IAS Newsletter, May 2015

Abstract

HKUST JOCKEY CLUB MAY 2015 IAS NEWSLETTER INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDY Prof Evelyn Hu Connecting Puzzles in Science & Engineering One may be humble to understate continuous efforts made but truly distinguished scholars, remarkable research achievements and notable scientific discoveries are not dreams come true overnight. Every time when I see and talk to our internationally acclaimed visitors, I can sense their enormous inner strength striving for further excellence and breakthroughs. Receiving an average of about 30 “regular” IAS visitors every year, we are in particular pleased to have hosted the sabbatical visits of IAS Visiting Professor Evelyn Hu and her husband Prof David Clarke, both from Harvard University. Evelyn is a perfect role model for women students who intend to pursue a path to research. Please read on the “IAS Chatroom” to learn more about Evelyn’s work and thoughts. A bold idea can change human life. Nowadays, information sharing can be done through the World Wide Web (www) within a split second. Do you know what www is? Who invented it? Why, how, where and when? Can you imagine that Hong Kong scientists are participating in the largest science experiment in the world? Read the “Knowledge Corner” to find out more. Every year, a number of HKUST UG students spend their summer working and studying there. Advanced study is boundless. In March and April 2015, we organized programs and workshops from wave functional materials to geometric data, from biomaterials for medical applications to computational neuroscience, just to quote some as examples. From end of May to early August 2015, we will be busy hosting eight Gordon Research Conferences (GRC) and two Gordon Research Seminars. Each GRC can accept up to 200 established and young researchers world-wide. We need you to bring more talents and cutting-edge research to HKUST. Please take a look at “Call for Proposals” to see how we can work together. Thank you. Henry Tye Director HKUST Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study Curious minds drive novel ideas and innovation. Perseverance determines success. Inspiring ambience draws talents. Words from the Director May 2015 1 IAS Visiting Professor Evelyn Hu is Tarr-Coyne Professor of Applied Physics and of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University. Her research focuses on high-resolution fabrication of compound semiconductor electronic and optoelectronic devices, candidate structures for the realization of quantum computation schemes, and novel device structures formed through the heterogeneous integration of materials. She has also developed biological approaches to the formation of electronic and photonic materials. Distinguished yet humble, Prof Hu is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Academia Sinica of Taiwan. She is also a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the American Physical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She has been a recipient of an National Science Foundation (NSF) Distinguished Teaching Fellow Award and an AAAS Lifetime Mentor Award, and holds honorary Doctorates of Engineering from the University of Glasgow and HKUST. Prof Hu spent her sabbatical at HKUST from October 2014 to May 2015 and shared her insights with faculty and students through short courses, general lectures, informal sharing and discussions. Your research focuses on nanofabrication techniques and you have given a short course about laser in HKUST. As laser was invented half a century ago, how could it be further applied in our daily lives? There are some devices that are such powerful, enabling building blocks that they continue to find and define new applications, scores of years after their original invention. The laser is one of these devices (as are transistors and Light Emitting Diodes, or batteries). Lasers have a host of industrial, medical and communications applications. But my work is not strictly confined to nanofabrication technique, nor does it involve ‘simple lasers’. The lasers I study are at the micron or nanometer scale, and I use them as exquisitely sensitive ways to understand the details of the physics in these tiny systems: how is the energy exchanged between electrons and photons, what are the most important loss mechanisms, could we make lasers of single atoms, how efficient could we make a laser? And these questions and concerns are what underlie the general area of ‘nanophotonics’: what changes in efficiency, intensity of light can we get when we confine light to uniquely engineered environments (cavities) whose sizes are about equal to the wavelength of light, or much smaller? IAS Evelyn Connecting Puzzles in Science & Engineering PROF EVELYN HU IAS Chatroom IAS Chatroom May 2015 May 2015 2 3 Prof Hu joined IAS as Visiting Professor since 2013. She is actively involved in IAS events, including giving a School of Science and IAS Nobel Prize Popular Science Lecture on “Lighting in the 21st Century - From Blue LED to White” during her sabbatical at HKUST. In science and