The use of low-cost and/or recycled materials for creating affordable instruments, sensors, analytical devices in domain such as health, environment, and energy could represents a clear breakthrough in developing countries where the lack of funding and sometimes of organized educational and social systems create strong inequalities in the very bulk of societies. Low-cost physics is also a challenge in the scientific and educational systems of the developed world, as a tool for a more sustainable development and social inclusion. The proposed symposium is dedicated to present the scientific achievements that the low-cost approach has reached up to now. Often, the low-cost approach is based on the use of materials, process and techniques that allow for coupling sustainability and high level research and technological development. The symposium is intended to be also a show case for the most ingenuous solutions found in laboratories all over the world. Tutorials and demo activities will represent an important aspect of the symposium.

Symposium Topics

  • Educational systems in developing countries through the development of scientific and educational tools from low-cost and/or recycled materials
  • Success cases and the related achievements supporting low-cost physics approach
  • Scientific and educational relevance of low-cost physics for developed and developing countries.
  • Key issues and bottlenecks for the development of scientific and educational tools from low-cost and/or recycled materials
  • Creation of a general roadmap bridging the scientific and technological development with the societal needs, with specific reference to developing countries

Invited Speakers

Cesar Costa, Escuela Politecnica Nacional de Quito, Ecuador; Eduardo Montoya, Instituto Peruano de Energia Nuclear, Peru; Luis Ponce, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Mexico; Ernst Van Groningen, Uppsala University, Sweden; Majed Chergui, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne – Switzerland; Sandro Scandolo, International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Italy;  Claude Lecomte, International Crystallography Union, France; Tom Baden, University of Tübingen, Germany; Rita Noumeir, University of Quebec, Canada; Joshua Pearce, Technical University of Michigan, USA; Paul Woafo, University of Yaoundé – Cameroon; Zohra Ben Lakhdar, University of Tunis, Tunisia; Jose Gomez-Marquez, The Little Devices Lab, MIT, USA; Anna Young, The Little Devices Lab, MIT, USA; Navi Radjou, Judge Business School, Cambridge, UK; Mmantsae Diale, University of Pretoria, South Africa; José-Daniel Muñoz-Castaño, University of Colombia, Colombia; Gui Lu Long, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China; Ashok Gadgil, University of Berkeley, USA