A Lecture on Artificial Intelligence in Hamburg

by Tommaso Dorigo

Are you going to be in the Hamburg (Germany) area on July 7th? Then mark the date! The AMVA4NewPhysics and INSIGHTS ITN networks have jointly organized, with the collaboration of the DESY laboratories and the Yandex school of machine learning, a public lecture titled “Artificial Intelligence: past, present, and future“. The lecturer is Prof. Pierre Baldi, from the Center for Machine Learning at the University of California Irvine.
The venue is the auditorium (horsaal) of the

Q & A on AMVA4NewPhysics

by Tommaso Dorigo

It is a very good thing that the European Commission pays close attention to document the work of the projects that benefited of its funding. So, for instance, the AMVA4NewPhysics network has been described, along with its goals, in a 2016 article on the Horizon magazine.

Since the network is nearing the end of its lifetime, I was asked to provide some information for an update of the above article. I think it is useful to share the questions and my own answers below. Of course, the mentions I made below of some of the network output are only a partial representation, and are

Accelerating the search for Dark Matter with Machine Learning

by Tommaso Dorigo

The topic of algorithms that may dramatically improve our statistical inference from collider data is dear to my heart, and has been so since at least two decades (my first invention, which has now become what is called the “inverse bagging” algorithm, is dated 1992, when nobody even knew what bagging was). But now _everybody_ appears to be interested in the topic, and that means all of my particle physics and astroparticle physics colleagues.

A way to gauge the interest of the community on this topic is the number of gatherings to discuss advancements in the field and their impact in experimental research in fundamental science. If I look back at just the past few months,

Advanced Results in Lisbon

by Tommaso Dorigo

This week the VII AMVA4NewPhysics workshop is under way in the premises of LIP in Lisbon. During these events the network gets together to discuss the status of the various projects, plan future events and activities, take action on arisen issues, and vote on budget and other topics. But this is a special event in the lifetime of the network, as we are getting toward the mature stage – we are in the 

IASA – Accelerating science in Athens

by Kostas Vellidis

IASA stands for Institute of Accelerating Systems and Applications – a mouthful indeed. IASA is a relative rarity in Greece: it is a private non-profit research institute. A number of those University Research Institutes (URI), or, in the original (to help you refresh your math characters) Ερευνητικά Πανεπιστημιακά Ινστιτούτα (ΕΠΙ), were established in the 90s, in an effort to promote research and postgraduate studies in the Greek University system by providing specialized infrastructure and/or expertise.

UCL – where tradition meets the future

by Christophe Delaere

Aiming at the broadening and transmission of human knowledge, university is one of the best inventions of the Middle Ages. The Université catholique de Louvain has played a part in this process with pride since 1425. Just to cite a few: Erasmus, Vésale, Mercator and many others came to Louvain to profit from its location at the heart of Europe.

600 Attend to Outreach Event in Venice Lido

by the AMVA4NewPhysics press office

On Saturday, July 8th, the “Sala Perla” of the Palazzo del Casinò was crowded by 600 attendees, who filled all seats and then some. The event, titled “Universo: tempo zero – breve storia dell’inizio”, was organized in conjunction with the international EPS conference, which takes place until this Wednesday at Lido of Venice, and was sponsored by the AMVA4NewPhysics network. It featured a discussion between the anchor, Silvia Rosa Brusin, and a few guests: Fabiola Gianotti, general director of CERN; Antonio Masiero, vice-president of INFN; and Mirko Pojer, responsible of operations of the LHC collider. The program was enriched by a few videos, and by readings by Sonia Bergamasco and jazz music by Umberto Petrin.

At the start of the evening, the Venice high-school students who won the “Art&Science” contest were given prizes (consumer electronics and gadgetry) offered by AMVA4NewPhysics as well as plaques with certificates. The winners, Martina Ciampi and Elena Murer, received in addition to the gadgets and the

Art & Science 39: Light’s Perspectives

by the AMVA4NewPhysics press office

Unlike previously understood, the last artwork by Venice high-school students featured in this blog, of a total of 39, is titled “Le prospettive della luce” (light’s perspectives). It is a video produced by Alberto Bentsik, Tommaso Moretti, and Samuele Tonello , students of the Liceo “G.B. Benedetti”. The students filmed themselves as they worked on a wooden board, and produced a high-speed video that shows their actions like in a movie from the nineteen-twenties. This allowed them to “document” their creative process, which is a bit mysterious as we only get to see them planting nails on the board and doing other slightly obscure operations on it. The board is shown below.

In the final frames of the video is shown the real result of their work – streaks of colour produced by red led lights shining on the board: that is their

Art & Science 38: Boson Motion

by the AMVA4NewPhysics press office

Elisa Brocca and Emma Troni, two students from Liceo “G.B. Benedetti”, are the authors of the video titled “Boson Motion”. The students captured the video as a succession of frames that try to picture the collision of two LHC protons with coloured balls, and to explain the motion of massive and massless particles in the presence of the Higgs boson field. The result is a fun animation.

The Art & Science contest is coming to a close, as tomorrow evening