Issue 1, 2014
Issue 1, 2007
As of January 2007 the Nordita News are published as wiki pages under the address http://wiki.nordita.org/index.php/News. This means that people are supposed to write articles and do corrections themselves (click on "Edit this page"). The material will be assembled gradually before it will be released and publicly advertised.
Nordita door sign
Since January 1st Nordita is located in its own building at the AlbaNova University Centre in Stockholm, with KTH and Stockholm University as host organisations. Presently Nordita is financed jointly by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the host universities.
One professor, Axel Brandenburg, followed Nordita to Stockholm, while John Hertz, Paolo Di Vecchia, Alan Luther, Chris Pethick and Ben Mottelson (emeritus) remained in Copenhagen. Several of the professors who choose to remain in Copenhagen pay regular visits to Nordita in Stockholm.
One assistant professor, Anupam Mazumdar, was to follow Nordita to Stockholm on September 1st, 2008, but he has now accepted a permanent position at the University of Lancaster in the UK and will unfortunately leave us. Two assistant professors, Charlotte Fløe Kristjansen and Olav Syljuåsen, whose terms expire in 2007, remain in Copenhagen
Three fellows followed Nordita to Stockholm for a third year as fellows: Kristjan Kristjansen in String theory, Martin Olsson, also in string theory and Torgny Karlsson in Astrophysics.
Five fellowships were announced during the fall. We received 80 applications, and the appointment process for the fellows has now been completed, and the following young researchers will begin their two year post-doc period at Nordita in 2007:
| Anssi Collin | FI | (Condensed matter; will begin 2008-02-01) |
| Petri Käpylä | FI | (Astrophysics; will begin 2008-01-01) |
| Raphaël Plasson | FR | (Astrobiology) |
| Lars Samuelsson | SE | (Astrophysics) |
| Solveig Skaudhage | DK | (High Energy Physics; will begin 2007-10-01) |
Nordita in February
In Nordita's establishment plan it was foreseen that a limited number of researchers from the environment should be engaged in Nordita at a 25% basis to complement and stimulate the activities in Nordita during the first years. At present, Professor Anders Rosengren from KTH, who is active in condensed matter, has been engaged in this program for 2007.
Two assistant professorships were also announced during the fall of 2006, and we have received 135 applications. The appointment process is ongoing, and we expect that offers can be made late March or early April. Since Anupam will leave Nordita in September, three assistant professors will now be recruited.
During the fall 2006 Nordita invited applications for scientific programs, http://wiki.nordita.org/index.php/Research. Fifteen program proposals have been received, and the evaluation is expected to be completed in April, 2007.
The board has decided to form an external advisory committee to advise the board on issues such as thematic fields and programs. The advisory committee will evaluate the program applications and suggest to the board which programs should be funded. It is envisaged that the committee will comprise eight members. Presently we have four confirmed members:
| Terri Hwa | (San Diego) |
| Renata Kallosh | (Stanford) |
| Graham Ross | (Oxford) |
| Joseph Silk | (Oxford) |
A new board and a new chairman should be appointed by July 1st 2007. Board members should be suggested by the Nordic research councils and the chairman of NOS-N. The formal appointments, based on these suggestions, are made by the presidents of Stockholm University and KTH jointly. Professor Risto Nieminen will take up the duties as director on July 1st, 2007. Visits to the research councils to discuss both the nomination of board members and future funding issues are planned in February and March, 2007.
Nordita 2007-02-16
Ulf Wahlgren
Director
Has been held 15-17 February in Stockholm. There were 66 registered participants. Invited talks were delivered by
Organizers: Paolo Di Vecchia. For details see
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=83.
Will be held 9-11 May in Stockholm.
Scope of the meeting:
The purpose of the 3-day symposium is to highlight the role of radiation in fluid dynamical activity throughout astrophysics. A wide range of topics will be considered including thermal effects in the solar atmosphere and sunspots, radiation pressure driven dynamics such as photon bubbles in hot stars and accretion discs and reionization of the Universe by the first stars. The general topic of radiation hydrodynamics is particularly timely in view of the 60th anniversary of Åke Nordlund, who pioneered the interaction of radiation transport with three-dimensional hydrodynamics in the mid 1970-ies. Radiation hydrodynamics simulations have now reached a high degree of realism and are routinely performed in solar and stellar physics. Hydrodynamic and hydromagnetic effects that are due to radiation pressure are beginning to find broad appreciation not only in the field of stellar physics, but also accretion discs. Radiation hydrodynamics is to an increasing extent being incorporated into cosmological simulations in order to understand radiative feedback in structure formation. Given such great diversity of applications, the cross-disciplinary exchange of idea is therefore particularly important.
