Ignatios Antoniadis (LPTHE - CNRS - Sorbonne University, France)

	Biography
	Ignatios Antoniadis (born December 2, 1955 in Chios) is a Greek theoretical physicist who deals with string theory and particle physics and works in Paris and at CERN. Antoniadis graduated from Athens University with a degree in Mathematics in 1977 and a DEA degree in Paris in 1978. In 1980 he received his doctorate at the École normal supérieure with the second part of the doctorate in the French system at the time at the École polytechnique in 1983. From 1982 he carried out research for the CNRS at the Center for Theoretical Physics (CPHT) of the École Polytechnique. From 1986 to 1988 he was at CERN and from 1983 to 1986 he was also a Research Associate at SLAC. From 2000 to 2014 he was a member of the theory department at CERN. Antoniadis deals with string theory, tests of their dualities, quantum gravity, supersymmetric and grand unified theories. He is particularly known for investigating the phenomenology of superstring theory and possibly observable effects such as extra dimensions and change the gravitational force at short distances. In 2008 he received an Advanced Grant from the European Research Commission (ERC). (https://second.wiki/wiki/ignatios_antoniadis)
Title	Challenges in particle physics and cosmology
Abstract	Particle physics studies the elementary constituents of matter and their fundamental forces. Very short distances are explored by particle collisions at very high energies, creating conditions similar to those governing the Universe just after the Big Bang. This is the reason that the same physics is also explored by cosmology through observations on the sky at very large distances. The current theory of particle physics, called Standard Model, provides an accurate description of all known physical phenomena in the microcosmos. On the other hand, the Standard Model of cosmology describes very well observations, confirmed recently by the Planck satellite experiments, pointing to the existence of a new dark sector of the Universe containing dark matter and dark energy. I will discuss the problem of scale hierarchies in particle physics and cosmology and propose ways to address it. In particular I will present a framework of obtaining inflation from supersymmetry breaking by identifying the inflaton with the superpartner of the goldstino and will describe its phenomenological consequences.
Links	https://inspirehep.net/authors/1018276 http://string.lpthe.jussieu.fr/members.pl?key=840 https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/3068

---

Abhay Ashtekar (The Pennsylvania State University, USA)

	Biography
	Abhay Ashtekar is the Evan Pugh Professor of Physics and holder of the Eberly Chair at Penn State, and of a Distinguished Visiting Chair at the Perimeter Institute, Canada. As the Founding Director, he led the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos from 1993 to 2021. His research has advanced our understanding of the asymptotic structure of space-time, gravitational waves in full non-linear general relativity, the ‘atomic’ structure of space-time geometry at the Planck scale, and the quantum nature of black holes and big bang. His reformulation of general relativity as gauge a theory has led to loop quantum gravity, an approach to the unification of general relativity and quantum physics that is now being pursued in dozens of research groups world wide. He has continued to play a seminal role in the development of this field as well as its sub-field called loop quantum cosmology. Ashtekar is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a winner of the Einstein Prize of the American Physical Society, given biannually for outstanding contributions to gravitational science. He is also one of only 51 Honorary Fellows of the Indian Academy of Sciences drawn from the community of scientists living outside of India. He was awarded the senior Forschungspreis by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and held the Krammers Visiting Chair in Theoretical Physics at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands; and the Sir C. V. Raman Chair of the Indian Academy of Science. He was awarded Doctor Rerum Naturalium Honoris Causa by the Friedrich-Schiller Universitaet, Jena, Germany in 2005 and by the Universite’ de Aix-Marseille II, France in 2010. He is a past President of the International Society for General Relativity and Gravitation, and a past Chair of the Division of Gravitational Physics of the American Physical Society. He served as Editor in Chief of the General Relativity Centennial volume commissioned by the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation, and also several international journals in the field. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abhay_Ashtekar)
Title	Quasi-local Horizons in Classical and Quantum Gravity
Abstract	One often thinks of event horizons as describing `surfaces' of black holes. But they are {\it teleological}: One may be contained in the room you are sitting in --and growing-- because of a gravitational collapse that may take place a billion years from now. Instead, one can use {\it isolated and dynamical horizons} that can be located quasi-locally (there isn't one in your room!). Unlike event horizons, dynamical horizons grow directly in response to the {\it local} inflow of energy. %Geometry of these quasi-local horizons is captured invariantly via a set of multipoles, which change in direct response to local physics. Because of such physical properties, quasi-local horizons are widely used also in numerical relativity. Recent results have opened up the new area of {\it gravitational wave tomography}: thanks to Einstein's equations, the late time dynamics of horizon multipoles can be read off from waveforms at infinity! On the quantum gravity side, what forms and evaporates in gravitational collapse is a dynamical horizon. The assumption that there is an event horizon in the process introduces considerable conceptual confusion that is removed by focusing instead on the dynamical horizon. This talk will provide a broad overview of the basic notions, fundamental properties and illustrative applications of quasi-local horizons that brings out the rich interplay between geometry and physics.
Links	https://science.psu.edu/physics/people/abhay-ashtekar https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=t9ec-6AAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (Center of Complex Networks Research, Northeastern University and Division of Network Medicine, Harvard University, USA)

	Biography
	Albert-László Barabási is a network scientist, fascinated with a wide range of topics, from unveiling the structure of the brain to treating diseases using network medicine, from the emergence of success in art to how does science really works. His work has helped unveil the hidden order behind various complex systems using the quantitative tools of network science, a research field that he pioneered, and lead to the discovery of scale-free networks, helping explain the emergence of many natural, technological and social networks. Albert-László Barabási spends most of his time in Boston, where is the Robert Gray Dodge Professor of Network Science at Northeastern University, and holds an appointment in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. But he splits his time with Budapest, where he runs an European Research Council project at Central European University. A Hungarian born native of Transylvania, Romania, he received his Masters in Theoretical Physics at the Eötvös University in Budapest, Hungary and Ph.D. three years later at Boston University. Barabási’s latest book is The Formula (Little Brown, 2018). He is the author of “Network Science” (Cambridge, 2016). "Linked" (Penguin, 2002), and "Bursts:" (Dutton, 2010) He co-edited Network Medicine (Harvard, 2017) and "The Structure and Dynamics of Networks" (Princeton, 2005). His books have been translated in over twenty languages.
Title	Taming Complexity: Controlling Networks
Abstract	The ultimate proof of our understanding of biological or technological systems is reflected in our ability to control them. While control theory offers mathematical tools to steer engineered and natural systems towards a desired state, we lack a framework to control complex self-organized systems. Here we develop analytical tools to study the controllability of an arbitrary complex directed network, identifying the set of driver nodes whose time-dependent control can guide the system’s entire dynamics. We apply these tools to several real networks, finding that the number of driver nodes is determined mainly by the network’s degree distribution. We show that sparse inhomogeneous networks, which emerge in many real complex systems, are the most difficult to control, but dense and homogeneous networks can be controlled via a few driver nodes. Counter-intuitively, we find that in both model and real systems the driver nodes tend to avoid the hubs.
Links	https://barabasi.com/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vsj2slIAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Salvatore Capozziello (Università' di Napoli "Federico II", Napoli, Italy)

