The ICG’s first Winter School for New Glass Researchers in Shenzhen, China, took place on the 8th – 11th December 2014.
32 students from both academia and industry, along with thirteen lecturers gathered in the International Meeting Hall at Shenzhen University to participate in the first four day ICG Winter School for Research Students in Glass Science.
The teaching staff were taken from the core team that runs the ICG Montpellier Summer School each year (Klaus Bange, Reinhard Conradt, Bernard Hehlen, John Parker, Akira Takada, Rene Vacher).
Also invited were lecturers from local Universities, some of whom had already participated in a successful earlier version of a Glass School in China (Gaorong Han, Jingong Pan, JianrongQiu, Jinjun Ren, Genbao Xu, Huidan Zeng, Xiujian Zhao).
Prof Jianrong Qiu was the host for the event and undertook much of the local organisation. The aim was to stimulate cross-fertilisation between the two different ICG Schools that had taken place previously (in China and Montpellier), and create a model that could be carried forward successfully into the future.
Professor Peng Shou, President of the International Commission on Glass, played a key role in bringing these two separate threads together and offered considerable support, both financial and administrative, to ensure the success of the event. The Chinese Ceramic Society was also an official sponsor.
During the 4 day event, 20 talks were presented in total. Individual topics ranged from phase diagrams to coating technologies and from glass colour to surface analytical techniques.
Wednesday included visits to Han’s Laser Technology Industry Group and Hua Wei, two internationally important companies in the optical and electronics fields respectively.
While running a course in English placed a high demand on those participating, it was seen as an opportunity to learn and improve language skills by many of those attending; it also facilitated participation by other Asian countries.
Caption: Participants of the 1st ICG Winter School.
