The 11th Physics Students Conference (COEFIS) will be held on 15 and 16 March in the Main Lecture Hall of the Physics and Mathematics Departments of the University of La Laguna. Specialists in various fields of physics will participate on both days to further enrich the experience and knowledge of the undergraduate audience.

The inauguration took place at 9.00h on the first day of the meeting and marked a crowded schedule of 16 talks. The timetable and detailed summaries of the talks can be looked up on the Conference website. A key contribution, ‘Using photons to manipulate atoms’, was imparted by Claude Cohen-Tannoudji, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997.

On the second day there were 14 talks, including ‘Cosmic radiation heralding an extreme and violent Universe’, presented by Dolores Rodríguez Frías, who holds the chair of Atomic, Molecular and Nuclear Physics, part of the Space and Astroparticle Group of the University of Alcalá de Henares in Madrid. Professor Rodríguez Frías has a long-standing association with high energy telescopes at Roque de los Muchachos Observatory on La Palma.

On Friday 16th, at 18:30h, a round-table to discuss outreach will be held with the participation of Antonia María Varela and Héctor Socas, researchers from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC). Varela is a senior engineer and member of the IAC’s Sky Quality Team. She was the first woman doctor in Physics that coursed the whole grade at the University of La Laguna. She will bring to the debate her thoughts on the role of women in science. "Much remains to be done -she says- to break stereotypes and encourage young women to consider careers in science and technology". Héctor Socas, solar physicist and creator of the podcast Coffee Break: Signal and Noise, will draw attention to "the dearth of scientific content on radio channels" and will hail "the enormous potential of the podcast platform in reaching the public".