Contact: rxh1[AT]psu.eduLocation: University Park, PA, USA
Second 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.
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 feature topics such as Future Technologies in Gravitational Wave Physics; Frontiers of Relativistic Astrophysics; The Next Decade in Cosmology; Future Directions in Computational Gravity; and, Gravity Meets the Quantum.
Parallel sessions will be divided into four themes following the tradition of the GRn conferences of the ISGRG: i) Mathematical and Numerical GR; ii) Relativistic Astrophysics and Cosmology; iii) Experimental and Observational Gravity; and, iv) Quantum Aspects of Gravity. They will feature contributed talks, as well as a few invited talks providing introductions to broad sub-areas. Some sessions will be dedicated to the interface between these 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.
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. 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