Colloquia and Seminars 2020-21

Colloquia are held weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year (September through to April). They are geared at a general audience—faculty, staff, students and interested members of the general public are welcome.

The 2020-21 colloquia were held online (via Zoom) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

PAST COLLOQUIA

Wednesday, April 14
Dr. Thomas Blum, University of Connecticut
“The Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment and the Hunt for New Physics”

Wednesday, April 7
Dr. Catherine Lovekin, Mount Allison University
“Radial Pulsation Characteristics of delta Scuti Stars”

Wednesday, March 31
Dr. Norm Murray, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA)
“Why the Day is 24 Hours Long”

Wednesday, March 24
Dr. Julie Hlavacek-Larrondo, University of Montreal
“New Results about Black Hole Feedback in Galaxy Clusters”

Wednesday, March 17
Dr. Adrian Liu, McGill University
“The Past, Present, and Future of 21cm Cosmology”

Wednesday, March 10
Dr. Tien-Tien Yu, University of Oregon
“Dispatches from the sub-GeV Dark Matter Frontier”

Wednesday, March 3
Dr. Eugene Chiang, University of California at Berkeley
“Planet Formation Post-Kepler”

Wednesday, February 24
Dr. Hasan Padamsee, Cornell University and Fermilab
“Superconducting RF (SRF) Acceleration for Frontier Accelerators”

Wednesday, February 10
Dr. Manjit Dosanjh, CERN
“Cancer and Linac based Radiotherapy Treatment for Challenging Environments”

Wednesday, February 3
Dr. Steve Desch, Arizona State University
“1I/'Oumuamua: The Nearest Exoplanet?”

Wednesday, January 27
Dr. Rowan Thomson, Carleton University
“Women in Physics: Untold Stories, the Elephant in the Room, and Challenging the Status Quo”

Wednesday, January 20
Dr. Laura Baudis, University of Zurich
“All the Dark We Can Not See - The State-of-the Art in Direct Dearches for Particle Dark Matter”

Wednesday, January 13
Dr. Carson Chow, National Institute of Health
“How Good are COVID-19 Pandemic Forecast Models?”

Wednesday, December 2
Dr. Jun Ye, JILA
“Clock, Quantum Matter, and Precision Physics”

Wednesday, November 25
Dr. Rob Appleby, University of Manchester
“Engaging with the Invisible : Communicating Science to the Visually Impaired and Tactile Collider”

Wednesday, November 18
Dr. Marta Volonteri, IAP
“Massive Black Hole Binaries in the Cosmos”

Wednesday, November 4
Dr. Victoria Kaspi, McGill University
“Fast Radio Bursts”

Wednesday, October 28
Dr. Reiner Kruecken, TRIUMF
“Physicists Battling COVID-19: Rapid Development of an Emergency Room Ventilator – the Mechanical Ventilator Milano”

Wednesday, October 21
Dr. Martin Bojowald, Penn State
“Physical Implications of a Fundamental Period of Time”

Wednesday, October 14
Dr. Lee McIntyre, Boston University
“How to Talk to a Science Denier: What I Learned at the Flat Earth Convention”

Wednesday, October 7
Dr. Yuri Suzuki, Stanford University
“Exploring Spin and Topological Phenomena in Complex Oxide Thin Films”

Wednesday, September 30
Dr. Roman Krems, UBC
“Can Machine Learning Outperform a Physicist”

Wednesday, September 23
Dr. Maikel Rheinstadter, McMaster
“Functional and Functionalized Membranes”

Wednesday, September 16
Dr. Mark Hartz, TRIUMF
“Probing Physics Beyond the Standard Model at T2K and Hyper-K”

Seminars are specialized and geared for those in a particular field. Dates and times for these talks vary.

PAST SEMINARS

Monday, August 9
Megan Donahue, Michigan State University
"Quenching of Star Formation in Massive Galaxies: Insights from X-ray Observations of their Gas Halos"

Wednesday, July 28
Chiaki Kobayashi, University of Hertfordshire
"Chemodynamical evolution of galaxies"

Wednesday, July 21
Sandro Tacchella, Harvard/UNIST
"The diversity of building up the quiescent sequence at redshift z~1"

Wednesday, July 14
Jenny Greene, Princeton University
"Dwarf Galaxies and Their Black Holes"

Wednesday, July 7
Chiara Circosta, University College London
"Looking for observational signatures of feedback from active galactic nuclei"

Wednesday, June 30
Nir Mandelker, KITP, UCSB
"The evolution of cold accretion flows in the CGM of massive galaxies and proto-clusters at z>2"

Wednesday, June 23
Alice Shapley, UCLA
"The Search for Ionizing Radiation at High Redshift"

Friday, June 18
Claudia Cicone, University of Oslo
"The Hidden Cold Circumgalactic Medium"

Monday, June 14
Deniz Aydin, University of Victoria, PhD candidate
“Seismic Detection with pi-shifted Fibre Bragg Gratings”

Wednesday, June 9
Samir Salim, Indiana University
"AGN Emission Line Diagnostic Diagrams"

Monday, June 7
Benoit Côté, Research Centre for Astronomy and Earth Sciences, Konkoly Observatory
"Cosmological Simulations of the Early Universe, and Probing r-process Nucleosynthesis with Meteorites"

Wednesday, June 2
Jinyi Shangguan, Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics
"Science of VLTI/GRAVITY near-infrared interferometer and the studies of luminous AGNs"

Wednesday, May 26
Eric Bell, University of Michigan
"Islands no more: how do mergers affect galaxies and their satellites?"

