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In 2020 it was not possible to hold the FinDiP annual meeting during the Physics Days (cancelled), so we had a digital call for new FinDiP board. We received several excellent applications from physicists of different genders, home institutions and career stages. We were please to bring all of them on board this year!

Now our board starts to reflect the kind of diversity we would like to see in our workplace. We will be planning new national activities this year, and connecting more to our community at all career stages. A major aim for this year is to support the emerging diversity activities in physics departments across Finland: see our current national network info page.

FinDiP is run by a small board of researchers interested in diversity issues. People on the board change every year, though it is common that some board members stay to help with continuity, advice and technical issues. The board meets every few months to touch ground and plan new initiatives. At the Physics Days Annual Meeting, we were going to discuss with potential new board members, but now we will do this electronically. If you are interested in joining the FinDiP board, we would love to hear from you!

Please use this link to tell us a bit about yourself and how you would like to contribute to FinDiP. If you are not sure about it or have questions, write to us and we can clarify. If you worry about the work involved, know that you will be supported. We hope to build a diverse board, with members who are male/female/other, Finnish/foreign, junior/senior, nationally diverse and with good ideas. We will wait to hear from you for one month, until 30 April 2020, so keep in touch.

Strange times for our community and society, as much of the world slows down to flatten the COVID-19 curve. Our colleagues are juggling remote work with kids activities and looking after the elderly. We hope you are staying safe and keeping sane!

Meanwhile, FPS activities go digital: the annual meeting was held electronically on 26 March. Likewise, we post the materials from our FinDiP annual meeting here. Read our Annual Report 2019 to hear all about our activities and engagements in the past year. This is an exciting time for us: we achieved a lot in the past year, and we can still do so much more for our community nationally and abroad.

An important part of the annual meeting is the discussion of the FinDiP leadership, and we have to do this electronically. We now extend an invite to all colleagues interested in joining the FinDiP board to get in touch.  We would love to hear from you: young or old, male or female, Finnish or foreign. If you have ideas for us and would like to get involved in national diversity activities, let us know. We are accepting nominations for the FinDiP board until 30 April.

With the restriction on large gatherings in place, the Finnish Physics Days 2020 have been cancelled. We are making plans to bring our session “Boosting Creative Science Through Diversity and Wellbeing” online. More information to follow soon!

FinDiP will host a range of activities at the upcoming Physics Days in Kuopio (17-19 March), all of them taking place on Wednesday,  18th of March.

• FinDiP annual meeting will be held 12-13h, during the lunch break. Participants can get free lunch provided by the organizers and join us for the meeting. We will be summarizing activities during the past year, and planning for the upcoming year, which also means selecting the annual leadership.
• Our parallel session “Boosting Creative Science Through Diversity and Wellbeing” will be held 14.30-16h. Prof. Tomas Brage (SE) will give an invited talk “What does gender got to do with physics“. In continuation, we will host a panel discussion on “Concrete measures for a creative and diverse workplace”. All participants will be able to ask questions about possible measures and plans to our panelists, who currently include Prof. Emilia Kilpua (UH),  Prof. Tomas Brage (Lund, SE), Prof. Vesa-Pekka Lehto (UEF) and Prof. Ari Jokinen (JYU).
• The poster session will be held 16-18h. Several posters will address the topic of diversity, inclusivity and wellbeing, and we will have a chance to continue our discussion there.

We encourage all interested colleagues to download the flyer for these events and advertise at their local institutions before the event. All are welcome!

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 February,  we repost this inspiring story authored by Emilia Kilpua and published on our sister blog of the Finnish Physical Society.

Fysiikan viemä

Standardimalli, alkuräjähdys ja aika-avaruus. Emilia Hiltusen huoneen seiniä eivät peitä rokkibändien ja poptähtien kuvat vaan fysiikka-aiheiset julisteet. Katossa roikkuu itse tehty alkeishiukkasmobile ja valkotaululle on kirjoitettu kuuluisien tiedemiesten lausahduksia. Continue reading “Fysiikan viemä”

2019 was a good year for FinDiP: we signed up many new members, changed our name and rebooted our websites, wrote articles for our community and lobbied for a parallel session at the next Physics Days. The work of our chairperson Dr. Milica Todorović (Aalto, department of Applied Physics) was rewarded in the Aalto University School of Science Awards in December 2019, with the “Team-building and Co-operation Award“.

In addition to chairing FinDiP, Milica has organised workshops on materials simulations for high-school girls at the “Shaking Up Tech” events,  and visited Finnish schools to talk about her research through the “Scientists in Schools” programme.  She shared the prize with Dr. Talayeh Aledavood, who organises diversity events at the department of Computer Science at Aalto.  We hope that our universities continue to champion diversity work!

Since changing the name, FinDiP made a change in all the communication channels.

– we have a new primary website : https://blogs.helsinki.fi/diversityinphysics/
– our Facebook page link has changed to https://www.facebook.com/DiPfinland/
– our mailing list name has changed from nais-fyysikot@helsinki.fi to diversity-physics@helsinki.fi

To join the mailing list, please email one of the FinDiP contacts.