	Biography
	He is a full Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Department of Physics of Università di Napoli "Federico II" and President of Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitation (SIGRAV). He spent several periods of his scientific career in USA, Germany, Poland, UK, Mexico, South Africa, Canada and France. His scientific activity is essentially devoted to research topics in General Relativity, Cosmology, Relativistic Astrophysics and Physics of Gravitation in their theoretical and phenomenological aspects. In particular, his research interestsare: Extended Theories of Gravity and their cosmological and astrophysical applications; Large Scale Structure of the Universe; Gravitational Lensing; Gravitational Waves; Galactic Dynamics; Quantum Phenomena in gravitational field; Quantum Cosmology. (https://www.gssi.it/people/professors/lectures-physics/item/203-capozziello-salvatore)
Title	Non-local gravity cosmology
Abstract	Recently the so-called Non-Local Gravity acquired a lot of interest as an effective field theory towards the full Quantum Gravity. In this talk, we sketch its main features, discussing, in particular, possible infrared effects at astrophysical and cosmological scales. In particular, we focus on general non-local actions including curvature invariants like the Ricci scalar and the Gauss-Bonnet topological invariant, in metric formalism, or the torsion scalar, in teleparallel formalism. In both cases, characteristic lengths emerge at cosmological and astrophysical scales. Furthermore, it is possible to fix the form of the Lagrangian and to study the cosmological evolution considering the existence of Noether symmetries.
Links	https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gGjuV8AAAAAJ&hl=it/

---

John Ellis (Kings College, UK)

	Biography
	John Ellis currently holds the Clerk Maxwell Professorship of Theoretical Physics at King's College in London. After his 1971 PhD from Cambridge University, he worked at SLAC, Caltech, and CERN (Geneva), where he was Theory Division Leader for six years. His research interests focus on the phenomenological aspects of elementary particle physics and its connections with astrophysics, cosmology and quantum gravity. Much of his work relates directly to interpreting results of searches for new particles. He was one of the first to study how the Higgs boson could be produced and discovered. He is currently very active in efforts to understand the Higgs particle discovered recently at CERN, as well as its implications for possible new physics such as dark matter and supersymmetry. He also studies possible future particle accelerators, such as the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) and future circular colliders, is known for his relentless efforts to promote global collaboration in particle physics. John Ellis was awarded the Maxwell Medal (1982) and the Paul Dirac Prize (2005) by the Institute of Physics. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1985 and of the Institute of Physics in 1991, and is an Honorary Fellow of King's College Cambridge and of King's College London.
Title	Probes of gravitational physics using cold atoms
Abstract	Interferometers using cold atoms offer interesting prospects for searches for ultralight dark matter, measure gravitational waves, probe the equivalence principle and test quantum mechanics. I will discuss 3 atom interferometer projects: the UK-based AION project to construct a series of strontium interferometers ranging from 10m to 1km in length, its extension to the space project AEDGE to look for gravitational waves in the mid-frequency band between the maximum sensitivities of LIGO/Virgo and LISA, and the STE-QUEST space project to use rubidium and potassium condensates to probe possible violations of the equivalence principle and models of quantum wave-function collapse as well as search for ultralight dark matter.
Links	https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/john-ellis/

---

Reinhard Genzel (Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), Garching, Germany)

	Biography
	Reinhard Genzel, (born March 24, 1952, Bad Homburg, West Germany), German astronomer who was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Physics for his discovery of a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. He shared the prize with British mathematician Roger Penrose and American astronomer Andrea Ghez Genzel received a diploma in physics from the University of Bonn in 1975 and a doctorate in physics and astronomy from the same institution in 1978. From 1978 to 1980 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. In 1981 he became an associate professor of physics at the Universityof California, Berkeley, and he became a full professor there in 1985. From 1986 he divided his time between Berkeley and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, where he was director. (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Reinhard-Genzel)
Title	A 40-Year Journey
Abstract	More than one hundred years ago, Albert Einstein published his Theory of General Relativity (GR). One year later, Karl Schwarzschild solved the GR equations for a non-rotating, spherical mass distribution; if this mass is sufficiently compact, even light cannot escape from within the so-called event horizon, and there is a mass singularity at the center. The theoretical concept of a 'black hole' was born, and was refined in the next decades by work of Penrose, Wheeler, Kerr, Hawking and many others. First indirect evidence for the existence of such black holes in our Universe came from observations of compact X-ray binaries and distant luminous quasars. I will discuss the forty year journey, which my colleagues and I have been undertaking to study the mass distribution in the Center of our Milky Way from ever more precise, long term studies of the motions of gas and stars as test particles of the space time. These studies show the existence of a four million solar mass object, which must be a single massive black hole, beyond any reasonable doubt.
Links	https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/genzel/facts/ https://www.mpg.de/463069/extraterrestrial-physics-genzel

---

Sabine Hossenfelder (Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies , Germany)

	Biography
	Sabine Hossenfelder (born 18 September 1976) is a German theoretical physicist, author, and musician who researches quantum gravity. She is a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies where she leads the Superfluid Dark Matter group. She is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray, which explores the concept of elegance in fundamental physics and cosmology.Hossenfelder completed her undergraduate degree with distinction in 1997 at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. She remained there for a Master's degree, and she wrote a thesis under the supervision of Walter Greiner titled "Particle Production in Time Dependent Gravitational Fields", which she completed in 2000. Hossenfelder received her doctorate from the same institution in 2003, for the thesis "Black Holes in Large Extra Dimensions" under the supervision of Horst Stöcker. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabine_Hossenfelder)
Title	Superdeterminism: The Forgotten Solution
Abstract	What is a measurement? This, it turns out, is the most difficult question in physics today. In this talk, I will explain why the measurement problem is important and why all attempts to solve it so far have failed. I will then discuss the obvious solution to the problem that was, unfortunately, discarded half a century ago without ever being seriously considered: Superdeterminism. After addressing some common objections to this idea, I will summarize the existing approaches to develop a theory for it.
Links	http://sabinehossenfelder.com/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=NaQZcyYAAAAJ&hl=tr

