The 13th International Workshop on Computational Physics and Materials Science: Total Energy and Force Methods will take place from 11 to 13 January in the ICTP Main Lecture Hall, marking the Centre’s first activity for 2007. About 300 participants will be in attendance. The activity will focus on the electronic structure of complex systems, both in theory and practice. The Workshop is co-sponsored by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) and the INFM DEMOCRITOS National Simulation Centre, Italy.

The course “Synchrotron Radiation for Materials Science Applications” is taught at UC Berkeley by David Attwood, a recognized authority in lithography and microscopy, and in the fabrication of related optical systems. The course reviews fundamentals, techniques, and applications of synchrotron radiation, with emphasis on the extended ultraviolet and soft-x-ray range. A useful, up-to-date introduction for graduate students in materials science and related disciplines with a specific interest in applications and instrumentation.
Lectures are webcasted live on Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. (Pacific time), during the period January 16 - May 8, 2007, and electronically archived for later viewing. The Webpage of the course includes the titles of the lectures with links to the Webcasts; lectures are free, just log on: http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/AST/srms/.

The proof by Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman of Poincaré Conjecture first presented in 2002 and subsequently confirmed by fellow mathematicians has been hailed as the scientific breakthrough of 2006 by the international journal Science. Among the earliest groups seeking to verify the proof were mathematicians participating in ICTP’s Summer School and Conference on Geometry and Topology of 3-Manifolds, held in June 2005. Perelman also received the Fields Medal, mathematics’ most prestigious award, for his discovery. But the iconoclast mathematician refused to attend the awards ceremony held at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Madrid in August 2006.

Hilda Cerdeira, a former ICTP staff scientist, has been named Fellow of the American Physical Society. Cerdeira was a member of ICTP’s Condensed Matter group from 1986 to 2004. She was also responsible for the Electronic Journals Delivery Service (eJDS), an ICTP-sponsored effort to provide scientists in the world’s poorest countries electronic access to the most current literature in their fields of study. APS is one of the largest and most eminent associations of physicists in the world.

Officials at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) have announced that about 200 students will enrol in its new School of Science and Engineering (SSE), which will begin its first semester of under-graduate classes next year. The School will offer degrees in a wide variety of fields, including biology, chemistry, mathematics. physics, and electrical, mechanical, biochemical and industrial engineering. With a projected budget of $125 million, SSE is being modelled on the paradigm for higher education followed by such elite universities as MIT, Caltech and Stanford. The School will also create a $1-million endowed chair in honour of Abdus Salam, ICTP’s founding director.

ICTP is sponsoring and hosting the African Physical Review, a free, on-line, peer-reviewed, international journal that will publish reviews, research articles, and brief communications in all branches of experimental and theoretical physics and related interdisciplinary fields. One of the objectives of the journal is to bridge the knowledge gap resulting from the inability of a large number of academic institutions in African countries to subscribe to leading physics periodicals.
Two major reasons motivated the Abdus Salam ICTP to organize and host this journal. First, low-cost, fast and easily accessible electronic publishing is rapidly replacing the traditional high-cost hard copy journal publishing. This trend is changing the entire field of peer-reviewed scientific publishing. Second, the economics of traditional mode of knowledge dissemination is not favorable to institutions in Africa. It is simply too expensive for these institutions to publish or purchase technical journals.
There is a critical mass of African scientists who produce good quality publications, but they publish their work abroad because so few quality journals in Africa meet international standards. There are some electronic journals but their quality suffers due to lack of experienced and highly qualified scientists managing their editorial functions.
The quality of the scientific material being published by APR will be overseen by an international advisory board of editors consisting of eminent scientists, including Sir Anthony Leggett, a Nobel laureate in physics (2003). ICTP will provide the editorial management and technical support team, whereas the editor, associate editors, and members of the international board of editors will operate from their home institutions worldwide.
For further information, contact K. Tahir Shah, Managing Editor, shah@ictp.it.

GianCarlo Ghirardi, Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Trieste, and long-time ICTP consultant, will deliver a Colloquium on “Symmetry in Art: Friezes and Periodic Tessellations” in the ICTP Main Lecture Hall, on Thursday, 1 February, at 18:00 hrs. The public is welcome to attend. Ghirardi will speak about the use of science in the creation of artistic patterns.
Ghirardi’s artworks – “The Periodic Tarots” – will be on display in the lobby of the Main Building. His technique follows the same principles used by Arab artists for ornamental purposes and by Dutch graphic artist, M.C. Escher, for his engravings. The technique requires mastering, for artistic purposes, an extremely refined mathematical procedure based on group theory. The exhibit will remain on display until the end of this week.

Daniel Schaffer, Public Information Officer for ICTP and TWAS, is the co-author of the lead article in Environment magazine, a monthly publication published by Heldref Publications in Washington, DC. His co-authors include Ehsan Masood, a a free-lance journalist who has written for Nature, New Scientist and The Economist; Pallava Bagla, the southeast Asia correspondent for Science; and Yvonne Ndege, a journalist with the BBC in London. The article, “Three Stories of Adaptation to Life Without Water,” consists of excerpts of a book edited by Schaffer and Masood, Dry: Life Without Water, published by Harvard University Press last year.

