Biophysics
January 6 - 12, 2008
Decision Making in Single Cells
Organizers:
Sharad Ramanathan (Harvard University & Bell Laboratories)
Peter Swain (McGill University)
Gathering and processing information is fundamental to life. In all cells, this ability is conferred by biochemical networks. Information is detected by proteins at the cell membrane, processed by networks of proteins in the cytosol, and ultimately transmitted to the cell nucleus. A failure in cellular information processing causes disease: whether it is a hijacking of the signalling network by a viral invader, the uncontrolled growth of cancer, or mistimings in the contractions of individual heart cells. Understanding and controlling such cellular decisions is thus of great importance.
Physicists working in these areas seldom have the opportunity to meet, yet they usually share a common conceptual approach. This workshop will bring together physicists who investigate cellular decision-making, and like-minded biologists, irrespective of the experimental system they study. Its goal is to explore a general theoretical description of cellular decision making.
Particle Physics
January 13 - 19, 2008
Revealing the Nature of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking
Organizers:
Yuri Gershtein, Florida State University,gerstein@hep.fsu.edu
Konstantin Goulianos, Rockefeller University, dino@mail.rockefeller.edu
Jane Nachtman, University of Iowa, nachtman@fnal.gov
John Terning, University of California, Davis, terning@physics.ucdavis.edu
Markus Wobisch, Louisiana Tech University, wobisch@fnal.gov
The conference will cover the latest developments in High Energy Physics, concentrating on the theoretical and experimental exploration of the Higgs sector and alternative models of electroweak symmetry breaking. The schedule and the mixture of foreseen talks are designed to encourage interactions between theorists and experimenters, exposing experimenters to the latest theoretical ideas, while providing a dose of reality to the theorists. For more information, please visit: http://conferences.fnal.gov/aspen/2008
Cosmology
January 27 – February 2, 2008
Cosmic Microwave Radiation
Organizers:
Kris Gorski, Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA
Marc Kamionkowski, Caltech
Amber Miller, Columbia University
Eiichiro Komatsu, University of Texas, Austin
Matias Zaldarriaga, Harvard
The cosmic microwave background has now blossomed into a precise cosmological probe. With last year's release of the WMAP 3-year data, a healthy crop of ongoing suborbital experiments, and the forthcoming launch of the Planck satellite, the time is ripe for theorists, experimentalists, and data analysts to come together and take stock of what we have learned and think more carefully about the science opportunities for Planck. The intention of this conference will be to review the current measurement results and determine strategies for forthcoming CMB experiments. The topics to be discussed will include the inflationary gravitational-wave background, searches of non-Gaussianity, cosmic-shear measurements with the CMB, and synergies between the CMB and other cosmological probes.
Completed applications are to be sent to: krzysztof.m.gorski@jpl.nasa.gov
Condensed Matter Physics
February 3 – 9, 2008
New Horizons in Condensed Matter Physics
Organizer:
Chandra Varma, University of California, Riverside
Kathryn A. Moler, Stanford University
Joel E. Moore, University of California, Berkeley
Wim van Saarloos, Instituut–Lorentz
This conference will focus on recent advances in condensed matter physics that promise to open up conceptually novel directions of research. This is a relatively broad conference highlighting the most important and rapidly developing areas from both “hard” and “soft” condensed matter and especially their overlap. The topics covered are:
In addition to the leading practitioners in the field, we intend to have about 30 post-docs and young researchers whose expenses will be partially deferred through a grant from ICAM. They are encouraged to apply to one of the organizers listed above.
Completed applications are to be sent to: chandra.varma@ucr.edu or kmoler@stanford.edu
Astrophysics
February 10 – 16, 2008
The First Two Billion Years of Galaxy Formation:
The Reionization Epoch and Beyond
Organizers:
Garth Illingworth, Chair, UCO Lick Observatory
Rychard Bouwens, UCO Lick Observatory
Marijn Franx, Leiden University
Mauro Giavalisco, Space Telescope Science Institute
Guinevere Kauffmann, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
Simon White, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics
Rosie Wyse, Johns Hopkins
Over the past years, we have made great strides in our ability to understand and to characterize the distant universe in its first two billion years. These advances have been made possible by the significant array of 8-10 meter class telescopes, large wide-area optical and near-infrared imagers, the Hubble Space Telescope, radio telescopes with kilometer long baselines, and a large array of other telescopes in space including Chandra, XMM, and the Spitzer Space Telescope. Somewhat simultaneously, similar advances have been made in the computational arena, and now with the current generation of simulations we are able to simulate very large volumes of over 500h-1 Mpc on a side, with a mass resolution of ~1010 solar masses. All these advances have been extremely helpful for studies of early galaxy formation which require superb observational and computational tools, and now we are able to identify candidate galaxies out to redshifts as high as z~7-10 and study massive galaxies at z~2-3 in significant detail. The goal of this meeting will be to bring together a large community of observers and theorists studying a wide range of different phenomena in high-redshift galaxies. Among the key topics to be explored in this meeting are:
* WMAP Constraints
* First Stars
* Reionization
* Galaxies and AGNs at z>6
* Evolved Galaxies at z>2
* Galaxy Evolution from z~10 to z~3
* High Redshift Star Formation
* AGN Feedback
* Metallicities at z>2
For more information see: http://www.ucolick.org/~gdi/AspenWinter08
Please click here to link to the presentations.
For more information call (970) 925-2585.