---

Claus Kiefer (University of Cologne, Germany)

	Biography
	Claus Kiefer (born April 25, 1958 in Karlsruhe ) is a German university professor for theoretical physics who deals with the fundamentals of quantum mechanics ( decoherence, also in the context of quantum gravity), astrophysics ( black hole theory ) and quantum gravity . Kiefer studied physics and astronomy at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg and the University of Vienna. In 1988 he did his doctorate with Dieter Zeh in Heidelberg on the concept of time in quantum gravity (“The concept of inner time in the canonical quantum theory of gravitation”). In 1988/89 he was a research assistant in Heidelberg, 1989 to 1993 at the University of Zurich and 1993 to 2001 at the University of Freiburg, where he qualified as a professor in 1995 with Hartmann Römer. In 2001 he became professor for theoretical physics at the University of Cologne . He was also visiting fellows at the Isaac Newton Institutefrom the University of Cambridge, 1996 at the University of Tours , 2004 at the University of Montpellier and 1999 at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. (https://second.wiki/wiki/claus_kiefer)
Title	Decoherence in Quantum Mechanics and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract	How does the classical behaviour emerge in a world that is fundamentally described by quantum theory? The key to the answer is given by a process that was described for the first time in 1970 - decoherence. Decoherence is the irreversible emergence of classical properties of a quantum system through the unavoidable interaction with its environment. In my talk, I give a general introduction into decoherence and present its most important theoretical and experimental applications. I discuss the situation in quantum mechanics including the relevance of decoherence for the interpretation of quantum theory. I then turn to quantum cosmology and explain how the classical appearance of the metric and matter fields can be understood in a theory of quantum gravity where arbitrary metric superpositions can occur. I also address the quantum-to-classical transition for primordial fluctuations in cosmology and point out the relevance of decoherence for the origin of the arrow of time.
Links	http://www.thp.uni-koeln.de/gravitation/mitarbeiter/kiefer.html https://inspirehep.net/authors/1003034

---

Attila Krasznahorkay (Institute for Nuclear Research (ATOMKI), Hungary)

	Biography
	Attila János Krasznahorkay was born on January 1, 1954 in Bakonszeg, Hungary.Master of Science, Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen, Hungary, 1978; Doctor of Philosophy, Lajos Kossuth University, Debrecen, Hungary, 1982; Candidate in Physical Science, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 1990; Dr, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 2001.Research fellow Institute Nuclear Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Debrecen, 1978-1980, research worker, 1980-1989, head nuclear spectroscopy department, since 1994. Postdoctoral staff Kernfysisch Versneller Institute, Groningen, The Netherlands, 1990-1991. Visiting research scholar Osaka (Japan) University, 1998-1999. Member nuclear physics board Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, since 1994. (https://prabook.com/web/attila.krasznahorkay/160808)
Title	A new light particle is beeing born
Abstract	A few yers ago we observed anomalous electron-positron angular correlations for the 18.15~MeV M1 transition of 8Be [1]. This was interpreted as the creation and decay of an intermediate bosonic particle with a mass of m0c2=16.70(35)(stat)(50)(sys) MeV, which is now called X17. The possible relation of the X17 boson to the dark matter problem triggered an enormous interest in the wider physics community. We then re-investigated the 8Be anomaly with an improved, and independent setup, and confirmed the signal of the assumed X17 particle [2,3]. Recently, we also observed a similar anomaly in 4He [4], which could be described also by the creation and subsequent decay of the same X17 particle. Our results agree well by the present ab initio calculations of Viviani et al., [5]. [1] A.J. Krasznahorkay et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 116 (2016) 042501. [2] A.J. Krasznahorkay et al., J. Phys.: Conf. Series 1056 (2018) 012028. [3] A.J. Krasznahorkay et al., Acta Phys. Pol. B 50 (2019) 675. [4] A.J. Krasznahorkay et al., Phys. Rev. C 104 (2021) 044003. [5] M. Viviani et al., Phys. Rev. C 105, (2022) 014001.
Links

---

Steve K. Lamoreaux (Yale University, USA)

	Biography
	Steve Lamoreaux is a Professor of Physics at Yale University. He received his B.S. in 1981 from the University of Washington and M.S. from the University of Oregon in 1982. He received his Ph.D. in 1986 from the University of Washington where he developed precision experimental techniques employing optically pumped mercury and applied those techniques to measurement of spatial isotropy and time reversal symmetry. He was a postdoc at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France where he worked on a U.S.-U.K. ultracold neutron electric dipole moment experiment (EDM) led by Prof. Norman Ramsey. He returned to the U.W. where he became a Research Associate Professor and conducted research in ultracold neutrons, precision laser spectroscopy, and proposed a new technique to measure the neutron EDM which is currently being developed at the Oak Ridge Spallation Neutron Source. He made the first high-accuracy measurement of the Casimir Force in 1996. Steve moved to Los Alamos in Nov. 1996, where he became a Laboratory Fellow, and worked on quantum cryptography, quantum computing, ultracold neutron physics, and led the Dynamic Materials (Weapons Physics) Team which developed novel techniques for Stockpile Stewardship. He joined the Yale Department of Physics in 2006. He presently is the Principal Investigator of HAYSTAC (Haloscope at Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold Dark Matter).
Title	The Laboratory Search for Dark Matter--Squeezed Vacuum State Sensitivity Enhancement for a Galactic Halo Axion Search
Abstract	The Pecci-Quinn mechanism was introduced in 1977 to explain the lack of time reversal asymmetry in the strong force, and was subsequently interpreted by Wilczek as to imply the existence of a new pseudoscalar particle, the Axion. Without the axion, the standard model calculation of the so-called QCD theta parameter begins to diverge at 14th order. The existence of axions at the weak scale was quickly ruled out, however subsequent analysis together with astrophysical observations suggests that the QCD axion has a mass most likely in the 10-1000 microelectron volt range. In the early 1980's Sikivie suggested the axion as a possible dark matter candidate due to its feeble interaction with ordinary matter, and suggested the use of a radiofrequency cavity as an impedance matching device between free space and a detector. The Haloscope at Yale Sensitive to Axion Cold Dark Matter (HAYSTAC) has been both under development and in operation for nearly a decade. Recently a squeezed vacuum receiving system operating in the 4.5-7 GHz range has been incorporated into the experiment and has doubled the rate at which the axion mass parameter space can be searched.
Links	https://physics.yale.edu/people/steve-lamoreaux https://inspirehep.net/authors/1001190

---

Andrei Linde (Stanford University, USA)

