Events

2021 Nov 17

Lee Historical Lecture: Helen Quinn, "A window on particle physics at Harvard in the early 1970’s"

6:30pm

Helen Quinn

Professor Emerita, Particle Physics and Astrophysics
SLAC National Accelerator Center, Stanford University

"A window on particle physics at Harvard in the early 1970’s"

Wednesday, November 17, 2021 6:30pm in Jefferson 250 
And also streamed live via Zoom (but we hope you will attend in person, with appropriate face covering)
For Zoom link, please contact Jolanta Davis

...

Read more about Lee Historical Lecture: Helen Quinn, "A window on particle physics at Harvard in the early 1970’s"
2021 Nov 15

Monday Colloquium: Jean Philippe Bouchaud (CFM)

4:30pm

Location: 

Zoom

Crises & Tipping Points: From Statistical Physics to Social Sciences

As P. W. Anderson wrote in 1972 in his article "More is Different", the behavior of large assemblies of individuals (/molecules) cannot be understood by extrapolating the behavior of isolated individuals (/molecules). On the contrary, completely new behaviors, sometimes spectacular and difficult to anticipate, can appear and require new ideas and methods. The purpose of statistical physics is precisely to try to understand these collective phenomena, which do not belong to any of the underlying elementary...

Read more about Monday Colloquium: Jean Philippe Bouchaud (CFM)
2021 Nov 08

Monday Colloquium: Paul McEuen (Cornell University)

4:30pm

Location: 

Zoom
Microscopic Robots?!
 
Can we build microscopic robots? Autonomous ambulatory creatures too small to be resolved by the naked eye? The brains are not the problem: a modern IC has tens of thousands of transistors in the area occupied by a paramecium. But two major components are missing: electronic actuators that can operate as the robot’s micro-appendages, and a power/communication system for getting energy/info in and out. In this talk, I will discuss work by an interdisciplinary team at Cornell to create tiny robots. We first created OWiCs, or...
Read more about Monday Colloquium: Paul McEuen (Cornell University)
2021 Feb 22

Monday Colloquium: Isaac Chuang (MIT) "Grand unification of quantum algorithms"

4:30pm

Location: 

Zoom

Modern quantum algorithms with provable speedups originate historically from three disparate origins: simulation, search, and factoring. Today, we can now understand and appreciate all of these as being instances of a single framework, recently created by Gilyen, Su, Low, and Weibe, based on two key ideas: (1) the transformability of singular values by quantum evolution, and (2) the nonlinearity available to process two-level quantum signals. This remarkable unified framework opens doors to new quantum algorithms, provides opportunities for quantum advantage, and introduces questions...

Read more about Monday Colloquium: Isaac Chuang (MIT) "Grand unification of quantum algorithms"
2021 Mar 15

Monday Colloquium: Maria Fyta (Universitat Stuttgart) "Nanometer-sized holes opened in materials for molecular detection"

4:30pm

Location: 

Zoom

Nanometer-sized holes can be opened in materials in order to detect single molecules, sequence DNA and RNA or store information. Using computational means at various spatiotemporal levels, we attempt to understand the characteristics of nanopores in different materials in order to tune their detection efficiency and biosensitivity. On top of these, Machine Learning approaches have allowed us to interpret relevant experimental data and provide us with predictions on the identity of the molecules threading the pores. We discuss what we have learned so far and the relevance of our work in...

Read more about Monday Colloquium: Maria Fyta (Universitat Stuttgart) "Nanometer-sized holes opened in materials for molecular detection"

Pages