Many members of the Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications recently attended the Strings 2016 Conference hosted at Tsinghua University in Beijing. This week-long conference featured talks by several of the world’s most prominent string theorists, including Director of IAS Robbert Dijkgraaf, Fields Medalist Edward Witten, and Nobel Laureate David Gross. In addition to the plenary speakers, the conference also organized a gong show featuring short presentations from students, poster sessions, several parallel sessions featuring talks by junior researches, and public talks. The conference was hugely successful, with several hundred attending from across the international physics and math community.
The conference offered the speakers and participants many chances to interact more informally outside of the talks, allowing them to collaborate on ideas and questions brought up during the sessions. Participants and speakers regularly gathered together during group lunches, excursions, and banquets, fostering academic collaboration as well as overall colleagiatlity. Throughout their talks, the speakers showed incredible enthusiasm for the current state of string theory and theoretical physics and a great eagerness to see what lies ahead. Undoubtedly, the work from Strings 2016 will help contribute to the forward movement of this exciting field of study.
Check out some photos of CMSA at Strings 2016:
Prof. Shing-Tung Yau welcomes attendees to Strings 2016
Prof. Andrew Strominger gives his talk “Soft Hair on Black Holes”
The audience watches Mina Aganagic
Robert Dijkgraaf giving his public talk
Participants Johannes Henn, Can Kozcaz, and Francesco Benini enjoying the excursion to Beijing’s Summer Palace.
Speaker dinner
Looking ahead to Strings 2017!