	Biography
	Andrei Linde (born March 2, 1948) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University. Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse. He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Moscow State University. In 1975, Linde was awarded a Ph.D. from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow. He worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) since 1989 and moved to the United States in 1990, where he became professor of physics at Stanford University. Among the various awards he has received for his work on inflation, in 2002 he was awarded the Dirac Medal, along with Alan Guth of MIT and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University. In 2004 he received, along with Alan Guth, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology for the development of inflationary cosmology. In 2012 he, along with Alan Guth, was an inaugural awardee of the Fundamental Physics Prize. In 2014 he received the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation", together with Alan Guth and Alexei Starobinsky. In 2018 he received the Gamow Prize. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei_Linde)
Title	Inflationary cosmology after Planck and BICEP
Abstract	I will discuss a broad class of inflationary models, cosmological attractors, which can describe all presently available inflation-related observational data using a single parameter. These models generalize the Starobinsky model and Higgs inflation, but they are sufficiently flexible to account for an arbitrary amount of inflationary gravitational waves.
Links	https://web.stanford.edu/~alinde/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=uOEjwMQAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Robert Mann (Waterloo University, Canada)

	Biography
	Professor Mann works on gravitation, quantum physics, and the overlap between these two subjects. He is interested in questions that provide us with information about the foundations of physics, particularly those that could be tested by experiment.Professor Mann has a lively and energetic research group of about 15 graduate and undergraduate students, where we address a number of interesting questions in physics, such as: How do black holes influence quantum entanglement? Could we use a quantum probe to peek inside a black hole? Why do black holes seem to exhibit chemical-like behaviour once vacuum energy is taken into account? Is it possible that the Big Bang could be replaced with a black hole at the beginning of time?
Title	The (Holographic) Chemistry of Black Holes
Abstract	Black Holes are amongst the strangest objects in the universe. They form from the collapse of matter into an object whose gravitational pull is so strong, nothing can escape from them. Yet a black hole also radiates heat like a blackbody, with a temperature equal to its surface gravity, an entropy equal to its area, and an energy equal to its mass. Over the past 10 years we have come to understand the vacuum energy — as embodied by a cosmological constant — plays a pivotal role in the thermodynamic behaviour of black holes. Mass becomes chemical enthalpy, the notion of a thermodynamic volume appears, and black holes exhibit a broad range of chemical phenomena, including liquid/gas phase transitions similar to a Van der Waals fluid, triple points similar to that of water, re-entrant phase transitions that appear in gels and heat engines. Under certain conditions they can even behave like superfluid helium! Now known as “Black Hole Chemistry”, I will review this subject and then go on to describe new work that is providing a pathway toward understanding these phenomena from the perspective of Gauge-Gravity duality, in which phase transitions in the (gravitational) bulk become dual to phase transitions in the dual gauge theory.
Links	https://uwaterloo.ca/physics-astronomy/people-profiles/robert-mann https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LXsd9hEAAAAJ&hl=tr

---

Ralf Metzler (Potsdam University, Germany)

	Biography
	Ralf Metzler received his doctorate in physics from the University of Ulm, Germany, in 1996. After postdoctorates at Tel Aviv University and MIT, he was appointed assistant professor at the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA), which was then in Copenhagen. After a period as Canada Research Chair in Biological Physics at the University of Ottawa, he moved to the Technical University of Munich as a professor. Since 2011, he has been chair professor for theoretical physics at the University of Potsdam and is an Alexander von Humboldt Polish Honorary Research Fellow. In 2010, Metzler received a Finland Distinguished Professorship from the Academy of Finland, and he was awarded the "SigmaPhi Prize 2017. His research focuses on non-equilibrium statistical physics and (anomalous) stochastic processes, with applications to biological and soft matter systems. (https://physics.aps.org/authors/ralf_metzler)
Title	Small scale complexity
Abstract	Massive advances in experimental techniques allow scientists to probe the microscopic interactions in living biological cells on a single-molecular level, and supercomputing studies unveil the complex internal dynamics of large molecules and their assemblies into larger structures. Theoretical tools are being developed to understand the dynamics in highly structured, heterogeneous, and non-equilibrium cellular environments in more detail. This talk will introduce recent advances in the physical mechanisms behind transport and chemical reactions in microscopic biological and soft matter systems, and how advanced data-driven methods help advancing our knowledge gain.
Links	http://www.agnld.uni-potsdam.de/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jjxiLF4AAAAJ&hl=en

---

Viatcheslav Mukhanov (Ludwig Maximilian University of München, Germany)

	Biography
	Viatcheslav Mukhanov was born in 1956 in Kanash, a town about 400 miles east of Moscow. In 1972 he moved to Moscow, where he studied at the Physical-Technical Institute, eventually receiving his doctorate in 1982. During his time there he and a colleague, G. V. Chibisov (deceased), developed a theory that in an expanding and evolving universe, the present structure on the largest scale is the result of quantum fluctuations in the earliest moments of the universe’s existence. Mukhanov was the first scientist from Germany to receive the Blaise Pascal Chair from the French government. He has also received the Gold Medal of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, the Klein Medal of the Stockholm University, and, both with Alexei Starobinsky, the Tomalla Prize of the Tomalla Foundation for Gravity Research in Switzerland and the Amaldi Medal from the Italian Society for General Relativity and Gravitational Physics.(https://gruber.yale.edu/cosmology/viatcheslav-mukhanov)
Title	Discrete Geometry
Abstract	We assume that the points in volumes smaller than an elementary volume (which may have a Planck size) are indistinguishable in any physical experiment. This naturally leads to a picture of a discrete space with a finite number of degrees of freedom per elementary volume. In such discrete spaces, each elementary cell is completely characterized by displacement operators connecting a cell to the neighboring cells and by the spin connection. We define the torsion and curvature of the discrete spaces and show that in the limiting case of vanishing elementary volume the standard results for the continuous curved differentiable manifolds are completely reproduced.
Links	https://www.theorie.physik.uni-muenchen.de/cosmology/members/professors/mukhanov/index.html https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=J8ZbzOIAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Sergei Odintsov (ICREA and ICE-IEEC, CSIC, Barcelona, Spain)

