The Department of Physics at Assam Don Bosco University organised its 3rd annual conference titled Springer International Conference on Trends in Modern Physics 2021 (TiMP 2021) on 26 – 27 February 2021, in collaboration with the Indian Association of Physics Teachers (IAPT).
The conference was inaugurated in the presence of Prof. Vijay A. Singh, President of IAPT. Prof. Singh who then set into motion the proceedings of the conference with his illuminating plenary talk titled Seminconductor Nanostructures: Simple Scaling Approach. This was followed by five separate technical sessions for oral presentations and a single session for poster presentations over the course of the next two days.
The first technical session had nuclear physics as its theme where Prof. Ashok K. Jain, Amity University, Noida, delivered an invited talk titled Extremely Low Energy Isomers and their applications. This was succeeded by contributory talks from delegates, followed by lunch.
The second technical session, with astrophysics & cosmology as the theme, began after lunch on the first day with two invited talks. Prof. Atri Deshamukhya from Department of Physics, Assam University, gave a talk on Tropical Cyclones: A look through double eye walls. This was followed by a presentation by Dr. Jan-Uwe Ness from European Space Agency, Spain, who enthralled the audience with his talk titled Observing Nuclear Burning on the Surface of White Dwarf Stars.
The morning session of the second day consisted of two parallel technical sessions. The session on the theme of material & nanophysics was chaired by Prof. Vijay Singh. Because of the large number of presentations on this theme, this session had to be split into two sub-sessions. The first sub-session began with an invited talk by Dr. Ramakrishna Podila from Clemson University, USA, who regaled the audience with personal anecdotes and insights in his talk titled Stories from the Nano-bio lab at Clemson. This was followed by another invited talk by Dr. Anthony Childress from Northeastern University, USA, who made an informative presentation titled Directed Assembly of Nanomaterials: Methods and Applications. The delegates then made presentations on their contributory talks. The second sub-session continued after a tea-break where delegates continued with their presentations.
The parallel technical session on plasma physics was chaired by Dr. Ngangom Aomoa from the Department of Physics, ADBU. Dr. Srikumar Ghorui from Bhabha Atomic Reseach Centre (BARC) delivered an invited talk titled Addressing Some of the Key Challenges in Thermal Plasma Technology, followed by presentations by delegates.
Another session, parallel to the second sub-session on material & nanophysics, began after the tea-break. This session was dedicated to the theme of particle physics. This session was chaired by Dr. Samrat Dey. Dr. Saurya Das, from the University of Lethbridge, Canada, delivered his invited talk titled Our Universe: the known, unknown and some speculations. He was followed by Prof. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, from the Department of Physics, Gauhati University, who made a presentation on the topic Primordial Matter. This was followed by presentation by delegates.
The afternoon session on the second day was dedicated to poster presentations by the delegates. This time the organizers of TiMP had offered the participants the opportunity to also present their posters online, apart from presenting in-person. For online posters presentations, all the posters were hosted on the TiMP 2021 website at https://conferences.dbuniversity.ac.in/timp2021/index.php/online-poster-presentation/ and a comment section was enabled for a duration of seven days for every poster, so as to enable the viewer to post queries or suggestions for the benefit of the presenter.
Mr. Parag Bhattacharya from the Department of Physics, ADBU was the convener of the conference, along with Dr. Ngangom Aomoa and Dr. Debajyoti Dutta as the co-conveners. Fifty-five participants from twenty-seven different institutions had presented their research on diverse topics from astrophysics & cosmology, material & nanophysics, nuclear physics, particle physics and plasma physics