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ICTP-SAIFR 5th Anniversary Symposium: Advancement of Science in South America
On November 6-8, 2016, ICTP-SAIFR will celebrate its 5th anniversary with a symposium of public talks, research seminars and roundtable discussions with the participation of its Steering Committee and Scientific Council, its 60 Associated Members from South America, and several invited distinguished speakers and panelists.
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UNESP and ICTP-SAIFR in Nature
In July, Nature published Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars, which identifies institutions and countries which have significantly improved the quality of their scientific research. UNESP was named the #1 Most Improved Institution in Latin America with research strengths in physics and astronomy. ICTP-SAIFR was explicitly mentioned in the report which states that UNESP`s contribution to high-quality science more than doubled from 2012 to 2015.
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ICTP-SAIFR in Nature Communications
In July, Alexandre Rocha (IFT-UNESP and ICTP-SAIFR associate member), together with his postdoc Cesar Villegas and collaborators, published an article in Nature Communications entitled “Edge phonons in black phosphorus”. Theoretical simulations and experimental results confirmed that the edges of black phosphorus are due to vibrational modes of edge phonon states that are forbidden in the bulk.
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Second LIGO Announcement of Gravitational Waves
On June 15, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration announced the second detection of gravitational waves. ICTP-SAIFR faculty member Riccardo Sturani leads one of the two LIGO groups in Latin America and participated in this detection by choosing the waveforms used to analyze the gravitational waves.
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School on Dark Matter
The School on Dark Matter was held at ICTP-SAIFR from June 27 to July 8 and organized by ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP faculty F. Iocco and E. Pontón together with G. Bertone (U. Amsterdam) and G. Gelmini (UCLA). The school focused on various astrophysical, cosmological and particle physics aspects of Dark Matter using both observational and theoretical analysis.
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School on Spectroscopy in Astrophysics and Laboratory Plasmas
The School on Spectroscopy in Astrophysics and Laboratory Plasmas was held at ICTP-SAIFR from July 8 - 9 and was organized by Beatriz Barbuy (USP) and Claudio Mendoza (Western Michigan U.). The school discussed the application of spectroscopic methods to astrophysical research topics.
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Xth International Conference on the Interconnection between Particle Physics and Cosmology - PPC 2016
The Particle Physics and Cosmology Workshop (PPC 2016) was held at ICTP-SAIFR from July 11 - 15 and organized by R. Abramo (IF-USP), M. Carena (FERMILAB/U. Chicago), F. Iocco (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP) and E. Pontón (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP). This workshop is an international series starting in 2007 that brings together experts in the fields of Particle Physics and Cosmology to discuss recent advances in both areas.
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IFT-Perimeter-SAIFR Journeys into Theoretical Physics school
From July 18-23, the first edition of the IFT-Perimeter-SAIFR Journeys into Theoretical Physics school took place at ICTP-SAIFR with over 100 of the best undergraduate students from all over Latin America. The top students in this school were accepted to a joint master`s program where they will spend one year at Perimeter Institute (Waterloo) and one year at ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP.
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IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR Prize for Young Physicists
Every year, the IFT-UNESP and ICTP-SAIFR organize an exam competition for physics students in the last year of undergraduate studies on the topics of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, special relativity and mathematical physics. This year, the top student was Francisco Vladimir C. Cigüenas (PUC-Lima, Peru) who obtained the score of 189 out of 200 in the exam.
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Econophysics Colloquium 2016
The 12th edition of this annual international meeting was held at ICTP-SAIFR on July 27-29, and was organized by A.P.F Atman (CEFET-MG), C. Frajuca (IFSP), L. Sandoval (Insper), M.A. Bertella (UNESP-Araraquara), N. Romero (IFSP), R. Rosenfeld (SAIFR/IFT) and R.R. Freire (PUC-RJ). Topics included statistical methods, quantitative measures, high frequency trading, market dynamics, and simulations of financial and economic systems.
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Papos de Física (August)
Papos de Fisica is an outreach program of ICTP-SAIFR introducing current topics in theoretical physics to the general public in an informal setting. On August 4, Riccardo Sturani (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP) presented the seminar “Gravitational Waves Astronomy: The dawn of a new science” where he discussed the impact on astronomy of LIGO`s first and second detections of gravity waves coming from two merging black holes.
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Papos de Física (September)
In the third monthly meeting of this program on September 1st, Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP & Perimeter I.) presented the seminar “Are we a hologram?” where he discussed the holographic principle, the idea that the universe might be mathematically described as a surface on the cosmological horizon.
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Minicourse for High-School Students
Every Saturday morning from Sept. 3 - Oct. 8, ICTP-SAIFR organized a minicourse on topics of theoretical physics for over 100 high-school students from the São Paulo region. In this minicourse, Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP & Perimeter I.) introduced modern physics concepts from special relativity to quantum mechanics, and described research topics at the frontier of physics.
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Cutting-edge In-class Physics Resources
The Workshop Cutting-edge In-class Physics Resources was held at ICTP-SAIFR on Sept. 17-18 and presented modern physics concepts to high-school teachers. Organizers Gregory Dick (Perimeter I.) and Glenn Wagner (Perimeter I.) used hands-on activities to introduce wave-particle duality, dark matter, and particle physics to high-school teachers who also received a set of classroom-ready resources to share with their students.
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Workshop on 3-point functions in Gauge/String theories
From Sept. 19 - 30, the Workshop on 3-point functions in Gauge/String theories took place at ICTP-SAIFR and was organized by B. Basso (LPTENS), R. Janik (Jagiellonian U.), P. Vieira (SAIFR-UNESP & Perimeter I.) and Z. Bajnok (Wigner Res. Center for Physics). The workshop hosted several seminars and informal discussions on different aspects of 3-point correlations in AdS/CFT, integrability and conformal field theory.
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