(Photos courtesy of Tiffany Lewis)
In January Michigan Tech’s Physics Department hosted about 100 future physicists at one of 15 Conferences for Undergraduate Women and Gender Minorities in Physics (CU*iP) being held nationwide in 2025. The American Physical Society chose Michigan Tech for this three-day regional networking event based on application criteria including facilities and available funding, faculty participation, and institutional support for the conference’s goals.
Assistant Physics Professor Tiffany Lewis helped organize the conference for students from universities and colleges across Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio. About 80 volunteers, staff, speakers, and panelists came together to make the event a success.
“CU*iP is intended to bring female and gender minority folks together in one place to foster a sense of belonging in physics as a field, a sense of identity as future physicists, and provide examples of women who pursued a career in physics successfully,” said Lewis.
The event is for undergraduate students, but graduate student members of Women in Physics played a vital role in organizing it. Michigan Tech students were also responsible for the initial application, recruiting faculty support and leading Python and lab skills workshops during the conference.
Lewis said hosting the conference was both an honor for the university and vital to supporting physics students.
“It is not uncommon for a woman majoring in physics to spend her entire major as the only woman in all of her physics classes,” said Lewis. “Since women tend to make up even smaller percentages of the field for increasing career stages, it can also be hard to find mentors that female students relate to—they can struggle to see themselves in a physics career because they don’t see anyone who looks like them.”
CU*iP conferences are sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. The Michigan Tech conference was also made possible by support from multiple divisions within the university.
About the Physics Department
Physicists at Michigan Technological University help students apply academic concepts to real-world issues. Our physicists take on the big questions to discover how the universe works—from the smallest particles to the largest galaxies. The Physics Department offers three undergraduate degrees and three graduate degrees. Supercharge your physics skills to meet the demands of a technology-driven society at a flagship public research university powered by science, technology, engineering, and math. Graduate with the theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to solve real-world problems and succeed in academia, research, and tomorrow’s high-tech business landscape.
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