|
Announcement of two Simons-FAPESP Research Professor positions
Applications are open here for two Simons-FAPESP research professor positions. Depending on the qualifications of the candidates, the positions will be either permanent professorships or 4-year professorships with the possibility of tenure after 3 years. Candidates from all areas of theoretical physics are encouraged to apply, and preference for one of the two positions will be in the area of complex systems with connections to biology. Although applications will be accepted until the two positions are filled, candidates are strongly encouraged to apply before May 31, 2017.
|
|
Announcement of Joint School and Masters Program with Perimeter Institute
Applications are open here for the second edition of the joint school and masters program between IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Students in the last year of their undergraduate studies will be selected to the joint masters program through an annual school and exam held every July, and will spend one year at IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR and one year at the world-famous Perimeter Scholars International (PSI) masters program in Waterloo, Canada. The application deadline is April 28, 2017.
|
|
VI Southern-Summer School on Mathematical Biology
The sixth edition of the Southern-Summer School on Mathematical Biology was held at ICTP-SAIFR from January 16 - 27. During the first week, Prof. Roberto Kraenkel (IFT-UNESP) covered the basics of population biology and his lectures were supplemented with modelling exercises. During the second week, up-to-date topics in ecology and evolution were covered by F. Débarre (Collège de France), A. Nourmohammad (Princeton U.), S. Petrovskii (U. Leicester) and A. de Roos (U. Amsterdam).
|
|
School on Interaction of Light with Cold Atoms
The School on Interaction of Light with Cold Atoms was held at ICTP-SAIFR from Jan. 30 - Feb. 10 and organized by R. Bachelard, P. Courteille, R. Shiozaki and R. Teixeira from USP São Carlos, and R. Kaiser (I. Non Linéaire de Nice). The lecturers. J-M Raimond (U. Pierre & Marie Curie), J. Walraven (U. Amsterdam), C Weitenberg (U. Hamburg), L Davidovich (UFRJ), J. Shaffer (U. Oklahoma) and C. Zimmermann (U. Tübingen) and speakers covered topics including light scattering, cold and ultra-cold matter, quantum information and quantum optics.
|
|
New FAPESP postdoctoral fellow
In February, Ekaterina Karukes (SISSA, Italy) joined ICTP-SAIFR as a FAPESP postdoctoral fellow. Dr. Karukes’ research involves dark matter studies using different approaches and includes improvement of the rotation curve of the Milky Way galaxy using data from blue-horizontal branch stars, testing dwarf rotationally supported galaxies as possible targets for indirect dark matter searches, and using kinematical observations of the rotation curves of galaxies to test alternative dark matter models such as self-interacting dark matter and warm dark matter.
|
|
New members of the ICTP-SAIFR staff
In March, Jaqueline Venturim and Ivan Cardoso joined ICTP-SAIFR as technical assistant and science journalist with FAPESP fellowships. Jaqueline will assist our Computer Systems manager in the development of an online archive of seminars. In addition to translating material for high-school physics students, Ivan will write about ICTP-SAIFR scientific activities for the UNESP monthly newspaper Jornal UNESP and will write a weekly blog which is online at ICTP-SAIFR´s homepage.
|
|
Winners of 2016 IFT/ICTP-SAIFR Prêmio para Jovens Físicos
The 2016 IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR Prêmio para Jovens Físicos was awarded on March 6 to students who obtained the highest score on an exam administered by IFT and ICTP-SAIFR professors. From left to right are the 2016 winners Ivan Carlos de Almeida (USP), Carlos Gustavo Rodriguez Fernandez (U. San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador), Alexandre Homrich (USP), Francisco Vladimir Calvera Cigueñas (PUC-Peru) and the ICTP-SAIFR Director Nathan Berkovits.
|
|
Papos de Física - March 8
Papos de Fisica is a monthly outreach program of ICTP-SAIFR introducing current topics in theoretical physics to the general public in an informal setting. On March 8, Rodrigo Nemmen (IAG-USP) talked about the properties of black holes with the title “13 ways to die in a black hole”, and also included in his discussion the recent cuts to science funding in Brazil and gender inequalities in science.
|
|
School of Biological Soft Matter: from molecular interactions to engineered materials
The School on Biological Soft Matter was held at ICTP-SAIFR from March 13-24 and organized by C. Cotta (COPPE-UFRJ), F. Duda (COPPE-UFRJ), R. Eichhorn (NORDITA), J. Koiller (INMETRO), S. Pasquali (U. Sorbonne Paris Cité), A. Ribeiro (UNIGRANRIO) and F. Barroso (USP-Ribeirão Preto). Topics covered in the first week included nucleic acids, proteins and electrostatic interactions, while bioengineering was the main theme of this activity in the second week.
|
|
Codello Minicourse on Effective Field Theory of Gravity
From March 13-24, Prof. Alessandro Codello (CP3 – Origins, Odense, Denmark) visited ICTP-SAIFR to present a minicourse on the Effective Field Theory of Gravity. Codello used covariant heat kernel techniques to compute both the divergent and finite parts of the gravitational effective action in arbitrary spacetimes. Applications included computation of the leading corrections to the Newtonian potential as well as cosmological implications such as the possibility of unifying inflation and dark energy within the EFT approach.
|
|