engineering, women are not significantly represented. Why did you choose to devote to scientific research? What would be your advice for ladies who want to go into these professions? I had a lot of guidance and encouragement from my parents, and I have been very lucky in the educational opportunities that I have had, in and out of the classroom. I love the puzzles and discovery process of science and engineering – looking for a particular behavior and finding it, or being puzzled by strange results, and figuring out the underlying reasons. More importantly, since I am both scientist and engineer – I think that this understanding can lead to ways of enhancing our ability to compute, to communicate, to store energy, to heal – it’s our way to make a good difference to the world. For girls and women who are contemplating engineering and science – I would just recommend. You were a PhD student of Prof Chien-Shiung Wu, a renowned Chinese experimental physicist who is honored as “The First Lady of Physics Research”. How did Prof Wu enlighten you in your study? What do you think is the major drive to pursue research excellence? Prof Wu was very devoted to her science. I’m not sure what drove her to focus on science in the way that she did, but I think it is natural to try to do the best you can in any field you try: that is, if you are going to embark on research, then it’s natural to seek to do it at the highest level you can. I’ve been lucky to work with people throughout my career who also look for the highest excellence in their work, who teach and inspire me to try even harder. As co-founder of two successful startup companies that develop novel materials for electronic devices, could you share with us your experience of turning ideas into reality? It has been one of the best experiences I have undergone, to be able to work with a colleague and friend (Prof Angela Belcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology), see the value of some of the science we were working on, and then begin to gradually work with people and companies to see that become a reality. We worked with venture firms who provided the advice and assistance in hiring on CEOs, personnel, etc. We were very fortunate that these people are outstanding: knowledgeable, creative and hardworking. What is interesting to me was that at least for one company, the product and the direction of the company was completely different from anything we imagined initially. I learned so much, even at the sort of distant level at which I was involved – I learned about markets, and strategic alliances – and I also learned how rapidly the market can change. When you are interacting with HKUST students, do you find any significant differences between students in Hong Kong and US? It’s all too easy to make generalized statements about groups of people, recognizing that students everywhere are individuals, with a range of talents, motivations, energies and determination. One very big difference in the environment of education is that almost every HKUST student is carrying out their education, sitting in classes, completing assignments in a language that is NOT their native language. Something very obvious – so obvious that it is easy to ignore. But however comfortable a person is, using another language, there must be some important differences in learning, assimilating and interacting in a language that is not the one which is the most comfortable for you. The HKUST students should be commended for taking on this challenge. In terms of environment, support and talents, do you have any suggestions for IAS to be more proactive in prompting Hong Kong’s technological advancement? IAS already has programs that bring in a broad diversity of experts and expertise, ranging from music, to Chinese literature, to economics, big data, the environment, molecular biology, particle physics, etc. IAS has a beautiful building, designed to encourage contemplation and discussion, and it has a fantastic and very talented support staff. I don’t know if the following is even part of IAS’s mandate, but what if IAS were to organize small workshops on topical issues that addressed pragmatic and practical challenges for Hong Kong in the years ahead, and possible scientific and technological approaches that could address those challenges? Aging population and affordable healthcare: issues for remote medical monitoring, issues of electronic medical records, any technological needs for an aging population? Issues of water availability, purity, access, delivery … issues of power? IAS has the ‘gravitas’ (deep respect) to perhaps bring all the ‘right people’ together: local and international experts, scientists and engineers, perhaps policy makers, economists, sociologists, investors – to put their heads together and truly try to solve some real-world problems. Perhaps public dissemination of the results of these workshops would prevent people from being truly open in the expression of their opinions – but it would be most effective if some summary of those discussions could be made: imagine IAS generating a set of highly