This year’s Balkan School on Nuclear Physics is the 9th part in the series of Summer Schools first started in 1998. The School was organized by ELI-NP and NIPNE in Constanta at the picturesque Romania’s coast at the Black Sea. More than 45 students (mainly graduate, but also a few undergraduate) attended a variety of contemporary topics in Nuclear Physics given by the 18 invited speakers from prominent institutions around the world.
Despite this comment is a very short one regarding the extent of knowledge offered during the school, my main impression is two-fold:
a. the students, almost all of them from Balkan countries (Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey), have shown great potential and some of them presented excellent results from their recent research work in the accompanying poster session (32 posters in total)
b. the lectures covered a very broad context in Nuclear Physics: nuclear structure, nuclear reactions, nuclear astrophysics, applications, even open questions regarding fission and the standard model (dark photons!). High quality work and lots of new results from work mostly carried out in European labs sparked questions and interesting discussions.
Overall, Constanta and the Ovidius Unviersity provided the ideal combo for hosting this summer school. Excellent food, good friends from all over the place and nice waters by the Black Sea closed the circle. Till the next one in two years from now (still to be decided where it will take place) I will be left with great memories and lots of fun.
An Isotopia 