Author: Niko Jokela

Our first colloquium in the spring series is by Hanna Vehkamäki from the University of Helsinki on January 26th.

Hanna completed her PhD in theoretical physics at the University of Helsinki 1998. After that she worked two years at University College London, UK. She returned to University of Helsinki 2000, and was appointed a professor in computational aerosol physics 2009. Since 2001 she has been leading a research group focusing on computational studies of molecular cluster formation in the atmosphere. She is the director of Research Council of Finland Centre of Excellence ‘Virtual Laboratory for Molecular Level Atmospheric Transformations’ 2022-2029. 2011 Hanna founded and then chaired the INAR (Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research) equality and well-being group until 2023, and she is currently faculty of science vice dean responsible for equality and work well-being.

The event will take place on Friday 26.1.24 at 14:15, in Chemicum A110.
The event was also be streamed via Zoom, link:
https://helsinki.zoom.us/j/65796756028

The slides of the talk are available here: Vehkamaki_fys_kollokvio_no_vid_26_1_2024

The title of her talk is: Everyday tips for implementing Kumpula code of conduct

The abstract of her talk reads:

The presentation invites you to contemplate how the Kumpula Campus Code of Conduct https://www.helsinki.fi/en/faculty-science/faculty/kumpula-campus-code-conduct and more generally values it is based on should manifest themselves in the Kumpula community – especially from the point of view the work well-being and equality. The INAR equality and work well-being group has comprised a list of everyday behavior patterns that we should pay attention to when striving to make the workplace culture welcoming to people with diverse backgrounds, and some points from this list are highlighted as examples.

Our first colloquium in the fall series is by Anna Watts from the University of Amsterdam on September 15th.

Anna Watts is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Amsterdam. Her group studies neutron stars, in particular the ultradense nuclear matter in their cores, and their violent dynamical events such as starquakes and magnetic or thermonuclear explosions. She is an ERC Starting and Consolidator Grant laureate and in 2021 was awarded the Mid-Career Prize by the American Astronomical Society’s High Energy Astrophysics Division. 

The event will take place on Friday 15.9.23 at 14:15, in Exactum CK112.
The event was also streamed via Zoom. Link to video:  https://unitube.it.helsinki.fi/unitube/embed.html?id=7ea94a6a-93ae-4de6-a3d3-08ea192779b3

 

The title of her talk is: A NICER view of neutron stars

Her abstract reads:

NICER, the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer, is an X-ray telescope on the International Space Station. Its primary mission is to measure neutron star masses and radii, quantities that enable us to investigate the nature of the ultradense nuclear matter in the star’s cores. NICER exploits relativistic effects on X-rays emitted from the hot magnetic polar caps of millisecond pulsars, a technique that also lets us map the hot emitting regions on the stellar surface. I will present NICER’s latest results and discuss the implications for our understanding of ultradense matter, pulsar emission, and stellar magnetic fields.

Our next colloquium in the spring series is by Tuomas Lappi from the University of Jyväskylä on April 14th.

Tuomas Lappi obtained his PhD from the University of Helsinki in 2005. After postdocs at Brookhaven National Laboratory and CEA/Saclay he moved to the University of Jyväskylä in 2009. He obtained an ERC Consolidator grant in 2015. Since 2022 he is the director of the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in Quark Matter. His research revolves around the interactions of quarks and gluons in high energy collisions, such as relativistic heavy ion collisions aiming to produce deconfined quark matter in the laboratory.

 

The event was held on Friday 14.4.23 at 14:15, in Chemicum A129.
Link to video: https://unitube.it.helsinki.fi/unitube/embed.html?id=3352d6c6-f559-4413-97af-04b610c04939

The title of his talk is: The Electron-Ion Collider EIC – the most powerful microscope on Earth

His abstract reads:

This talk will discuss the physics program of the Electron-Ion Collider EIC. The EIC will be built at Brookhaven, combining the existing proton and ion beams of RHIC with a new electron accelerator, and should start taking data in the early 2030’s. The EIC will be the first collider energy deep inelastic scattering experiment with polarized protons, and the first to collide heavy ions. It will also have a luminosity that is orders of magnitude higher than previous comparable experiments at DESY. These features allow the EIC to access new aspects of gluonic degrees of freedom in ordinary matter, in particular gluons carrying a small fraction of the nucleus momentum. These gluons are also the relevant degrees of freedom for understanding the creation of the matter that subsequently turns into deconfined quark matter in a relativistic heavy ion collision. Thus the EIC physics program has many connections to the research on properties of the quark gluon plasma.