Summer colloquium

Every year at Rice in early August, the Rice Quantum Institute (old website) (shorthand: people who care about interdisciplinary science and engineering involving hbar) has its annual Summer Colloquium. Today is the twenty-fifth such event. It's a day-long miniconference, featuring oral presentations by grad students and posters, by both grad students and undergrad researchers from a couple of REU programs (this year, the RQI REU and the NanoJapan REU). It's a full day, with many talks. It's a friendly way for students to get more presentation experience, and a good way for faculty to learn what their colleagues are doing. I'd be curious to know if other institutions have similar things - my impression has been that this is comparatively unique, particularly its very broad interdisciplinary nature (e.g., talks on spectroscopy for pollution monitoring, topological insulators, plasmons, carbon nanotube composites, batteries) and combination of undergrads and grad students.