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Background
The Department of Physics and Materials Science here at the University of Memphis has the great honor of being selected as a regional host for the Conference for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics (CU*iP). Since 2009, Dr. Firouzeh Sabri has had the goal of hosting this conference. As Chair of the Department of Physics and Materials Science since January of 2020, she has worked to make this happen and is thrilled to see it come to fruition. 100% of the amount raised by this MomentUM campaign will go to fund the cost of student participation in this event.
About the Conference
CU*iP is a professional conference experience for undergraduate women and gender minorities to build their networks and further their careers in physics. It is a three-day regional conference of the American Physical Society (APS) in which events are tailored for undergraduate physics and physical science majors to provide an enriching experience for attendees.
Featuring a national keynote address, dynamic plenary sessions, valuable networking opportunities, guidance on navigating graduate school and career paths, and mentorship opportunities from conference leaders, this annual event is hosted by universities across the U.S. and Canada. This annual CU*iP event will be regionally hosted at the UofM for the first time in January 2025. The national keynote speaker for the 2025 CU*iP will be Meghan Anzelc, PhD. Explore Meghan Anzelc's career and accomplishments.
Case for Support
Conferences like Cu*iP take a step toward ensuring that everyone, regardless of gender, can study and work in physics if they choose. A smaller percentage of graduate degrees are awarded to women in physics than to women in any other field. Only about 25% of master's degrees and 20% of PhDs in physics are awarded to women.
Consider the personal story of Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, who gave the 2024 Cu*iP Keynote address. In this short video, she describes the gender-based obstacles she faced, her perseverance and her eventual success. Had she quit, the world would have missed her major discovery of pulsars and the inspiration she has provided to women and gender minorities ever since as a role model.
In 1967, Jocelyn Bell was a graduate student at Cambridge University when she discovered pulsars. Being there at that time and having built a radio telescope for her research, she had already navigated many obstacles encountered because of her gender. She persevered, made her discovery, and recognized its significance as a first-of-a-kind phenomenon. However, her thesis advisor, Anthony Hewish, initially did not recognize that it was a detection of a new real astrophysical object. Later he took credit for the discovery and received the 1974 Nobel Prize in Physics for it.
In 2018, in recognition of her discovery of pulsars, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell received the $3,000,000 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. She donated the entire amount to establish a fund for helping women, minorities, and refugee students to become research physicists.