	Biography
	Sergei D. Odintsov (born 1959, Shchuchinsk, Kazakhstan) is a Spanish/Russian astrophysicist active in the fields of cosmology, quantum field theory and quantum gravity. Odintsov is an ICREA Research Professor at the Institut de Ciències de l'Espai (Barcelona) since 2003. He is author of about 600 research articles with fundamental results on realistic modified gravity which unifies the inflation with dark energy era. He is editor-in-chief of Symmetry, and is a member of the editorial boards of several more journals. In 2011, Odintsov was included in the list of the top 10 most well-known scientists of Russian origin according to Forbes. Awarded by Amaldi Gold Medal: European Prize for Gravitational Physics 2014. In 2014-2018, 5 years in a row, he was included in the list of The World's Most Influential Scientific Minds: 2014-2018 according to Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Odintsov)
Title	Unification of inflation with dark energy in axion F(R) gravity
Abstract	F(R) gravity coupled with axion (primordial broken Peccei-Quinn like symmetry, misalignment model) is considered. It is shown that unified universe history from inflation to dark energy maybe achieved in such a model. In addition, axion dark matter naturally presents in the course of universe evolution. The role of non-minimal coupling of gravity with axion maybe essential for such realistic scenario.
Links	https://www.icrea.cat/Web/ScientificStaff/sergei-odintsov-250 https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1j1w5V4AAAAJ&hl=tr

---

Carlo Rovelli (Aix-Marseille University, France)

	Biography
	Carlo Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist and writer who has worked in Italy, the United States and, since 2000, in France. He is also currently a Distinguished Visiting Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute. He works mainly in the field of quantum gravity and is a founder of loop quantum gravity theory. He has also worked in the history and philosophy of science. He collaborates with several Italian newspapers, including the cultural supplements of the Corriere della Sera, Il Sole 24 Ore and La Repubblica. His popular science book, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, was originally published in Italian in 2014. It has been translated into 41 languages and has sold over a million copies worldwide. In 2019, he was included by Foreign Policy magazine in a list of 100 most influential global thinkers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Rovelli)
Title	How do black holes end?
Abstract	Black holes do not live can. What happens at the end of their evaporation bears heavily on assumptions commonly and uncritically taken for granted. The end of the evaporation is in the quantum gravitational regime and should be addressed with current tentative theories of quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity indicates that the black hole horizon is not an event horizon, the von Neumann entropy of the hole can be higher than the Bekenstein Hawking entropy, and the horizon can quantum tunnels into an anti trapping horizon.
Links	http://www.cpt.univ-mrs.fr/~rovelli/ https://arxiv.org/search/?query=Carlo+Rovelli&searchtype=author&order=-announced_date_first&size=50

---

Mikhail Shifman (University of Minnesota, USA)

	Biography
	Mikhail Shifman is the Ida Cohen Fine Professor of Theoretical Physics at William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute, the University of Minnesota. Born in 1949 in Riga, Latvia, he received his education in Moscow. Since the early 1970s he was one of the pioneers of non-perturbative methods in QCD based on OPE expansions. In particular, he (and co-authors) discovered the penguin mechanism in the flavor-changing weak decays, developed the SVZ sum rules and related expansion in the inverse heavy quark mass for heavy-light hadrons, and suggested invisible axions –– all of the above results are widely known and used today. Since the mid-1980s he worked on exact non-perturbative results in supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories and sigma models, such as the NSVZ beta functions, supersymmetric anomalies, BPS-saurated domain walls, string vortices and other topological defects. Since 2018 M. Shifman is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences. Recently, M. Shifman authored a number of books and collections on history of quantum science between two wars.
Title	The inception, the Concept and the Second Life of Supersymmetry
Abstract	After a brief review of the inception of supersymmetry and its development since the mid-1970s I explain where it stands now and its unique uses in four-dimensional quantum field theory at strong coupling. Unlike two-dimensional field theories in which some exact solutions had been found in the past, no examples of this type existed in four dimensions. With the advent of supersymmetry it all changed. I will present a number of examples culminating in 1994 discovery of the exact solution in N=2 user-Yang-Mills by Seiberg and Witten. This was a breakthrough of remarkable proportions in understanding (in full analytic power) of how confinement emerges in Yang-Mills theories –– one of the most mysteries phenomenon in nature. Then I present a few selected results after Seiberg&Witten in a pedagogical manner.
Links	https://cse.umn.edu/physics/mikhail-shifman https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=PQwnvvUAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Qaisar Shafi (University of Delaware, USA)

	Biography
	Qaisar Shafi is a Pakistani-American theoretical physicist and the Inaugural Bartol Research Institute Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware.Shafi grew up in Karachi, Pakistan and lived there until his early teens when his family moved to London, United Kingdom. After graduating as valedictorian from Holland Park School, London, UK, he studied physics at Imperial College, London, where he received both his B.Sc. Honors and PhD. His PhD advisor was the late Nobel Laureate Professor Abdus Salam, whom he subsequently joined International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy.Shafi was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Prize and spent some years in Germany (Munich, Aachen, and Freiburg) In 1978, he received his Habilitation with Venia Legendi from the University of Freiburg. He then spent two years at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) after which he moved to the United States. Since 1983, Shafi has been a faculty member at the Bartol Research Institute, University of Delaware, which in 2005 merged with the Department of Physics and Astronomy.Shafi has done pioneering research in areas ranging from Grand Unification to Kaluza-Klein theories, to inflationary cosmology and supersymmetric theories, and he is widely regarded as a leader in these fields. He has published more than 300 papers in refereed journals, among them many of the most prestigious in the field, lectured at close to 250 conferences, workshops, and universities.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qaisar_Shafi).
Title	Monopoles, Strings and Gravitational Waves
Abstract	A variety of interesting topological objects arise in spontaneously broken unified theories. They include monopoles and strings as well as more complex structures with cosmological implications. This talk will focus on magnetic monopoles, cosmic strings and gravitational waves radiated by the latter.
Links	https://web.physics.udel.edu/about/directory/faculty/qaisar-shafi https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xftbQIIAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Burra G. Sidharth (Universita degli Studi di Udine, Italy)

