Instituto Serrapilheira Awards for ICTP-SAIFR

In May, the Instituto Serrapilheira awarded two grants to ICTP-SAIFR. The first grant will fund a new SAIFR-Perimeter-Serrapilheira outreach coordinator position and the second grant will fund a research chair for Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP/Perimeter I.).

New members of the ICTP-SAIFR staff

In April and June, Malena Stariolo and Isabela Pereira joined ICTP-SAIFR as science journalist and technical assistant with FAPESP fellowships. Malena writes about ICTP-SAIFR scientific activities for the UNESP monthly newspaper Jornal UNESP and for a weekly blog on ICTP-SAIFR´s homepage. Isabela assists in the development of an online archive of seminars.

New executive secretary at ICTP-SAIFR

In June, Humberto Neto was hired as the new executive secretary of ICTP-SAIFR. In addition to the usual secretarial activities, Humberto will arrange the visas, flights and accommodations for the more than 1000 visitors who annually participate in ICTP-SAIFR activities.

Papos de Física: April 5

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 5, Ivone Albuquerque (IF-USP) spoke on the composition of the Universe giving special emphasis to what is known and unknown about dark matter.

Ciência em Diálogo-Física e Arte: April 6

ICTP-SAIFR continued its outreach program with the Instituto Moreira Salles (IMS) involving a monthly series of presentations at the IMS museum featuring one scientist and one non-scientist. In the April edition of this program, cosmologist Raul Abramo (IF-USP) and art historian/journalist Cristina Bonfiglioli discussed the topic “Aerospace Photography”.

A Física do Universo: Cosmologia - minicourse 1 for high-school students: April 7-28

Every Saturday morning from April 7-28, ICTP-SAIFR organized a minicourse on topics in cosmology for 80 high-school students from the São Paulo region. In his lectures, Rogério Rosenfeld (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP) used basic concepts from observational cosmology to discuss the structure and evolution of our universe.

Ciência em Diálogo-Física e Arte: May 4

In the May meeting of this monthly program at the IMS museum, astrophysicist Rodrigo Nemmen (IAG-USP) and writer Antonio Xerxenesky discussed the topic “Science Fiction” from both historical and scientific perspectives, with comments on the accuracy of predictions made in the science fiction literature.

CHY: a Stringy View of Field Theory Amplitudes: May 7-9

From May 7-9, Ellis Ye Yuan (IAS-Princeton) presented an introduction to the Cachazo-He-Yuan (CHY) formalism, which is a universal method for modeling the perturbative S-matrix of massless particles using an underlying “world-sheet” instead of the traditional Feynman diagrams.

Workshop on Spatial and Temporal Dynamics of Ecological Networks: May 14-18

From May 14-18, ICTP-SAIFR associate member Marcus A.M. Aguiar (UNICAMP) organized this workshop on ecological networks with international speakers including Laura Burkle (Montana State U.), Marie Josée Fortin (U. Toronto), Dominique Gravel (U. Quebec), David Hembry (U. Arizona), Erica Newman (U. Arizona) and James O’Donnell (U. Washington).

Papos de Física in Pint of Science Brazil: May 14-16

In this international festival, Papos de Física joined forces with the Pint of Science Brazil to present current physics topics to the general public. During three consecutive evenings, G. Krein (IFT-UNESP) and A. Saa (UNICAMP) talked about entropy and the concept of infinity, O. Éboli (USP) and M. Yamashita (IFT-UNESP) discussed particle physics and pseudoscience, and O. Aguiar (INPE) and V. Rivelles (USP) gave presentations on gravitational waves and string theory.

Relatividade e Gravitação - minicourse 2 for high-school students: May 26 - June 9

In this minicourse given by Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP & Perimeter I.) to over 80 high-school students, Prof. Vieira lectured each Saturday morning on topics in special and general relativity using mathematical language accessible to high-school students.

Workshop on Long-range Interactions and Synchronization: May 28-31

This four-day workshop was organized by S. Gupta (Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda U.), R. P. M. Bachelard (UFSCAr) and T. M. da Rocha Filho (UnB), and brought together statistical physicists and dynamical systems physicists to discuss common aspects of long-range and synchronizing systems.

Latin-American Workshop on Gravity and Holography: June 4-8

This one-week workshop on gravity and holography was organized at ICTP-SAIFR by T. Andrade (U. Barcelona), E. Cáceres (U. Texas at Austin), M. Chernicoff (UNAM) and ICTP-SAIFR associate member D. Trancanelli (USP). The workshop included seminars by 28 Latin American physicists working in USA and Europe as well as Latin America.

Papos de Física:June 7

In this monthly presentation in an informal setting, Adriano Natale (IFT-UNESP) presented the seminar “The science of the videogame”. Prof. Natale talked about several curiosities regarding the world of videogames, including how physics knowledge is used to produce them and how games can influence human behavior.

Ciência em Diálogo-Física e Arte:June 8

In the June meeting of this program at the IMS museum, theoretical physicist Pedro Vieira (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP/Perimeter I.) and art historian Sonia Salzstein (ECA-USP) discussed the notion of beauty. The relation of beauty to the scientific concepts of truth and symmetry were discussed, as well as its relation to temporary fashions in art.

Joint ICTP-Trieste/ICTP-SAIFR School on Particle Physics: June 18-29

This two-week joint school with ICTP-Trieste on particle physics was organized by E. Bertuzzo (USP), E. Pontón (ICTP-SAIFR/IFT-UNESP), A. Romanino (SISSA/ISAS, INFN & ICTP-Trieste) and G. Villadoro (ICTP-Trieste). The school aimed at giving PhD students an overview of particle physics, with special emphasis on LHC physics where recent progress has been made.