Announcement of Joint School and Master’s Program with Perimeter Institute

Applications are open here for the third edition of the joint school and master’s program between IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Students will be selected to the joint master’s program through an exam at the Journeys into Theoretical Physics school in July, and will spend one year at IFT-UNESP/ICTP-SAIFR and one year at the world-famous Perimeter Scholars International (PSI) masters program. The application deadline is May 11, 2018.

Announcement of new joint master’s fellowship with CUNY/Princeton Center for the Physics of Biological Function

Applications are also open for a new SAIFR-Princeton Fellowship which will allow the awardee to spend one year in the Masters program at ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP in São Paulo and one year as a Visiting Student Research Collaborator at the CUNY/Princeton Center for the Physics of Biological Function. The selection for this fellowship is through the exam results at the Journeys into Theoretical Physics school and applications are open here with deadline of May 11, 2018.

International agreements with KITP and CLAF

Two new agreements were signed with Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) and with the Latin-American Center for Physics (CLAF). The KITP agreement is together with the International Institute of Physics in Natal and involves the joint financing of visitors and workshops. The CLAF agreement promotes joint international activities including Olympiads for university students from Latin America and the Caribbean and workshops involving the planned ANDES underground laboratory.

VII Southern-Summer School on Mathematical Biology

The seventh edition of the Southern-Summer School on Mathematical Biology was held at ICTP-SAIFR from January 15 - 21. Lectures given by Prof, Roberto Kraenkel (IFT-UNESP) covered the basics of population dynamics and were supplemented with modelling exercises and group projects addressing mainly problems in ecology, epidemiology and evolution.

School on Physics Applications in Biology

From January 22 - 27, the second edition of the School on Physics Application in Biology took place at ICTP-SAIFR featuring lectures by physicists and applied mathematicians who have made important contributions to different areas of biological research. Lectures included topics on neuroscience, evolutionary dynamics, time-series analysis applied to ecology and epidemiology, collective behavior, and optimization. 

SPRINT Award: FAPESP/Purdue Univ.

In February, the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and Purdue University awarded funding for the interchange of researchers to Nathan Berkovits (director of ICTP-SAIFR) and Luis Kruczensky (Purdue Univ.). The joint grant was awarded to 22 research groups in all areas of science, and the group of Berkovits and Kruczensky will perform research in the area of string theory and its applications.

Distinguished Lecture by André Luiz de Gouvêa and IMS Ceremony

On February 4, ICTP-SAIFR Scientific Council member, André Luiz de Gouvêa (Northwestern U., USA) presented a colloquium entitled “What we know that we don´t know: neutrinos, dark matter and other ghostly phenomena”. Before his talk, there was a short ceremony marking the start of a collaboration between ICTP-SAIFR and the Instituto Moreira Salles involving a new outreach program.

2018 Meeting of Scientific Council and Steering Committee

The ICTP-SAIFR Steering Committee including Fernando Quevedo (ICTP-Trieste director), Carlos Graeff (representing UNESP rector Sandro Valentim), Carlos Brito Cruz (FAPESP scientific director), and Juan Maldacena (South American representative), met on Feb. 5-6 with its Scientific Council of ten distinguished physicists chaired by Peter Goddard (IAS Princeton) to discuss future directions for the center and select the 2019 scientific activities.

Special Seminars by 2018 Lorentz Medal Laureate Juan Maldacena

On February 6, Steering Committee member Juan Maldacena (IAS Princeton.) presented two seminars entitled "Making transversable wormholes" and “Chaos and black holes”. Prof. Maldacena was recently awarded the 2018 Lorentz Medal for his work on quantum gravity and string theory, and has been previously been awarded various prizes including the Dirac Medal in 2008 and the Fundamental Physics Prize in 2012. 

School on Nonlinear Time Series Analysis and Complex Networks in the Big Data Era

The School on NTSA and Complex Networks in the Big Data Era was held from Feb. 19 - March 1 and organized by Hilda A. Cerdeira (IFT-UNESP), Jesús Gomez-Gardenes (U. of Zaragoza) and Cristina Masoller (U.Politecnica de Catalunya-Terrassa). The school provided participants a broad overview of Big Data analysis tools, including the most recent advances in the analysis of large time series and datasets using nonlinear dynamics and network science.

Papos de Física - March 1

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 1, Leandro Aolita (IF-UFRJ and visiting fellow of ICTP-SAIFR) spoke on quantum mechanics and its applications in processing and encoding information.

Dialogues in Science: Physics and Art - March 2

In March 2018, ICTP-SAIFR began a new outreach program through a collaboration with the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS), a museum in downtown São Paulo. This outreach program involves a monthly series of presentations at the IMS featuring one scientist and one non-scientist who discuss a topic of common interest. In the first edition of this program, Nathan Berkovits (ICTP-SAIFR director) and Flo Menezes (composer at Studio PANaroma/IA-UNESP) discussed the topic “music and sound”.

CTA Temático Workshop

From March 5-6, a workshop for researchers working with the Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) was organized at ICTP-SAIFR by Fabio Iocco (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP) and Vitor de Souza (IFSC-USP). The purpose of the meeting was to bring together the members of the CTA FAPESP Tematico to share scientific and technical knowledge and plan future activities. 

Minicourse on Gravitational Waves for Field Theorists

From March 5-9, Rafael Porto (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP) presented an introduction to the new field of gravitational wave (GW) science. An overview of the field was presented and the basic concepts with hands-on calculations were illustrated. Emphasis was given to the new tools recently developed—based on field theoretical ideas that originated in particle physics—to construct the most accurate template banks.