Invited Speakers:
Marek Abramowicz (Göteborg),
Mitchell C. Begelman (Boulder),
Omer Blaes (Santa Barbara),
Nick Gnedin (Chicago),
Tobias Heinemann (Cambridge),
Christiane Helling (St Andrews),
Susanne Höfner (Uppsala),
Mika Juvela (Helsinki),
Hans Ludwig (Meudon),
Garrelt Mellema (Stockholm),
Åke Nordlund (Copenhagen),
Juri Poutanen (Oulu),
Göran Scharmer (Stockholm),
Aristotle Socrates (Princeton),
Jesper Sommer-Larsen* (Copenhagen),
Edward A. Spiegel (Columbia Univ),
Robert F. Stein (Michigan),
Rashid Sunyaev (MPI Munich/Garching),
Neal J. Turner (JPL/Caltech),
Masayuki Umemura (Tsukuba U, Japan),
Alexander Vögler (Utrecht),
Organizers: Axel Brandenburg & Garrelt Mellema
For details see
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=99
Will be held 11-20 June in Stockholm.
Organizers: Lars Bergström, Ulf Danielsson, Ariel Goobar, Anupam Mazumdar
For details see
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=89
Will be held 15-18 July at Hotel Arkipelag, Åland, Finland.
Content and scope:
Statistical physics has recently applied been to understanding, analysis
and design of large distributed information systems. These range from
decoding algorithms (Belief Propagation) and phase transitions and
typical-case hardness in combinatorial optimization problems to content
distribution and dynamical phenomena on the Internet, to the modelling
of distributed agent systems - Peer-to-Peer networks, auction mechanisms
and so forth. The meeting aims to survey current trends in this exciting
area, and foster new research into untapped directions.
Format:
The program will consist both of invited lectures and contributed
talks. Participants are encouraged to describe their contribution upon
registration. The number of participants will be limited to 50.
Invited speakers:
Misha Chertkov (Los Alamos),
Sui Huang (Harvard),
Petteri Kaski (Helsinki),
Satya Majumdar (Paris),
Elitza Maneva (IBM Almaden),
Andrea De Martino (Rome),
Marc Mezard (Paris),
Remi Monasson (Paris),
Amin Shokrollahi (EPFL),
Arne Traulsen (Harvard),
Udi Wieder (Microsoft Research),
Jonathan Yedidia (Mitsubishi Research).
Organizer: Mikko Alava, Erik Aurell, John Hertz, Scott Kirkpatrick, Supriya Krishnamurthy
For details see
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=48
Will be held 14-17 August in Stockholm.
The Pencil Code (www.nordita.org/pencil-code) is a multipurpose code for massively parallel computing
(especially on the cheaper Linux cluster).
It includes optionally hydrodynamics, magnetic fields, radiation, ionization, multi-species dust dynamics with coagulation, and certain reaction-diffusion equations.
It is developed and maintained under the Concurrent Versioning System
(CVS; see http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/) by around 25 people with check-in permission and has been
downloaded by around 400 registered users (without check-in permission).
The code is tested nightly on several platforms and provides an excellent
pedagogical tool for students to implement new code within an organized
framework.
The purpose of the meeting is to bring the core developers together and
to allow others to interact with them and learn more about the code.
Organizer: Axel Brandenburg
For details see
http://agenda.albanova.se/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=68
Since this year the general physics colloqium at AlbaNova is co-organized with Nordita. The committee members include Edwin Langmann KTH, Hector Rubinstein SU, Göran Östlin SU, and Axel Branderburg, Nordita. Colloquia take place nearly every Thursday, at 15:15, in the Oscar Klein Auditorium. The current list of speakers is listed under the INDICO system, which tries to keep track of all the talks at AlbaNova campus. The web address is http://agenda.albanova.se/categoryDisplay.py?categId=2. The committee welcomes suggestions for future speakers.
In connection with the start of the Astrobiology Graduate School in Stockholm, Nordita has been involved in organizing seminars in Astrobiology. For a full list of seminars see http://agenda.albanova.se/categoryDisplay.py?categId=9. Video recordings of some of these are also available on this web site. The Graduate School is organized jointly by the Departments of Astronomy, Geology and Geochemistry, Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics, and Physics; see http://www.astrobiology.fysik.su.se/.
Anders Johansen (Heidelberg): 24-26 Jan Martin Nilsson Jacobi (Chalmers): 8-9 Feb Antonio Masiero (Padova): 11-15 Feb Dhrubaditya Mitra (London): 18-23 Feb
(*): Funded by external sources
Nordita encourages their fellows to visit other Nordic institutes. Visits of Nordita fellows and other staff to other Nordic institutes can be supported by Nordita. The corresponding people should normally be contacted directly.
If you have information about meetings or other items that would be useful to include in Nordita News, please send it to Anne Jifält, Nordita, email: anne@kth.se.