sought-after studies that brought together a talented group of international people to address questions of critical interest to Hong Kong’s well-being (and those issues are fairly global, although the particular manifestations and solutions might be more locally-based). IAS Evelyn IAS Evelyn IAS Evelyn IAS Evelyn IAS Evelyn Prof Hu with colleagues at Holmdel in her initial time at AT&T Bell Laboratories. Prof Hu during her PhD study at Columbia University. Working as a supervisor at Murray Hill in AT&T Bell Laboratories. IAS Chatroom IAS Chatroom May 2015 May 2015 4 5 The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid is to integrate over 160 computing centers across 40 countries around the world. IAS Junior Fellow, Dr Kirill Prokofiev is now at CERN for the ATLAS experiment. Please read on to P.8-9 'IAS Junior Fellow Sets Sail for CERN ATLAS' to find out more. The LHC is inside a 27 km tunnel 100 meters underground as indicated by the circle shown. The Geneva airport runway in Switzerland is on the right. The end view of the A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS (ATLAS) detector before closing. There are 4 detectors in LHC. This ATLAS Collaboration has about 3,000 physicists working together. They came from 180 universities and institutes from 40 countries. Hong Kong joined ATLAS in 2014. By Tao Liu (Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, HKUST) and Yanjun Tu (Assistant Professor, Department of Physics, HKU) LHC is Back, with Big Data! After two years of maintenance and upgrade, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, is back in operation on 5 April 2015, as reported in the news media. This brings the LHC to its Run II era. During Run I (2009-2012), the Higgs Boson (the God particle), a key element to understand the mass generation of all basic particles (such as the electron) in the universe, was discovered. This discovery was named 2012’s “Breakthrough of the Year” by Science magazine. The upgrade of the LHC has been very successful so far. Operating at an unprecedented energy – almost double that of Run I – at 13 trillion electron volts (TeV) for a single proton-proton collision, the LHC experiments will soon be exploring uncharted territories probing the fundamental laws in nature. At the LHC, for every 50 or 25 nano-seconds, two beams of proton-proton bunches cross each other and produce thousands of particles. The passage of those particles is recorded by the detector electronic systems. The electronic signals are processed by sophisticated computers. During Run I, there were about 15,000 trillion bytes (15 petabytes) data collected (a small fraction of the total data produced) - more than the data of all the videos uploaded to YouTube annually. Eventually 400 petabytes data per year are expected from the LHC future runs before Year 2030. Processing such big data sets is extremely challenging in many aspects including capturing, storing, transferring, visualizing and analyzing them in a limited time by collaborators that are spread world-wide. In the 1980s, CERN developed a communication system to handle the vast amount of data to be analyzed by the physicists world-wide. This information system, the World Wide Web (www), was released in the early 1990s for the world to use for free. To face the present challenges, the LHC has created the world’s largest computing grid, Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), which integrates thousands of computers and storage systems in over 13 Tier-1 and 150 Tier-2 computing centers across 40 countries around the world. Every day WLCG processes more than a million jobs, a number that will increase in coming years. The Joint Consortium for Fundamental Physics comprising representatives of HKUST, HKU and CUHK was formed in 2013. Under this umbrella, a Hong Kong cluster formally joined the ATLAS experiment at the LHC in June 2014. One of the missions led by the Hong Kong cluster is to build up a Tier-2 computing center in Hong Kong, which is expected to play an important role in serving both the LHC physics community and the local scientific and engineering communities. This center is designed to have 1,000 processing cores and 1 petabytes of disk space. It will start to function in early 2016. Looking beyond LHC, building the next-generation collider in China is being proposed this year. Led by the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), the HKUST team participated in the preliminary conceptual design of the “Circular Electron-Positron Collider – Super Proton-Proton Collider”. In January 2015, IAS hosted a program on the Future of High Energy Physics together with IHEP. This IAS program provided a lively platform for about 100 participants from institutions in US, Europe and Asia. May 2015 Knowledge Corner Knowledge Corner May 2015 6 7 IAS Junior Fellow Sets Sail for CERN ATLAS ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) is one of the seven particle detector experiments constructed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland. Dr Kirill Prokofiev, our IAS Junior Fellow, plays an active role in the