«Es chulo», or «This night, I almost cried»

by Pietro Vischia

Today I had a very full day. It started with a working meeting (an informal meeting of the people working on some analysis) for planning how to improve the EWkino analysis (one of the searches for new physics we are involved in) with the new data CMS is taking. I then went on to the UniOvi CMS group weekly meeting, in which we all meet in the large common office (plus some people connected in videoconference from CERN) to discuss the various topics the group is involved it. Let me delay to another occasion my rant on the amount of CMS meetings we are subjected to!

Then, after some quick and frenetic coding work, I

AMVA4NewPhysics: A Success Story

by Tommaso Dorigo

As I write this, I have on my desk a pile of brochures that INFN and the University of Padova Department of Physics and Astronomy have produced in the context of the program “Europe in my region”.

Thanks to the work, among others, of our press office coordinator Sabine Hemmer, these brochures are real nice booklets in the end. They will be distributed during the “Researchers’ Night” next Friday, September 29, in the context of the large number of initiatives that will take place in Padova – and to which will contribute the members of our network Martino dall’Osso and Pablo de Castro, who will man the INFN stand in the center of Padova.

What do these brochures contain? They describe the dozens of European Projects and Research in Physics and Astronomy that is partly funded by EU initiatives. Each main project takes one page – so AMVA4NewPhysics

Astro@stats Workshop

by Greg Kotkowski

On Friday, September 8 ^th I attended a Sino-Italian workshop on astrostatistics organized at the Department of Statistical Sciences in Padova. It touched current topics at the interface between Astronomy, Physics and Statistics. At a first glance, I was surprised by the similarity of the research topics that are faced across different fields of science. Often the main difference lays only in the data and the assumptions of the underlying data generating process.

First CMS Physics Object School in Bari

by Ioanna Papavergou

One of the best parts of being a physics PhD student is having the chance to broaden your knowledge by attending seminars and schools especially designed for helping you to be more efficient in your research. I was fortunate to have such an opportunity by attending the first CMS Physics Object School (POS) which took place from September 4^th to 8^th in Bari, Italy.