How do I build a career in optics and photonics? Is my research focus too narrow? What career opportunities do universities offer international applicants? Unfortunately, the academic job market is far too often a black box and navigating one's path to a tenure position is a mix of grit and luck. The new conference format "Humboldt meets Leibniz" aims to change that and shed light on the career-building mechanisms in academia. 14 famous award winners of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation will share their expertise in optics and photonics and their career-building experiences with the next generation of scientists. Thus, 150 PhD students and Postdocs will be selected to attend this premier conference in Hannover, Germany. Their research shall focus on optical technologies, including material simulation, quantum optics, simulation, laser systems, optical imaging, metrology, and manufacturing technology. The event comprises classic poster sessions, presentations and discussions on research and career-building topics, and time for networking. Registration ends 1 November 2021 at www.uni-hannover.de/HmL.

A new study from the University of Southampton has demonstrated a new method to safely clean and reuse facemask respirators with advanced low-temperature plasma technology. The discovery could help future pandemic responses by providing contingency options should a shortage of personal protective equipment for frontline healthcare staff occur again.

Stock market prediction is a long-standing challenge for the natural language processing community, as it involves processing data that varies in format. Researchers in China have constructed a novel heterogeneous graph neural network to model the interactions between these various data groups. The predictions produced by their model outperform baseline figures.