experiment by coordinating two groups of scientists to generate productive results. “The ATLAS collaboration represents an uncommon yet successful society model. The common work in the 3000-people-collaboration is based on democracy, competitiveness and mutual respect. There is a management which is elected by the collaboration’s board composed of CERN’s representatives. The board also appoints physics coordinators who then appoint heads of working groups. It is noteworthy that people managing the working groups, the group members and the management themselves are employed by different universities. Therefore there is no finance, contract or hierarchy relationship between them. They can work together only out of common scientific interests bound by mutual respect.” said Kirill. “There is also an important competition factor: everyone tries to make his/her university team most visible in the collaboration. The system is very democratic: a member of any university team can reach nearly any level in the collaboration – subject to personal skills, hard work and recognition by the community. When a new interesting topic, performance study or a physics analysis comes on stage, individual universities teams express their interest. Soon enough they form a small community ‘by interest’ and start working together.” Kirill has been coordinating the vertex reconstruction group in ATLAS for almost seven years. The group is commissioned to maintain and update the reconstruction software so as to ensure smooth data collection of primary vertices at LHC. Kirill has been working on this domain since he was pursuing his PhD at University of Zurich, and is now regarded as an expert. In April 2014, Kirill was also appointed convener of the Higgs properties and combination group, which includes professors, postdocs and students from different universities. The group compiles research results from various Higgs sub-groups and generates the final ATLAS Higgs publications. During Kirill’s term, final LHC Run-1 measurements of Higgs spin and parity, Higgs boson couplings to fermions and vector bosons and measurement of the Higgs mass had been published. Members of the working groups come from all around the world, including US, UK, Canada, China, Japan and many other European countries. There are also participants from Hong Kong in the ATLAS experiment, with a majority of them affiliated with the Joint Consortium for Fundamental Physics (JCFP) comprising members from HKUST, HKU and CUHK. Despite the diverse backgrounds, people are working together toward a common project with clearly defined scientific goals. Thus the only factor which matters is the contributions to the common task. This allows for a strong and diverse collaboration, which gives its members equal chances but also utilizes the diversity in an efficient way. Various university teams send students to CERN every summer. There are normally around 200 to 300 interns of literally all nationalities and languages. During their internship, they are expected to follow half-day lecture sessions during the first month and lab work for the rest of the working time. Each student is assigned to a working team performing the actual research and given a task to complete. Throughout their stay, they share their time among studies, research, international parties and travels. Four undergraduate students from JCFP spent around three months at CERN last summer, and more graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from Hong Kong universities are being recruited to the team. The region around Geneva is famed for hiking and outdoor activities. Several important music festivals of all styles are held every summer and CERN students are typically participating in numbers. Summer is also a traditional season for local celebrations: Swiss National Day, Day of Geneva and others are the events students never miss. The central location within Europe also allows for easy and affordable weekend travels to nearby destinations. After a long but fruitful workweek, Kirill enjoys exploring nature in the neighborhood. In particular, he is a fan of alpine skiing and sailing. While the Higgs discovery has deterred him from taking a long vacation to the Alps, he takes part in at least one major sailing competition on Lake Geneva every year. As a member of CERN’s sailing club committee, he also helps repair boats and organize various regattas and cruises. Prof Ming Chung Chu from CUHK (right) with students from Hong Kong at CERN last summer. The blue tube is to host the spare dipole magnets used for the LHC construction. Discussion with CERN colleagues over coffee break. Kirill and the new boat of CERN’s sailing club before its maiden voyage. IAS Community May 2015 IAS Community May 2015 8 9 The Bank of East Asia (BEA) organized a talk given by IAS BEA Professor Ching W. Tang on 13 March 2015. The talk attracted a crowd of over 320 local high school students and teachers, filling up the auditorium of BEA Tower in Kwun Tong. After sharing his reminiscence of growing up in Hong Kong and success story as the inventor of organic light