Third Announcement
An international conference to celebrate 100 years of general relativity, entitled General Relativity and Gravitation: A Centennial Perspective will be held at the University Park campus of Penn State from Sunday, June 7 through Friday, June 12, 2015 under the auspices of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation (ISGRG) and the Topical Group on Gravitation (GGR) of the American Physical Society. ISGRG has commissioned a volume to celebrate the centennial, to be published by the Cambridge University Press. This volume will be released at the conference.
For Table of contents, see: http://event.gravity.psu.edu/book_toc.shtml
Registration is now open at the conference website: http://event.gravity.psu.edu/index.shtml
The regular registration fee is $150 with a student rate of $75 and the accompanying guest rate of $50. This fee includes all social events including the banquet. Early registration is strongly recommended since the total number of participants is limited because of the capacity of the main auditorium.
Scientific Structure of the Conference
The scientific program has a dual goal: To assess the current status of our field in broad terms, and discuss future directions. Therefore the plenary part of the conference will feature invited talks on various areas as well as perspective sessions in which 3-4 panelists will share their vision on a single theme. The invited talks will consist of broad overviews summarizing major developments over the past 2-3 decades. The perspective sessions will look to the future. The Plenary Program is as follows.
Overviews: Speakers and Topics
Einstein’s Triumph
Eiichiro Komatsu: Observation and theoretical aspects of precision cosmology
Peter Meszaros: Gamma ray bursts
Clifford Will: Was Einstein right?
New Window on the Universe: Gravitational Waves
Gabriela Gonzalez: Receiving gravitational waves
B. S. Sathyaprakash: Sources of gravitational waves: Theory and Observations
Gravity is Geometry, Afterall
Piotr Chrusciel: General relativistic constraint equations
Mihalis Dafermos: Stability of black holes and cosmic censorship conjectures
Luis Lehner: Probing strong field gravity through numerical simulations.
Beyond Einstein
Gary T. Horowitz: Quantum gravity via supersymmetry and holography
Carlo Rovelli: From general relativity to quantum gravity
Robert M. Wald: Quantum field theory in curved space-times.
Future Perspectives Panels: Topics and Panel Chairs
Future directions in Computational Gravity (Frans Pretorius)
Frontiers of Relativistic Astrophysics (Masaru Shibata)
Next Decade in Cosmology (Roy Maartens)
Future technologies in gravitational wave science (Rana Adhikari)
Gravity Meets the Quantum (Gabriele Veneziano)
Parallel sessions
These will be divided into four themes following the tradition of the GRn conferences of the ISGRG:
A1. Mathematical General Relativity (Chair: Gregory Galloway)
A2. Numerical Relativity and Astrophysics (Chair: Deirdre Shoemaker)
B1. Relativistic Astrophysics (Jocelyn Read)
B2. Theoretical and Observational Cosmology (Arthur Kosowsky)
C1. Gravitational Waves: Event rates (Daniel Holz)
C2. Numerical Relativity, Data Analysis and Sources (Alessandra Buonanno)
C3. LIGO/VIRGO Search Plans (Laura Cadonati)
C4. Status of LIGO (Stefan Ballmer)
D1. From General Relativity to Quantum Gravity (Jorge Pullin)
D2. Higher Dimensions, Holography, and Supersymmetry (Veronika Hubney)
These sessions will feature contributed talks, as well as a few invited talks providing introductions to broad sub-areas. There will also be a special Poster Session one afternoon featuring not only contributed presentations but also posters summarizing the invited talks at parallel sessions for the benefit of the participants who could not attend those specific sessions. The abstract submission link will open early December. There is a limit of two abstracts per participant. Although abstracts can be submitted prior to registration, as a general rule, session Chairs will consider abstracts only from registered participants.
General Information
The conference will offer ample opportunities for informal discussions and social interactions. There will be a welcome reception in the evening on Sunday, June 7, a poster session (with refreshments) in the afternoon on Tuesday, June 9 and a conference banquet on Thursday, June 11. Participation in all these events in included in the registration fee. The conference will end late afternoon on Friday, June 12.
The local airport at Penn State is University Park/State College (SCE), served by Delta, United, and US Airways with flights from Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington DC. University Park/State College is also within easy driving distance (approximately 2-4 hours) from Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Washington DC. A block of rooms has been reserved at local hotels and again, early reservations are strongly recommended. Please see the conference web-page for further information.
Local Organization Committee:
Eugenio Bianchi (Co-Chair), Chad Hanna (Co-Chair), Abhay Ashtekar, Martin Bojowald, Randi Neshteruk, Ben Owen
Scientific Organization Committee:
Abhay Ashtekar (Chair), Beverly Berger, John Friedman, James Isenberg, Malcolm MaCCallum, Peter Saulson