	Biography
	After finishing his masters degree in applied mathematics with quantum mechanics as a specialization, Sidharth was briefly at the Int. center for Theoretical physics, in Trieste, Italy Here he briefly interacted with Professor Abdul‘s salam and continued to be in touch with him till his demise. He returned from Trieste with a PHD from Kolkata university. There upon he continued working in quantum scattering till the mid 90s, but then this work evolved into a number of significant areas. For example, in 1995 he proposed One dimensional and Two dimensional structure‘s. Nanotubes and graphene followed later, in fact graphene itself was discovered in 2005. In 1997 he came up with his model of dark energy and an evil accelerating universe. This was noted by if you Nobel laureate‘s. In fact professor Tony Legget went on to say that the Nobel committee could have at least acknowledged this, because shortly there after the accelerating universe was observationally discovered. All this was but a part of his research which went on to point out things like the fifth force and so on. Dr. Sidharth has some 200 peer reviewed research articles has also some 15 books, with another couple of books on the anvil He was proposed for the Nobel prize He has also played host to some 40 Nobel laureate’s.
Title	The fifth force
Abstract	For many decades physicists have known about the fundamental forces: electromagnetism, strong and weak forces, Gravity etc. These are everywhere in the universe. Now there is strong evidence for the existence of a new force, called the fifth force by many researchers. This is a new paradigm, apart from being a fantastic prospect. It must be said that Burra Sidharth has been writing and lecturing on this topic from the late eighties. This work has appeared, in papers, in the Chaotic Universe, Nova Science, New York, 1990; the Universe of fluctuations, Springer; The Thermodynamic universe, World scientific. The papers have appeared in journals IJMPA, IJMPE, The International J of Theoretical Physics and other peer reviewed and Standard International journals Burra also suggested an alternative test for the new force, in the form of a possible shift in the energy levels of quarkonium particles eg Charmonium. These are essentially quark anti quark pairs. The energy levels are already worked out in detail. So, after 20 years, the experimental evidence for the hitherto unknown new force has started coming in, whether it be from the Fermi lab in Chicago or the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva These results are in excess of the 3.1 and even 4.1 Sigma level of confidence which makes this credible as there is a 1 in 40,000 chance of this being a fluke. So 20 years on, 2022 may see the Inauguration of a brand new force of nature.
Links	https://inspirehep.net/authors/988778

---

Kostas Skenderis (Southhampton University, UK)

	Biography
	Kostas Skenderis is a Professor in the school of Mathematical Sciences, the Head of the Applied Mathematics & Theoretical Physics Division in the school of Mathematical Sciences and the co-Director of the STAG Research Centre. He obtained his undergraduate degree from Thessaloniki, and his PhD in theoretical Physics from SUNY at Stony Brook, USA. He held faculty positions in Princeton University, the University of Amsterdam, and since 2012 at the University of Southampton. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory and cosmology. He worked extensively in holographic dualities and in particular he introduced the method of holographic renormalization, which underlies the mathematics of the “holographic dictionary”, i.e. the way holography links bulk and boundary quantities. His current research includes the use lattice methods in holography and the application of holography to cosmology..
Title	Holography and the origin of time
Abstract	The theory of General Relativity breaks down close to spacetime singularities, and these singularities are expected to be resolved by quantum gravity. In this talk I will discuss holographic models for the very early universe, and present evidence that the dynamics of the dual QFT resolves the initial singularity.
Links	https://www.southampton.ac.uk/maths/about/staff/ks8e11.page https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=2-4AWrsAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Paul J. Steinhardt (Princeton University, USA)

	Biography
	Paul J. Steinhardt is the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University, where he is on the faculty of both the departments of Physics and of Astrophysical Sciences. He co- founded the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science and served as its Director from 2007 to 2019. Steinhardt’s research spans problems in particle physics, astrophysics, cosmology, condensed matter physics and geoscience. He is well known as one of the original architects of the inflationary model of the universe, and was one of the first to show that inflation leads to a multiverse. Concerned that the multiverse effect destroys the predictability of inflation, he later co-developed the “cyclic model” of the universe, which is now considered a leading rival. Advances are currently being pursued by the Simons Foundation program on Cosmological Bounces and Bouncing Cosmologies, which he co- founded. Steinhardt is also known for his work on dark energy and dark matter, including introducing theories of “quintessence” dark energy and self-interacting dark matter (SIDM). (https://wwwphy.princeton.edu/~steinh/shorter.html)
Title	Rethinking Cosmology
Abstract	The talk will point out a number of common misconceptions about early universe cosmology and show how they naturally lead us to a new possibility for the origin of the universe and the future of dark energy.
Links	https://phy.princeton.edu/people/paul-j-steinhardt https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=LUbmYqgAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Leonard Susskind (Stanford University, USA)

	Biography
	Leonard Susskind is the Felix Bloch professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University. His research interests include string theory, quantum field theory, quantum statistical mechanics and quantum cosmology. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an associate member of the faculty of Canada's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and a distinguished professor of the Korea Institute for Advanced Study. Susskind is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory, having, with Yoichiro Nambu and Holger Bech Nielsen, independently introduced the idea that particles could in fact be states of excitation of a relativistic string. He was the first to introduce the idea of the string theory landscape in 2003. (https://www.simonsfoundation.org/people/leonard-susskind/)
Title	Gravity, Quantum Mechanics, and Computer Science
Abstract	I will talk about some of the profound connections that have been uncovered between gravity and quantum mechanics, and the unexpected relation with basic concepts of computer science such as complexity theory, and if time permits, the "quantum-extended Church-Turing" thesis.
Links	https://sitp.stanford.edu/people/leonard-susskind

---

Eric Thrane (Monash University, Australia)

	Biography
	Mark Eric Thrane is a Professor at Monash University (outside of Melbourne in Australia) where he runs a research group specialising in gravitational-wave astrophysics and cosmology. He is the recipient of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellowship and serves as Data Theme Leader for OzGrav: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational-Wave Discovery. He has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration for 14 years, during which time he has served in a number of leadership roles.
Title	The population of merging compact binaries inferred using gravitational waves through GWTC-3
Abstract	With the publication of the third gravitational-wave transient catalog (GWTC-3), the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations have confidently identified 90 signals from merging compact binaries. By analysing the morphology of each gravitational waveform, we are able to work out the masses and spins of the black holes and neutron stars that source these signals. We also determine the distance to the merger. By studying the distributions of black-hole mass, spin, and distance, we are painting a picture of the population properties of compact mergers, providing clues about the fate of massive stars and telling us how and where binary black holes are assembled. In this talk, I'll summarise our current understanding of the population properties of merging compact binaries and highlight some of the interesting questions going forward.
Links	https://users.monash.edu.au/~erict/ https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=FIUZuS0AAAAJ&hl=en

---

Mark Trodden (University of Pennsylvania, USA)

	Biography
	Mark Trodden is the Fay R. and Eugene L. Langberg Professor of Physics at the University of Pennsylvania. He is co-Director of the Center for Particle Cosmology, and currently serves as the Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. He previously held the Alumni Professorship at Syracuse University, and has had visiting positions at Cornell University, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in Santa Barbara, and as a Sir Thomas Lyle Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Trodden is an elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the Institute of Physics, and has been a member of the US High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). Dr. Trodden’s research interests are broadly in both theoretical cosmology and particle physics. His early work was on the origin of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, and on the microphysical properties of topological defect solutions to quantum field theories. In later significant work, he explored how models of neutrino masses can give rise to dark matter candidates, and proposed new compactification manifolds for large extra dimensions. He is best known for introducing one of the most-studied modified gravity approaches to late-time cosmic acceleration, as well as for the detailed development of novel field theories with applications to both the early and present-day dynamics of the universe.
Title	Coupled Early Dark Energy
Abstract	I will describe how some of the fine-tuning problems of the early dark energy solution to the Hubble tension can be addressed using couplings to other fields already present in cosmology. I will discuss the formulation, the cosmology, and the constraints on such models, arising from both observational and theoretical considerations.
Links	https://live-sas-physics.pantheon.sas.upenn.edu/people/standing-faculty/mark-trodden https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=3HPicwEAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Constantino Tsallis (Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, Brazil and Santa Fe Institute, USA)