emitting diodes (OLED), Prof Tang had an inspiring dialogue with BEA’s Deputy Chief Executive Mr Hon-shing Tong. Students from SKH St. Mary’s Church Mok Hing Yiu College, SKH Tang Siu Kin Secondary School, HKMA David Li Kwok Po College, SKH Kei Hau Secondary School and SKH Holy Carpenter Secondary School were enthused about Prof Tang’s experience and asked questions eagerly during and after the talk. “I am truly pleased to have this opportunity to meet with local school students,” he said. “I hope that my story will serve as inspiration that they too can make a difference in our world.” Another opportunity to learn about Prof Tang’s invention is available in town at Hong Kong Maritime Museum in Central. An exhibition titled “Made in Hong Kong: Our City. Our Stories” comprises three galleries, namely Changing Landscapes, Trade and Commerce and the People’s Wall, which allow visitors to grasp a kaleidoscopic view of the history of the city over the past 150 years. Prof Tang has been featured in the City of Talent section of the People’s Wall, together with Prof Charles Kao, Dr Ng Sze-chuen and Lord Norman Foster as experts in technology and innovation. A slide show featuring his OLED technology is also showcased (of course, with a tablet made of OLED). Don’t miss out the exhibition which is open daily until 4 September 2015! IAS Bank of East Asia Professor Inspires in Town The ubiquitous presence of electromagnetic and acoustic waves means that their study can be dated back to the antiquities. Their diverse applications form the very pillars of our modern existence. About two decades ago, the incipient stage of a revolution began in this classic field, propelled by both theory and experiments, which demonstrate the feasibility of realizing man-made materials with wave manipulation functionalities beyond the defined limits of those found in nature. These “wave functional materials” include photonic or phononic crystals, metamaterials and plasmonic structures. In 2013, the Research Grants Committee of the Hong Kong SAR Government funded an “Areas of Excellence” project entitled ”Novel Wave Functional Materials for Manipulating Light and Sound” of which Prof Che Ting Chan, Chair Professor of Physics at HKUST and Executive Director of IAS is the Coordinator. This project is the collaboration among 18 faculties from five local institutions. The AoE Workshop on Wave Functional Materials was held on 25 March 2015 for the AoE team members to report the progress of their work in these areas. This workshop is also part of the IAS Program on Wave Functional Materials. May 2015 IAS Community Event Highlights May 2015 10 11 Prominent researchers in Statistics, Computer Science, and Applied Mathematics from UK, US, Israel, Japan, Mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong with interests in big data, including Prof Michael Goldberg from Columbia University and Prof Sethu Vijayakumar from University of Edinburgh as the keynote speakers, congregated to deliver 21 talks and hold a panel discussion. To welcome a wider audience, Prof Vijayakumar gave an IAS Joint School Lecture entitled “Robots that Learn: Harnessing Advances in Machine Learning for Smart Actuation” to explore the scientific challenges in robotics and demonstrate the prosthetic device. Understanding the brain is one of the greatest challenges in this century. In the past few decades, there were great advances in probing the neural systems. Theoretical models of the neural system have also gone a long way. Recently there is a rising impact of computational neuroscience in the domain of embodied artificial intelligence (AI), ranging from autonomous robotic systems, prosthetics and exoskeletons. To explore more applications, a focused program on Computational Neuroscience: A Bridge to Artificial Intelligence was held on 13-17 April 2015. A recent trend, emerging independently in multiple theoretical and applied communities, is to understand collections or networks of geometric data sets through their relations and interconnections, a point of view that can be broadly described as exploiting the functoriality of data, which has a long tradition associated with it in mathematics. Functoriality, in its broadest form, is the notion that in dealing with any kind of mathematical object, it is at least as important to understand the maps, transformations or symmetries possessed by the object or the family of objects to which it belongs, as it is to study the object itself. This general idea has led to deep insights into the structure of various geometric spaces as well as to the state-of-the-art methods in various application domains. Chaired by Prof Leonidas J. Guibas, IAS Senior Visiting Fellow from Stanford University; and coordinated by Prof Siu-Wing Cheng, Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at HKUST and professors from France and Israel, a 5-day focused program on Functoriality in Geometric Data was held on 13-17 April 2015 at IAS. This focused program brought together 5 plenary speakers, 15 invited speakers and over 33 participants from Hong Kong and overseas to explore and exploit functoriality in geometric data from an algorithmic perspective. 