Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Faculty Positions at CHEP Indian Institute of Science

Faculty positions at the level of Assistant Professor are open to Indian citizens at the Centre for High Energy Physics in the areas of theoretical high energy physics and phenomenology, interface areas between particle physics and cosmology/astrophysics, string theory, quantum field theory and mathematical physics. The faculty of the Centre consists of B. Ananthanarayan, Justin David, Rohini Godbole, Apoorva Patel, Diptiman Sen, Sachindeo Vaidya and Sudhir Vempati. Aninda Sinha is expected to join by the end of the year.

Applicants should have a Ph. D. in the relevant areas, at least 3 years of post-doctoral experience, an outstanding research record, and a potential for independent research, and should preferably be below 35 years of age. The position of Assistant Professors will be in PB-3 i.e. Rs.15,600-39,100 with minimum pay of Rs.30,000/- with Grade pay Rs.8000/- plus allowances. After completion of three years service in PB-3 they will be placed in PB-4 i.e. Rs.37400-67000 with Grade pay of Rs.9000/- plus allowances.

Applicants should send their curriculum vitae with a list of publications and proposed research plans, to the following address:

The Chairman,
Centre for High Energy Physics,
Indian Institute of Science,
Bangalore 560012, India.

They should also request three referees to send letters of recommendation directly to the Chairman, CHEP. The material should reach us by 15th Jan, 2010. Applicants are welcome to visit the CHEP home page, the website and to contact the Chairman of CHEP for further information.



The 2010 Infosys Prizes announced

The Infosys Science Foundation has announced the winners of the 2010 Infosys Prize. The winner in physical sciences is string theorist Sandip Trivedi of TIFR. Other winners are:


Chandrasekhar Khare (UCLA) [Mathematical Sciences]; Ashutosh Sharma (IITK) [Engineering and Computer Science]; Chetan Chitnis (ICGEB) [Life Sciences]; Amita Bhaviskar (IEG)[Social Sciences - Sociology] and Nandini Sundar (DSE) [Social Sciences - Social Anthropology]


Read more here.

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL)

The National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL, in short) aims to enhance the quality of education (mostly engineering and science) in India (and worldwide) by developing curriculum based video and web courses. Phase I of the programme has been completed and a much more ambitious Phase II of the programme is ongoing -- the number of courses will touch around 500. Roughly, each video course consists of around 40 lectures, each around 50 minutes long. Many of the lectures are now available online through the NPTEL website as well as YouTube. Most of the lectures are given by faculty members of IIT's/IISc and other institutions from India. It would be interesting to see its impact in the long run. The spirit of the programme is similar to MIT Open Courseware and in a sense, complements what is on offer there.


Thursday, June 3, 2010

Preparatory SERC School in THEP -- Oct 20 - Nov 15, 2010

Dear Colleagues,
It is a great pleasure for us to announce the Preparatory SERC School in Theoretical High Energy Physics to be held during October 20 to November 15, 2010 at the Birla Institute of Techonology and Sciences, K K Birla Goa Campus, Goa.

This school will have the following courses:
  1. Quantum Field Theory
  2. Statistical methods in Physics
  3. Group Theory
  4. Particle Physics and the Standard Model
  5. The General theory of Relativity
Applications are invited from graduate students/teachers working for their Ph.D. degrees in Theoretical High Energy Physics. Students in their final year of M.Sc. with exceptionally good academic record and a strong motivation for research may also apply.

Please note that the financial support [i.e. local hospitality, accommodation and food) and round trip travel expenses by train (AC 3T/ I Class)], for the selected participants is subject to the approval of the funding by the DST (Department of Science and Technology), Government of India.

Last date for receiving the applications is 5th July, 2010.

To apply and for more information on the school, please visit: School Homepage

Please send the soft of your application by email and hard copy by regular post. The application must reach us by 5th July, 2010. Please note that the last date for receiving the reference letter is 6th July, 2010.

Prasanta Kumar Das and V Sunil Kumar
(Joint Directors, Preparatory SERC school in THEP 2010)
Physics department
Birla Institute of Technology & Sciences - Pilani

K K Birla Goa campus, Goa-403726


Sunday, May 30, 2010

Advanced String School 2010 (Oct 4-10) Puri

From the school webpage:

The String Theory group at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar is organising the Advanced String School (third in the series) from October 4-10, 2010. The school will be held in the historic town of Puri. Puri has been a seat of art, music, dance, literature and philosophy for eight hundred years and is famous for the Jagannath temple. The venue is Hotel Shree Hari, a hotel right on the beach where all the speakers and participants will be housed.

The aim of the school is to stimulate scientific interactions between students and researchers from the international community while contributing to the development of scientific research in India.

This school, in particular, is for graduate students and postdocs in India working in String Theory. Permanent faculty members are also welcome to attend. This school is open to anyone from the international community working in String Theory as well. The institute will take care of the local hospitality for the participants during the week of the school. We may also have limited funds for domestic travel for some of the participants.


Organisers of the school: Anirban Basu, J. Maharana and Sudipta Mukherji


Important Date: August 1, 2010 (last date for registration)

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Meeting on "Primordial Features and Non-Gaussianities (PFNG-2010)"

Dear Colleague:

We are pleased to announce the international meeting titled "Primordial features and non-Gaussianities (PFNG-2010)" that is to be held at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI), Allahabad, India, during December 14-18, 2010.

The meeting will focus on understanding the generation and detection of primordial (both inflationary as well as non/post-inflationary) features and non-Gaussianities. While the first four days (December 14-17, 2010) of the meeting will be dedicated to these topics, the fifth day (i.e. December 18, 2010) will focus on issues in string cosmology.

The web-site for the meeting can be accessed at either of the following URLs:
PFNG-2010 || PFNG-2010


The Scientific Organizing Committee of the meeting consists of:

* Richard Easther (Yale University)
* Alan Heavens (Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh)
* Eiichiro Komatsu (University of Texas at Austin)
* Juan Maldacena (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)
* Jerome Martin, Chair (Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris)
* Subir Sarkar (University of Oxford)
* Tarun Souradeep (IUCAA, Pune)
* Matias Zaldarriaga (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton)

The program will consist of invited plenary talks and contributed talks as well as posters. Invited plenary speakers include:

* Xingang Chen (DAMTP, University of Cambridge)
* Asantha Cooray (University of California, Irvine)
* Amir Hajian (Princeton University)
* Mark Hindmarsh (University of Sussex)
* Shamit Kachru (KITP, Santa Barbara)
* Liam McAllister (Cornell University)
* Dipak Munshi (Cardiff University)
* Hiranya Peiris (University College, London)
* Christophe Ringeval (Louvain University)
* David Seery (University of Sussex)
* Arman Shafieloo (University of Oxford)
* Eva Silverstein (KITP, Santa Barbara)
* Kendrick Smith (Princeton University), To be confirmed
* Licia Verde (Institute of Cosmological Sciences, Barcelona)

The registration for the meeting is now open, and we welcome contributed talks and posters.

Please visit the web-site or write to us at the address for further information about the meeting.

We would be grateful if you can forward this message to your colleagues, post-docs and students.

We look forward to seeing you at HRI in December 2010.

Yours Sincerely,

L. Sriramkumar and Sudhakar Panda.
(On behalf of the Local Organization Committee)

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Programme at Isaac Newton Institute

I'd like to bring to everyone's attention that a programme "Mathematics and Applications of Branes in String and M-theory" will be held at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge from 3 January - 29 June 2012. The preliminary announcement can be found here.

Sunil Mukhi