	Biography
	Constantino Tsallis is a physicist in the area of statistical mechanics, former head of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the Centro Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, in Rio de Janeiro (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of Brazil), and and also founder of the National Institute of Science and Technology for Complex Systems of Brazil. He obtained his title of Docteur d´ État ès Sciences Physiques from the University of Paris-France in 1974. He has worked in a variety of theoretical subjects in the areas of critical phenomena, chaos and nonlinear dynamics, economics, cognitive psychology, immunology, population evolution, among others. Since three decades, he is focusing on the entropy and the foundations of statistical mechanics, as well as on some of their scientific and technological applications. He is Doctor Honoris Causa from the University of Cordoba, Argentina, the University of Maringa and Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, and the Aristotelian University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and was distinguished with the award Aristion (Excellence) by the Academy of Athens, originally founded by Plato. In 2005 and 2006, he did basic research at the Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, where he co-authored several papers with Murray Gell-Mann.
Title	Statistical mechanics at the edge of chaos
Abstract	Together with Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell electromagnetism, Einstein relativity and quantum mechanics, Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) statistical mechanics constitutes one of the pillars of contemporary theoretical physics, with uncountable applications in science and technology. This theory applies formidably well to a plethora of physical systems. Still, it fails in the realm of complex systems, characterized by generically strong space-time entanglement of their elements. On the basis of a nonadditive entropy (defined by an index q, which recovers, for q=1, the celebrated Boltzmann-Gibbs-von Neumann-Shannon entropy), it is possible to generalize the BG theory. We will briefly review the foundations of this generalization, its relevant connections with nonlinear dynamical systems at the edge of chaos, Pesin identity, central limit theorem, large deviation theory, as well as its applications in natural, artificial and social systems. A Bibliography is available at http://tsallis.cat.cbpf.br/biblio.htm
Links	https://www.santafe.edu/people/profile/constantino-tsallis https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=frSidx8AAAAJ&hl=en

---

Vlatko Vedral (Oxford University, UK)

	Biography
	He completed his undergraduate and graduate studies at Imperial College, London. Since June 2009 he has been in an entangled state of professorship at the University of Oxford and at the National University of Singapore. He is known for his research on the theory of Entanglement and Quantum Information Theory. As of 2017 he has published over 280 research papers in quantum mechanics and quantum information and was awarded the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2007. He is the author of several books, including Decoding Reality.
Title	Quantum Physics in the Macroscopic Domain
Abstract	Many macroscopic phenomena rely on the laws of quantum physics. The solid state physics, for instance, started with the realization that both electrons and vibrations have to be treated quantum mechanically to even begin to be able to understand the thermodynamical behavior of many-body systems. A growing body of evidence now suggests that living systems too could be utilising quantum coherence, superpositions, and even, in some cases, quantum entanglement to perform some tasks with higher efficiency. However, it is an exciting open question to what degree quantum effects can be maintained and controlled at the macroscopic level. This is interesting not just for our quest to realise scalable quantum computers, but also for engineering special-purpose programmable nano-machines. I will explain the basics of witnessing entanglement and I will put this into the context of our present understanding of macroscopic quantum phenomena. I will then experiments we are currently undertaking in our laboratory to obtain a better understanding of quantum effects in complex (bio)molecules. This will include our recent observation of the vacuum Rabi splitting in a living bacterium strongly coupled with the electromagnetic field as well as hybrid qubit state between a tardigrade and a superconductor. I will also discuss how these experiments can be scaled-up, as well as how we can design artificial and hybrid biomimetic structures that capture the underlying fundamental quantum behavior of complex systems. Gravity may well be the only remaining frontier and I intend to comment on how its quantum nature could be tested. Will quantum physics ultimately be superseded in the macro domain, or will it prove to be a universal description of all the known phenomena?
Links	https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/vedral https://scholar.google.co.uk/citations?user=d0ruO6gAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Xiao-Gang Wen (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA)

	Biography
	Xiao-Gang Wen is a theoretical condensed matter physicist, recognized for his work on introducing the notion topological order (1989) and developing the theories of this new class of quantum states of matter. Since 2000, the study of topological states of matter slowly became a very active new field in condensed matter physics. Wen was born in Beijing and grew up in Xi'an, China. He went to University of Science and Technology of China after the reopening of universities in China in 1977. Through T.D. Lee's CUSPEA program, he obtained a chance to enter the graduate school of Princeton University in 1982, and earned a PhD degree in the eld of superstring theory under Prof. Witten. During his postdoctoral period (1987-1989) in ITP, Santa Barbara, he started to pursue research in condensed matter physics. After a two-years stay in IAS, Princeton, he joined the faculty of department of Physics, MIT in 1991. He was awarded Oliver E. Buckley Condensed Matter Prize by APS in 2017. (https://xgwen.mit.edu/biosketch)
Awards	Dirac Medal
Title	A unification elementary particles and fundamental forces via quantum information
Abstract	The quantum revolution unifies particle with waves, and energy with frequency. In this talk, we will explore the possibility that unifies matter with quantum information. In other words, the elementary particles (the bosonic force particles and fermionic matter particles) all originated from quantum information (qubits): they are collective excitations of an entangled qubit ocean that corresponds to our space. The beautiful geometric Yang-Mills gauge theory and the strange Fermi statistics of matter particles now have a common origin -- the long range entanglement of the qubits that form our space.
Links	https://physics.mit.edu/faculty/xiao-gang-wen/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=jfZtuFwAAAAJ&hl=en

---

Edward Witten (Institute for Advanced Study, USA)

