Support for US Researchers to Attend the US-Latin American Quantum Gravity Network Workshop

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports the participation of a mixture of experienced and young US researchers in a US-Latin American Workshop on quantum gravity. The workshop will be co-organized by the PI and the Latin American Quantum Gravity Network in Uruguay. It will be held in conjunction with the sixth Quantum Gravity in the Southern Cone workshop in April 2017. The Quantum Gravity in the Southern Cone Workshops were started by the PI and Prof. Rodolfo Gambini in Uruguay with NSF-INT support and have been successfully continued in Argentina, Chile and again in Uruguay. The workshops have spawned the creation of an informal network of Latin American researchers in quantum gravity that now organizes and manages the meetings. They provide a unique opportunity for young researchers to meet world leaders in their fields. The workshop series also seeks to consolidate ties between a formal regional network of researchers and US scientists, helping to establish long term collaborations between researchers in the network and US researchers. This workshop is also an exceptional opportunity for increasing the participation of underrepresented groups and for junior US scientists and students to meet and share knowledge with experts from the international community in a stimulating environment. The Workshop will be held in Montevideo, Uruguay, in April 2017, and it will consist of a three-day meeting with talks by invited speakers. In this meeting, the organizers seek to add an international component to the regional meeting by having one day focused on increasing cooperation between Latin American researchers in the area and US researchers, particularly those at the beginning of their careers. It is to be noted that Latin America has a tradition of contributing valuable researchers to the field of quantum gravity over the years. The organizers will fund the air travel of three senior US researchers and three junior (grad student or postdoc level) US researchers to attend the workshop. Quantum gravity at the moment is a field where significantly different approaches are being pursued by various subsectors of the research community. Meetings like this one are unique opportunities to provide a broad exposure to the various approaches and to allow cross-fertilization among the subfields. The three senior researchers are Abhay Ashtekhar (Eberly Chair at PennState), Andy Strominger (Gwill E. York Professor at Harvard) and Juan Maldacena (Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton). In turn each of them will designate a young researcher to attend the meeting.