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.

School on AdS/CMT correspondence

The School on AdS/CMT correspondence was held at ICTP-SAIFR from March 27 - April 7 with lecturers S. Hartnoll (Stanford), O. Dias (Southampton), H. Liu (MIT), D. Tong (Cambridge), J. Zaanen (Lieden) and S. Kachru (Stanford). This school provided students with a panorama of current theoretical problems in condensed matter systems and the tools used to attack them, with a special emphasis on holographic techniques.

Papos de Física - April 4

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 April 4, Adriana Valio (CRAAM-Mackenzie U.) explained what are exoplanets, described methods to detect them and discussed the possibilities for the existence of life on other solar systems.

Workshop on Solitons: Integrability, Duality and Applications

The Workshop  on Solitons was held at ICTP-SAIFR from April 17-20 and organized by B. Hartmann (São Carlos), C. Constantinidis (Vitória), G. Luchini (Vitória) and W. Zakrzewski (Durham). The workshop focused on non-linear phenomena in field theory, and Prof. Luiz Agostinho Ferreira (São Carlos) was honoured for his contributions to this area on the occasion of his 60th birthday.

Mathematica Minicourse: Paper Computations in Theoretical Physics done Efficiently
From April 24-28, Prof. Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP/Perimeter I.) presented a Mathematica minicourse where he explained how to perform analytic symbolic computations using this program. Examples sent by students were used as basis for the lectures, and topics included how to simplify differential equations and compute Feynman diagrams.

South American Dark Matter Workshop
From May 10-12, the South American Dark Matter Workshop took place at ICTP-SAIFR and was organized by Enrico Bertuzzo (USP), Fabio Iocco (IFT-UNESP/ ICTP-SAIFR) and Manuela Vecchi (IFSC-USP). The goal of this workshop was to bring together the South American and international community to discuss the latest developments in all theoretical and experimental branches of the search for Dark Matter.

Papos de Física in Pint of Science Brazil - May 15-17
In this 3-day international festival, Papos de Física joined forces with the Pint of Science Brazil to introduce current topics in science and technology to the general public. During three consecutive evenings, Marcus Aguiar (UNICAMP) and Roberto Kraenkel (IFT-UNESP) talked about biological physics, Diogenes Galetti and Adriano Natale (IFT-UNESP) discussed nuclear physics, and Sergio Novaes and Sandra Padula (IFT/NCC-UNESP) gave presentations on high-energy physics.

New member of the ICTP-SAIFR staff
In May, Vivian Vidal was hired as the new executive secretary of ICTP-SAIFR. The Executive Secretary is responsible for general administration, as well as arranging visas, flights and accommodations for ICTP-SAIFR researchers and for all participants in ICTP-SAIFR activities.

Bootstrap 2017
From May 15 - June 16, a 5-week program funded by the Simons Foundation (New York) was organized on new bootstrap methods for solving problems in strongly coupled quantum field theories. The program involved daily seminars with over 80 participants coming from institutes worldwide to participate in this Simons collaboration meeting led by Leonardo Rastelli (Stony Brook).

Simons Non-Perturbative Bootstrap School
The Simons Non-perturbative Bootstrap School was held at ICTP-SAIFR from May 22 – 29 and organized by Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP/Perimeter I.) and Vasco Gonçalves (ICTP-SAIFR). Topics included an introduction to conformal field theories, the conformal bootstrap, the AdS/CFT correspondence and S-matrix bootstrap techniques.

New FAPESP postdoctoral fellows
In June, José H. Diestra (U. Texas-Austin) and Andrea Guerrieri (Chulalongkorn U.) joined ICTP-SAIFR as FAPESP postdoctoral fellows. Dr. Diestra works in the field of complex systems and uses visibility algorithms to make predictions in the contexts of epidemiology of tropical diseases, seismic activity, and political elections. Dr. Guerrieri works in the field of integrability and studies gauge theories such as supersymmetric Yang-Mills using the AdS-CFT correspondence.

Papos de Física - June 8
In the third monthly meeting of this program, João Penedones (EPFL, Lausanne) presented the seminar “Quantum mechanics: the worst theory, except for all others”. After describing numerous paradoxes in the theory of quantum mechanics, he used the double slit experiment to explain how this theory is fundamentally different from our classical intuition.