	Biography
	Edward Witten, (born August 26, 1951, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.), American mathematical physicist who was awarded the Fields Medal in 1990 for his work in superstring theory. He also received the Dirac Medal from the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (1985).Witten was educated at Brandeis University (B.A., 1971) in Waltham, Massachusetts, and Princeton University (M.A., 1974; Ph.D., 1976) in New Jersey. He held a fellowship at Harvard University (1976–77), was a junior fellow in the Harvard Society of Fellows (1977–80), and held a MacArthur Foundation fellowship (1982). He held an appointment at Princeton (1980–87) before moving to the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, in 1987.Witten was awarded the Fields Medal at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Kyōto, Japan, in 1990. His early research interests were in electromagnetism, but he soon developed an interest in what is now known as superstring theory in mathematical physics. He made significant contributions to Morse theory, supersymmetry, and knot theory. Additionally, he explored the relationship between quantum field theory and the differential topology of manifolds of two and three dimensions. With the physicist Nathan Seiberg he produced a family of partial differential equations that greatly simplified Simon Donaldson’s approach to the classification of four-dimensional manifolds.Witten’s publications include, with Sam B. Treimen, Roman Jackiw, and Bruno Zumino, Current Algebra and Anomalies (1985) and, with Michael B. Green and John H. Schwarz, Superstring Theory (1987). (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-Witten)
Awards	Field Medal, Dirac Medal, Einstein Medal, Klein Medak, Newton Medal, Lorentz Medal
Title	Entropies and Algebras in Black Hole Theory and de Sitter Space
Abstract
Links	https://www.ias.edu/sns/witten https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Z-EXYCkAAAAJ&hl=en

---

---

Opening and Closing Talks

---

Closing Talk: Durmuş Ali Demir (Sabancı University University, Turkey)

	Biography
	Short bio
Title	Title
Abstract
Links	http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/durmusdemir/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=tr&user=P2e-HFIAAAAJ

---

Closing Talk: Ali Mostafazadeh (Koç University, Turkey)

	Biography
	Short bio
Title	Renormalization of point scatterers in two and three dimensions and its coincident-limit problem
Abstract	In two and three dimensions, the standard treatment of the scattering problem for a multi-delta- function potential, leads to divergent terms. Regularization of these terms and renormalization of the coupling constants give rise to a finite expression for the scattering amplitude, but this expression has an important short-coming; in the limit where the centers of the delta functions coincide, it does not reproduce the formula for the scattering amplitude of a single-delta-function potential, i.e., it seems to have a wrong coincidence limit. We provide a critical assessment of the standard treatment of these potentials, offer a resolution of its coincidence-limit problem, and reveal its inability to determine the dependence of the scattering amplitude on the distances between the centers of the delta functions. This is in sharp contrast to the treatment of this problem offered by a recently proposed dynamical formulation of stationary scattering (DFSS). For cases where the centers of the delta functions lie on a straight line, this formulation avoids singularities of the standard approach and yields an expression for the scattering amplitude which has the correct coincidence limit. We elaborate on the implicit regularization property of DFSS and relate the singularity appearing in the standard approach of this problem to the inclusion of unphysical waves whose momentum is parallel to the detector’s screen.
Links	http://home.ku.edu.tr/~amostafazadeh/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=tr&user=DNufROQAAAAJ

---

Closing Talk: Özgür Müstecaplıoğlu (Koç University, Turkey)

	Biography
	Short bio
Title	Fundamentals and Applications of Heat Currents in Quantum Systems
Abstract	Heat and conversion of it into other forms of energy have been fueling the progress of humankind since ancient times. The earliest recorded steam engine, the aeolipile, generates the rotation of a steam ball powered by boiling water in a cauldron underneath. Systematic study of steam engines, or more generally heat engines, led to the emergence of thermodynamics as a new scientific discipline in the early 1800s. Thermodynamics explores the relations between heat and all forms of energy, establishing fundamental bounds on energy processes and associated machine operations. Thermodynamical laws on engine efficiencies and energy conversions are expressed for classical macroscopical systems. On the other hand, technological trends are developing smaller and smaller devices operating in the microscopic or quantum realm. Natural questions and new challenges have arisen as the machines get smaller. Can we define heat, temperature, and work for microscopical or quantum systems and expect the same thermodynamical laws to set the bounds for such small machines? Explorations of such questions led to a new, rapidly developing field of research, quantum thermodynamics. The first part of this talk will introduce the answers given by quantum thermodynamics to the definitions of heat and work in quantum systems. Our focus will be mainly on the heat in the second part of the talk, where we will overview counterintuitive examples of heat flows in quantum systems. Our examples include edge heat currents in topological insulators which can flow from cold to hot reservoirs, heat currents between non-thermal baths, conversion of quantum information into a heat flow, generalized Onsager relations, and persistent (super) heat currents. In the third and the last part of the talk, we will briefly present some physical settings and applications of the heat currents in quantum systems, such as trapped ions, optomechanical resonators, and superconducting circuits. We will discuss applications of quantum thermal diodes, switches, and transistors for phononic quantum technologies, next-generation quantum thermal annealers, and quantum measurement engines.
Links	http://home.ku.edu.tr/~omustecap/ https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vGwRAIQAAAAJ&hl=tr

---

Closing Talk: Christian Corda (Instito Levi, Italy)

	Biography
	Short bio
Title	The secret of planets' perihelion between Newton and Einstein
Abstract	It is shown that, contrary to a longstanding conviction older than 160 years, the advance of Mercury perihelion can be achieved in Newtonian gravity with a very high precision by correctly analysing the situation without neglecting Mercury's mass. General relativity remains more precise than Newtonian physics, but Newtonian framework is more powerful than researchers and astronomers were thinking till now, at least for the case of Mercury. The Newtonian formula of the advance of planets' perihelion breaks down for the other planets. The predicted Newtonian result is indeed too large for Venus and Earth. Therefore, it is also shown that corrections due to gravitational and rotational time dilation, in an intermediate framework which analyzes gravity between Newton and Einstein, solve the problem. By adding such corrections, a result consistent with the one of general relativity is indeed obtained. Thus, the most important results of this Closing Talk are two: i) It is not correct that Newtonian theory cannot predict the anomalous rate of precession of the perihelion of planets' orbit. The real problem is instead that a pure Newtonian prediction is too large. ii) Perihelion's precession can be achieved with the same precision of general relativity by extending Newtonian gravity through the inclusion of gravitational and rotational time dilation effects. This second result is in agreement with a couple of recent and interesting papers of Hansen, Hartong and Obers. Differently from such papers, in the present Closing Talk the importance of rotational time dilation is also highlighted. Finally, it is important to stress that a better understanding of gravitational effects in an intermediate framework between Newtonian theory and general relativity, which is one of the goals of this Closing Talk, could, in principle, be crucial for a subsequent better understanding of the famous Dark Matter and Dark Energy problems. This is the Conference's Closing Meeting which arises from the reseach paper Physics of the Dark Universe 32 (2021) 100834.
Links	https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=WfUTLj8AAAAJ

---