NSF Award
1934879
This award will support the participation of researchers working on the Physics of Living Systems (PoLS) at the 27th International Conference on Statistical Physics, StatPhys27, which will be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina in July 2019. It is expected that StatPhys27 will bring together about 700 participants from all over the world, including senior and young researchers and graduate students. Statistical Physics is largely interdisciplinary, so that the participation of researchers with diverse scientific backgrounds is expected. StatPhys27 will last for five days. Associated to StatPhys27 there will be an outreach activity with three talks for the general public at the National Science Museum. Two of the talks will be in the field of PoLS. There will also be sessions on human rights and on inclusion and diversity in physics and an outreach activity for the general public. Taking active part in StatPhys27 will allow the researchers working in the field of PoLS to reach out to new communities of students and researchers. The plenary talks of StatPhys27 will be videotaped and made available at the conference website. The possibility of streaming them live over the Internet is under consideration. The International Centre for Theoretical Physics of Trieste (ICTP) has offered to set up a special conference room at its premises where people could watch the video-streaming. Thus, StatPhys27 is expected to have a huge impact in various places. Furthermore, the outreach activity that is planned to take place at the Science Museum in Buenos Aires will allow the general public to learn about the subjects of statistical physics and the physics of living systems.<br/><br/>StatPhys is the largest and most prestigious conference on the nowadays broadly interdisciplinary area of statistical physics. Held triennially in different parts of the world, it attracts most of the community that does research on the subject. Ten renowned scientists will give plenary talks and another 30 will do so at one of the four planned parallel sessions of StatPhys27. The conference will also host the Boltzmann Medal and Young Scientist in Statistical Physics ceremonies. The recipient of the prestigious Boltzmann Medal will give a plenary talk. StatPhys27 will embrace a variety of subjects including Physics of Living Systems, Complex and Interdisciplinary Systems, Soft Matter, Out-of-equilibrium phenomena and Nonlinear Physics, etc.<br/><br/>This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
