Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (IEEC-UB) will launch this new edition
Barcelona 8 November 2016. The Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB, IEEC-UB) begins a new series of ICCUB Colloquia with a talk by Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at ICCUB, on the development that Cosmology has experienced in the last few years, as well as the challenges and new opportunities that have opened up for the future.
Throughout the last twenty years, Cosmology has experienced a dramatic progress. Several independent observations have allowed the definition of a model for the Big Bang which, complemented with an initial inflation period, describes the evolution of our Universe during the last 13,772 million years based on a few parameters and in a very accurate way.
Licia Verde (Venice, 1971), ICREA researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB), is one of the most highly cited authors according to the Highly Cited Researchers list published by Thompson Reuters in 2015. She has worked at the University of Princeton and at the University of Pennsylvania, and has been visitor researcher at the University of Harvard, the Imperial College London and CERN, among others. Among other recognitions, she has been awarded the Gruber Prize of Cosmology 2012 and an ERC starting grant (2009).
Since the beginnings of her career, Licia Verde has contributed to the development of present-day Cosmology in a very relevant way thanks to her participation in some of the most important space surveys, among them the NASA project Wilkinson Microwave AnisotropyProbe (WMAP, 2001-2012) and the SDSS-III Collaboration project Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS, 2000-2016), recently finished. WMAP measured the whole sky temperature of the microwave background with an unprecedented precision, which allowed the definition of the current Standard Model of Cosmology. BOSS has determined the three-dimensional distribution of galaxies and quasars by measuring distances on a cosmological scale covering half the history of the Universe since the Big Bang, and it has established the relationship between these distances and the expansion of the Universe.
About the ICCUB Colloquia series
The ICCUB Colloquia series is a program of talks given by internationally renowned scientists about cutting-edge topics in the fields of cosmology, astrophysics, and particle and nuclear physics. Throughout the academic year 2016-2017 several conferences are planned, by speakers such as Licia Verde (Institut de Ciències del Cosmos, ICCUB, IEEC-UB), Lisa Randall (Harvard University), Romain Quidant (Institut de Ciències Fotòniques, ICFO) and Guilllem Anglada-Escudé (Queen Mary University of London). They will take place one Thursday a month at the Physics Faculty of the University of Barcelona, the headquarters of the ICCUB, and will be addressed to both physics students and researchers, and those in related fields. The colloquia are also followed by an afternoon meeting between students and postdoctoral fellows and the speaker.
About the Institute of Cosmos Sciences (ICCUB)
The ICCUB is an institute belonging to the University of Barcelona. It was created in 2006 and has been awarded the certification of Unity of Excellence María de Maeztu. The center is devoted to fundamental research in the fields of Cosmology, Astrophysics, and Particle and Nuclear Physics, and collaborates in several international projects at both scientific and techonological levels. The ICCUB brings together numerous professors and reseachers of the Department of Quantum Physicsand Astrophysics, appointed to the Physics Faculty, besides ten ICREA researchers and research staff from other departments and faculties. The ICCUB is also one of the four units which constitute the Institute of Space Studies of Catalonia (IEEC).
The ICCUB has an important role in international projects such as the Gaia Mission of the European Space Agency, the LHCb Experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located in CERN, the international collaboration Sloan DigitalSky Survey (SDSS-III), or the gamma ray telescope projects MAGIC and CTA.
Colloquim by Licia Verde: Thursday 10 November, Physics Faculty, University of Barcelona. More information.
