XXV Preparatory SERC School in Theoretical High Energy Physics

The next Preparatory SERC school in Theoretical High Energy Physics is to be held from October 4-30, 2009 at the Department of Physics, IIT Madras. The Director of the school is Dr. Prasanta K. Tripathy of IIT Madras.

Courses (Lecturers):

• Quantum Field Theory (S. Govindarajan, IITM);
  
• Group Theory (H.S. Sharatchandra, IMSc);
  
• Particle Physics and the Standard Model (S. Umasankar, IITB Sourov Roy, IACS );
  
• General Relativity and Cosmology (G. Date, IMSc) and
  
• Statistical Methods in Physics (D. Indumathi, IMSc)

Prerequisites: Special Theory of Relativity, Relativistic Kinematics, Relativistic Quantum Mechanics, Electromagnetism in 4-vector notation

Further details are available at the homepage of the school. Interested graduate students may visit the site for further details.

RIP Jaydeep Majumder (1972-2009)

Jaydeep Majumder passed away at 6:00am on July 22, 2009 in Bhubaneswar. He was admitted to the hospital the previous evening at 10:30pm. Hospital scans revealed that he had a tumor in his brain and that may have been the cause of his untimely and unexpected passing away at a very young age. He had recently joined NISER, Bhubaneswar as a faculty member and was excited about having to teach quantum mechanics during the coming semester. He is survived by his wife. Our sincere and heartfelt condolences are to his immediate family. He will also be missed by all his friends like me.

A bit about Jaydeep: Jaydeep did his B.Sc. (1994) and M.Sc. (1996) in Physics from Calcutta university and then joined the Ph.D. programme at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) after spending a semester at Tata Institute (TIFR) in Mumbai. He completed his Ph.D. in 2001/2 under the supervision of Prof. Ashoke Sen. Subsequently, he did post-docs at Rutgers and the Helsinki Institute of Physics. He then joined MNNIT, Allahabad as an Assistant Professor in 2008 before moving to NISER, Bhubaneswar in June 2009. His research in the recent past has been in the area of cosmology. His publications are listed in the SPIRES database.

4th Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology

The 4th Asian Winter School on Strings, Particles and Cosmology is to be held in Mahabaleswar, Maharashtra, during January 11-20, 2010.

This School is being organized as a program of the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences of TIFR. It forms part of an ongoing series of Asian Winter schools organized by China, India, Japan and Korea. The previous Schools were held in

Korea <http://www.apctp.org/topical/stringws2007/>,

Japan <http://www-conf.kek.jp/nasulec/2007/> and

China<http://www.itp.ac.cn/conference.php?cID=string08>.

The current school also combines with the series of Asian Schools
<http://www-conf.kek.jp/nasulec/> on Particles, Strings and Cosmology held annually in Japan.

The School will cover various areas in String Theory, High Energy Physics and Cosmology. The intended audience consists of senior graduate students as well as practicing researchers. The lectures will cover a selection of basic areas as well as advanced topics at the forefront of current research. The list of speakers includes:

Ignatios Antoniadis (Ecole Polytechnique, France)
John Ellis* (CERN, Switzerland)
Sean Hartnoll (Harvard University, USA)
Kenneth Intrilligator (Univ. of California, San Diego, USA)
Liam McAllister (Cornell University, USA)
Shiraz Minwalla (TIFR, India)
Andrew Strominger (Harvard University, USA)
Herman Verlinde (Princeton University, USA)
Laurance Yaffe (University of Washington, Seattle, USA)

* To be confirmed

Further details and updates can be found in the School web page:
http://www.icts.res.in/program/asian4


Organizing Committee:

Amol Dighe (TIFR, India)
Rajesh Gopakumar (HRI, India)
Hyung Do Kim (Seoul National University, Korea)
Nakwoo Kim (Kyung Hee University, Korea)
Hideo Kodama (Kyoto University, Japan)
Yasuhiro Okada (Okada, Japan)
Sreerup Raychaudhuri (TIFR, India)
Tarun Souradeep (IUCAA, India)
Tadashi Takayanagi (IPMU, Japan)
Gautam Mandal (TIFR, India) Scientific Director of the School

Spenta R. Wadia, (Director, ICTS of TIFR) Overall Director of the School