" as the reason for your visit. However, there are limited rooms available, and they will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis. Further information regarding accommodation bookings for the Marsfield Lodge can be obtained from Vicki Drazenovic.

Student accommodation is also available at the residential colleges of the nearby Macquarie University: Dunmore Lang College and Robert Menzies College.

Registration

Students presenting at the symposium are asked to register by the 20th of June 2011, via the web form.
Other attendees are asked to register here for catering purposes.
A list of current registrants is available here.

Further inquiries:

• Justin Bray (justin.bray@adelaide.edu.au)
• Vanessa Moss (vmoss@physics.usyd.edu.au)
• Kitty Lo (k.lo@physics.usyd.edu.au)

Print out a copy of the poster and put it up at your institution to promote the symposium!