The G8-UNESCO World Forum on ‘Education, Research and Innovation: New Partnership for Sustainable Development’ will be held in Trieste on 10-12 May 2007. The meeting is being organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and UNESCO in collaboration with ICTP. Trieste’s other international scientific institutions, as well as the local authorities of Trieste and Regione Friuli-Venezia Giulia, are also lending their support.
The Forum builds on the discussion launched at the St. Petersburg summit on the interconnections between the three components of the triangle of knowledge—education, scientific research and technological innovation—from the perspective of sustainable development, and seeks to identify risks and opportunities for industrialized countries as well as developing and low-income countries.
The discussion will be presented by speakers of the highest level from the educational, scientific and entrepreneurial worlds, drawn from G8 countries as well as developing countries.

Filippo Giorgi, head of ICTP’s Earth System Physics group, and one of the vice-chairs of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group I, speaks on Radio3 Scienza about the release of the 21-page IPCC summary report for policymakers, released today at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. The interview, which is in Italian, is conducted by Fabio Pagan, ICTP Public Information Office.

ICTP Senior Associate Mary Teuw Niane has been appointed Rector of Université Gaston Berger, Saint-Louis, Senegal. Niane’s ties to the Centre date back to 1999, and he has been an Associate since 2000. He served as tutor at the ICTP School on Nonlinear Differential Equations in October 2006. His primary areas of research are partial differential equations and control theory. Before his recent appointment to Rector, he was director of the Laboratoire d’analyses numériques et d’informatique (Lani).

Roberto Iengo, director of the Interdisciplinary Laboratory at SISSA and long-time consultant in the ICTP High Energy Physics group and course director of ICTP activities in string theory since the late 1980s, has been appointed to the Nucleus Committee for the Assessment of the University of Trieste. He will be one of five members of an expert committee who will review the functioning of the University of Trieste and draft a report to propose improvements in fields such as scientific research, curricula, and administrative organization and management.

ICTP Director, K.R. Sreenivasan, has donated €100,000 to ICTP, on his own behalf and that of his wife and children. In his accompanying message, Sreenivasan added “I am not rich and my regret is that more is not possible.” The money shall be spent in ways that are currently examined to see “if there are aspects of the Centre for which the money could be more useful than for others.”

Svetlana V. Boriskina, School of Radiophysics, V. Kharazin Kharkov National University, in Kharkov, Ukraine, has won the 2007 ICO/ICTP Award. The cermony took place in the ICTP Main Lecture Hall during the Winter College on Fibre Optics, Fibre Lasers and Sensors, 12-23 February. Boriskina is being honoured for ther original work in the development of numerical modeling techniques for optoelectronic devices, micro-optical resonators, dielectric lenses and waveguides and for her active commitment aimed at the diffusion of research in optics in Ukraine.

Mohamed H.A. Hassan, executive director of TWAS — the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World — will give one of four plenary lectures at the AAAS Annual Meeting being held in San Francisco from 15-19 February. His topic is ‘international cooperation in science and technology for sustainable well-being.’ Other plenary lectures include: Larry Page, co-founder of Google; Nobel Laureate Steven Chu (Physics 1997), professor of physics and applied physics of Stanford University; and Susan Solomon, co-chair of Working Group 1, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The meeting is expected to draw more than 5000 people.

On 8 February, the UNESCO Club in Florence awarded the Prize for international cooperation and culture of peace to ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan. The ceremony took place at Palazzo Vecchio during an international conference on sustainable development in the field of cultural and environmental heritage.

During the School on Wireless Networking for Scientific Applications in Developing Countries on 15 February, ICTP Director K.R. Sreenivasan signed a memorandum of understanding with W. Halka, Development Director of the National Institute of Telecommunications of Poland. The institutions will collaborate for the advancement of human resources and research and development capabilities in the field of radiocommunication science and technology with particular emphasis on the development of information and communication technologies (ICT).

Mohammad Youssof Ahmed Soliman, who is seeking a Master’s degree in theroretical geophysics at the Faculty of Science, Suez Canal University, Ismailia, Egypt, has been awarded a six month fellowship, fully funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research of Egypt, to carry out research in the field of ionospheric physics at ICTP’s Aeronomy and Radiopropagation Laboratory. Youssof will work under the guidance of Sandro M. Radicella.

Tomorrow at 11:30 a.m., Claudio Tuniz (Applied Physics), Julian Chela-Flores (Applied Physics) and Claudio Piani (Physics of Weather and Climate) will participate in a programme on climate change on Radio1.

James Eells, first head of the ICTP Mathematics group, died on 14 February. He was 80 years old. An internationally known expert in differential geometry, Eells was professor emeritus at Warwick University (UK). He began his association with ICTP’s mathematics activities in 1972, and he served as head of the Mathematics group from 1986 to 1992.

A World of Sciencee, the quarterly newsletter of UNESCO Natural Sciences Sector, has published an article, “Helping Africa’s ‘Best and Brightest’ Lift Science at Home” which examines the ICTP-administered Mori Fellowships programme. The article, written by ICTP Public Information Officer Daniel Schaffer, is based on a feature story published in News from ICTP.