In April 2021, the School of Physics of Les Houches launched "Oxy-jeunes", a program aiming at organizing short stays, in an extra-ordinary setting, so that PhD and post-doctoral students can meet each other to exchange about their work or difficulties encountered during the pandemic.
The Laboratory of Physics (LPENSL) and the Laboratory of Biology and Modeling of the Cell (LBMC) have joined forces to "air" about thirty PhD students from June 27 to July 1 at the School of Physics of Les Houches, which supports this initiative by making available its hosting and training capacity. This project was financed by the laboratories and the PHAST doctoral school.
With the help of Salambô Dago, representative of the physics doctoral students on the laboratory council, five volunteer doctoral students - Aubin Archambault, François Liénard, Léo Mangeolle and Théophile Rémond in physics, and Alice Dufour in biology - have imagined a schedule balanced between moments of exchange around research (seminars, debates, round tables, training sessions, etc.) and moments of leisure (hikes, walks, nature, soccer matches, etc.).
The opening session took the form of a multidisciplinary discussion to "break the ice" between physicists and biologists. Afterwards, different topics were discussed, in the form of seminars (physics of climate change, energy transition) and trainings (Inkscape, Machine learning, Mathematica, Python or research ethics).
Four senior researchers (Freddy Bouchet, Olivier Vidal, Marc Jedliczka and Philippe Drobinski) were invited to speak in the evening by video conference on the energy transition. The director of the LPENSL came to speak to the young people about the organization and functioning of the research world.