The open day will be held as a hybrid meeting, online and in-person. UK-based students will be invited to come to RAL, while all others will be invited to participate online.
All participants (i.e. invited students + PhD supervisors) should register. When registering, you can request accommodation (inclusive of breakfast) for the night before the Open Day in the Cosener's House hotel (Abingdon, Oxfordshire) in which case it will be booked & paid for by our secretariat. Students will be reimbursed for their UK travel costs (by Emailing this form for UK bank accounts or this form for non-UK bank accounts + a single photo of all their receipts to ppdadministration@stfc.ac.uk ), but those who are abroad should participate via Zoom video-conferencing. We've booked taxis to take people from the hotel to RAL on the morning of the Open Day, departing at 8:50am.
A map to help you travel to RAL is map_to_RAL . A map showing you the inside of the RAL site is map_inside_RAL . You must enter RAL via the Main Gate, from where a PPD staff member will be waiting to give you a site pass & guide you to the meeting room. (If you have a car, park inside the RAL site, after first stopping at the main gate). You should bring a document with you to prove your identity.
During the morning, we'll all be together to attend talks about all the PhD projects. At RAL, this will be in Conference Room CR03 (building R61), or you can join online via this PLENARY ZOOM LINK ( password = 070036 ).
Lunch will be also be served in CR03. It will be followed by afternoon interviews between individual students and the supervisors of their preferred projects in the Particle Physics Dept. (1st floor of building R1).
When the Open Day & interviews are over, PhD applicants should fill in this STUDENT'S PROJECT PREFERENCE SURVEY to let us know which of the PhD projects they would like to be considered for. (This can differ from your application, if you've changed your mind).
Afternoon interviews & Particle Physics Dept. tours:
Each PhD project will be assigned an individual discussion room in building R1 shown in this map of R1 (& a Zoom room listed below if a remote PhD supervisor/student is joining). Each interview will be 28 mins long (+ 2 mins for students to move between rooms). Half this time is for the student to ask questions about the project and half is for the supervisors to ask questions to the student. The map also shows the PPD Exhibition Room & coffee lounge.
Interview & PPD Tour Bookings
This INTERVIEW SCHEDULE (which may be updated until 12:45 on 27th) shows which students will talk to supervisors in each time slot, All students attending person have been booked into time slots already for the two projects their application said they preferred. These candidates can optionally sign up via the polls below for interviews on a 3rd project after 27th. (Candidates informed that they are on the RESERVE list can sign up with these same polls, but only for the specific projects that invited them).
During the lunchbreak, Ian Tomalin can book you into tours of the ATLAS + Darkside-20k cleanroom + LHCb lab. These tours are shown on the INTERVIEW SCHEDULE.
Applicants who have free time during the afternoon can visit the PPD Exhibition Area (R1 1st floor) to talk to PPD staff/students about life at RAL. and from where tours of the ATLAS + Darkside-20k clean room + LHCb lab will leave. Or they can go to the R1 coffee lounge to relax.
We'll take taxi booking requests (e.g. leaving at 16:45 to Didcot station) during the lunch break.
Discussion rooms / Zoom links for each PhD project.
SOME ZOOM ROOM AND DOODLE POLL LINKS BELOW STILL NEED ADDING.
During the Open Day, interviews with the supervisors of each project will take place in the physical rooms listed below. In the few days after the Open Day, Zoom interviews will take place with students who could not attend the Open Day in person.
Project 1: Searching for Dark Matter beyond WIMPs with Novel Detector Technologies (PPD/Oxford)
- In person room: Conference Room CR21 (in R1 North wing)
- 5th Mar.: Zoom link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Project 2: Dark matter. new physics & radioassay at the Boulby mine (PPD/Edinburgh)
- In person room: Conference Room CR22 (in R1 North wing)
- 2nd Mar.: Microsoft Teams link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Project 3: Searching for dark matter in final states with low-momentum leptons at the ATLAS experiment (PPD/Liverpool)
- In person room: Conference Room CR24 (in R1 North wing)
- 5th Mar.: Zoom link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Project 4: Probing multi-parton dynamics & exotic scalar production with the ATLAS experiment (PPD/Warwick)
- In person room: Conference Room CR25 (in R1 North wing)
- 2nd Mar.: Zoom link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Project 5: LHCb: Measurement of the unitarity angle alpha and development of the Mighty Tracker readout (PPD/Glasgow)
- In person room: Conference Room CR26 (in R1 North wing)
- 3rd Mar.: Zoom link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Project 6: Commissioning & calibration of the Hyper-Kamiokande's far detector & development of its first neutrino oscillation experiment (PPD/Liverpool)
- In person room: Office R1.1.50 -- R1.1.51 (in R1 East wing)
- 2nd + 3rd Mar.: Zoom link HERE and Doodle Poll HERE to sign up for interviews.
Informal chats with current RAL students/staff about any topic you like or to join tours of PPD facilities.
- In person room: PPD Exhibition Room (in R1 East wing)