Monday, May 24
John Wise, Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Georgia Tech
"First Stars, Black Holes, and Galaxies in the Universe"

Monday, May 10
Daniel Siegel, Perimeter
"How to Synthesize Heavy Elements: Neutron-star Mergers and Beyond"

Monday, May 3
Trevor Dorn-Wallerstein, Astronomy Department, University of Washington
"New Phenomena in Evolved Supergiants Revealed by TESS"

Monday, May 3
Professor Michele Fumagalli, University of Milano
“Shedding Light on Gas Around Galaxies Across Cosmic Time”

Monday, April 26
Professor John Silverman, Kavli/IPMU
“Massive Galaxies and their Black Holes with Subaru’s Hyper Suprime-Cam”

Monday, April 19
Professor Roberto Maiolino, Kavli/Cambridge
“The Multiple Routes of Galaxy Transformation throughout the Cosmic Epochs”

Monday, April 12
Earl Patrick Bellinger, Stellar Astrophysics Centre
“What can Asteroseismology do for Astrophysics?”

Thursday, April 8
Professor Joop Schaye, Leiden University
“Simulating the Formation of Galaxies”

Monday, March 29
Erika Holmbeck, University of Notre Dame
"The Origin of the Heavy Elements: What We Can Learn from Metal-Poor Stars"

Monday, March 29
Dr. Mirka Dessauges-Zavadsky, Geneva Observatory
“Do Distant Galaxies at 1<z<3 Form Massive Star Cluster Complexes?”

Monday, March 22
Dr. Gurtina Besla, University of Arizona
“The LMC vs. the Milky Way: Challenges and New Opportunities for Tests of CDM Theory”

Thursday, March 18
Professor Desika Narayanan, University of Florida
“A Universe of Dusty Galaxies”

Tuesday, March 16
Dr. Hai-Bo Yu, University of California Riverside
"Dark Matter and Its Interactions"

Monday, March 15
Tyronne Woods, HIA
"The First Stars and the Birth of the Most Massive, High-redshift Quasars"

Tuesday, March 9
Dr. Tien-Tien Yu, University of Oregon
“Updated BBN Constraints on Ultralight Scalar Dark Matter”

Thursday, March 4
Professor Adam Leroy, Ohio State
“PHANGS – Resolving Local Galaxies into Individual Clouds, Clusters, and HII Regions”

Wednesday, March 3
Dr. Amos Yarom, Technion
“Hydrodynamics with Spin Currents”

Thursday, February 25
Professor Gabriela Canalizo, University of California Riverside
“AGN Feedback in Dwarf Galaxies”

Thursday, February 4
Dr. Tim Davis, Cardiff University
“Tracing out the Darkness with Cold Gas: Dynamically Probing Galaxy Evolution”

Wednesday, February 3
Dr. Eric Mefford, Ecole Polytechnique
“A Pedagogical Introduction to the Page Curve”

Thursday, January 28
Dr. Shobita Satyapal, George Mason University
“In Search of Tiny Giants: Elusive AGNs in the local Universe”

Thursday, January 21
Dr. Ilani Loubser, North West University
“Dynamics and Stellar populations of Brightest Cluster Galaxies”

Thursday, December 10
Professor Annalisa Pillepich, Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
“The Many Diverse Manifestations of Supermassive Black-Hole Feedback”

Friday, December 4
Dr. Travis Martin, University of Victoria
“Building Up Physics Education at UVic for 2020 and Beyond”

Monday, November 30
Professor Yingjie Peng, Kavli Institute for Astronomy
“Exploring Star Formation and Quenching via Multiple-Wavelength Synergy Surveys”

Monday, November 23
Professor Bianca Poggianti, INAF-Astronomical Observatory Padova
“Cosmic Jellyfish as Laboratories of Galaxy Evolution”

Tuesday, October 27
Justin Chiu, University of Victoria
“Search for Dark Sector Particles with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC”

The Café Scientifique series is an informal series of talks given in a relaxed setting such as a café. These talks are designed to engage the public in learning about recent research in science. Given by experts in the field, these talks provide an opportunity to stimulate discussion around some of the most exciting topics in modern science.

For more information about past or upcoming events, please contact the organizer:
Centre for Biomedical Research
cfbr@uvic.ca

PAST Café Scientifique TALKS

Dr. Rishi Gupta, Department of Civil Engineering: "Using biomimicry for developing self-cleaning surfaces and wash basins" (February 16, 2021)

Dr. Dean Karlen, Department of Physics and Astronomy: "Making sense of COVID-19 data" (February 9, 2021)

Dr. Karolina Valente-Papera, Department of Mechanical Engineering: "Taking advantage of cancer: Exploring drug delivery systems for cancer treatment" (January 19, 2021)

Dr. Peter Constable, Department of Biology: "Plant Power - Using Plants as Biochemical Factories in the Fight Against COVID" (January 12, 2021)

Rebecca Hof, Department of Chemistry: "It Takes a Village: Building a research community to tackle prolems in disease, environment & education" (October 20, 2020)

Dr. Karun Thanjavur, Department of Physics and Astronomy: "Maching Learning with Neural Networks - The Second Industrial Revolution" (October 13, 2020)

Dr. Kwang Moo Yi, Department of Computer Science: "Artificial intelligence for machine vision" (September 15, 2020)

Dr. Tobias Junginger, Department of Physics and Astronomy: "How particle accelerators have transformed our world and our understanding of it" (September 8, 2020)

PAST SPECIAL TALKS

Saturday, May 15, 2021
International Astronomy Day Star Party
Prof. Kim Venn, University of Victoria
"Fossils in our Galaxy"

Tuesday, March 2, 2021
Public Talk
Wilfred Buck, a former science facilitator at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre and an Indigenous star lore expert
"One Sky, Many Astronomies"

Wednesday, February 10
Dr. Zeljko Ivezic, Professor (University of Washington) and Project Scientist and Deputy Director of Construction, Vera C. Rubin Observatory
“The Greatest Movie of All Time”