UNAM and IU conduct the first online version of the National Nuclear Physics Summer School
June 30, 2021
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- The Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) and Indiana University successfully organized and co-hosted by Zoom the first distance version of the National Nuclear Physics Summer School. This school has been held annually since 1988 (with the exception of 1994) and is a world class leading summer doctoral school on nuclear physics. The intensive program is designed for second and third year experimental or theoretical nuclear physics graduate students who are well into a research project or researchers in their first postdoc position. The purpose is to bring together leading researchers to lecture on their specialties in experimental and theoretical nuclear physics. The overall goal of the school is to provide students with a reference frame for defining critical problems of nuclear physics and the most useful methods of analysis of the problems. The intent is to deliver high-quality education and broaden the students' appreciation for and vision of the nuclear physics field as a whole.
The National Nuclear Physics Summer School is governed by a national steering committee, appointed by the Executive Committee of the American Physics Society Division of Nuclear Physics. The main funding for the annual schools is through a grant from the National Science Foundation, administered by the Institute of Nuclear Theory at the University of Washington.
The NNPSS Steering Committee initially approved IU’s proposal to present the 32nd NNPSS at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) in Mexico City, Mexico, from June 22 through July 2, 2020. When the virus made this realization of the school impossible, the steering committee accepted our offer to host a Zoom version of the school, which was done successfully on June 21-25, 2021. 152 students enrolled in the school from throughout the world. Two of the school lecturers were IUB's own Emilie Passemar on Fundamental Symmetries and Matt Shepherd on Hadron Spectroscopy and Reactions.
The same UNAM/IU team plans to offer the normal in-person version of the school in summer 2022. To be held on the UNAM campus at the location of the IU Gateway in Mexico City, this will be the first time the NNPSS has been held and Mexico and the second time it has been help outside the US. An earlier version of the school was hosted at IU Bloomington with Steve Vigdor and Adam Szczepaniak on the organizing committee.
The "local" organizing committee was composed of Libertad Barron-Palos (UNAM, chair), Roelof Bijker (UNAM), Cesar Fernandez-Ramirez (UNAM), W. Michael Snow (IU), Adam P. Szczepaniak (IU, chair), and Victor M. Velazquez (UNAM). Moya Wright at MESH coordinated the several administrative aspects of the school.