12 13 May 2015 Event Highlights Event Highlights May 2015 IAS held a focused program on Biomaterials for Medical Applications on 20-23 April 2015 in which new challenges and opportunities in Bio-inspired Material Design, Biomaterials for Ophthalmic Applications, and Nanomaterials for Medical Applications were discussed. Three different themes in scientific areas generated fruitful and dynamic discussions during the program. Materials inspired by biological systems have huge potential in biomedical application due to their biomimetic properties. Principles and new methodologies leading to the development of these new materials presented in the program aroused participants’ great interest. Innovative biomaterials advancing approaches for drug delivery, regenerative medicines, and disease models for the eye were introduced. The recent use of nanomaterials such as graphene, DNAs, etc. in medical application was also discussed. Attended by around 55 participants, including material scientists, bioengineers, and clinicians in related fields from US, Australia, Mainland China and Hong Kong, the program served as an excellent occasion for sharing new research findings, exchanging ideas and promoting With the growing availability of large, unstructured and complex datasets in a range of critical areas of human activity (health, finance, business, social science, entertainment, sports, etc.) both online and offline, the task of collecting, organizing, and analyzing big data has emerged as an exciting challenge, requiring applications of methodologies from diverse disciplines. At HKUST, experts from various schools have worked in the specific aspects of the processing, management, visualization, modeling, analyzing and interpretation of large and complex datasets. As the University’s premier platform for promotion of cross-disciplinary interaction and collaboration, IAS introduces the IAS Seminar Series on Big Data, to bring distinguished researchers from academia and industry to share their knowledge and expertise with our faculty members and students, and develop synergy and novel research strategies to meet big data challenges. Event Highlights Event Highlights May 2015 May 2015 14 15 interdisciplinary research collaborations. Young scientists could also seize the opportunities to present their output in the poster session and interact with the veterans and their counterparts. Collaborating with the School of Humanities and Social Science, IAS was pleased to be one of the hosts again for the annual musical program “The Intimacy of Creativity” which ran from 20 April to 3 May 2015. This was the fifth year of the event. Led by IAS Visiting Professor Bright Sheng from University of Michigan as the Artistic Director, six talented composer fellows from US, Netherlands, Mainland China and Hong Kong were selected to interpret and revise their chamber music compositions. Open discussions between the composers and the performers were held at IAS. The revised compositions were formally presented by internationally-acclaimed artists at preview concerts in HKUST and world premiere concerts at the Hong Kong City Hall Theatre. In addition to musical performances, Prof Sheng also led two lunchtime lectures at IAS with Aaron Jay Kernis, the winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and Tianwa Yang, a renowned young violinist respectively. The Intimacy of Creativity 2015 Stochastic optimization and analysis play a very important role in many disciplines including resource management in wireless networks, power flow control in smart grid, networked control systems, operation research as well as financial engineering. Key challenges include the modeling and analysis of stochastic dynamical systems as well as optimization and control of systems with stochastic state evolutions. A mini-workshop was held in the afternoon on 28 April 2015 to explore the applications of these important techniques to the design, analysis and optimization of next generation wireless systems – 5G systems. Speakers from Huawei Technologies and Tata Institute of Fundamental Research discussed the future development of mobile video streaming, the applications of dynamic wireless broadcasting in stochastic networks and the strategies for transmitter-receiver energy harvesting. The mini-workshop provided an enabling platform to inspire greener and more energy efficient advancement of the 5G wireless networks. 16 17 Event Highlights Event Highlights May 2015 May 2015 As a unique academic platform where great minds converge, IAS offers unparalleled opportunities for HKUST faculty members to bring in renowned scholars from around the world for various forms of academic activities: IAS Distinguished Lectures for distinguished scholars to give a lecture of general interests. IAS Joint School Lectures / Seminars for outstanding scholars to give a talk of a specific topic. IAS Programs comprising short courses, workshops, and in some cases postdoc-led / postgraduate student-led discussion sessions. Fully-fledged programs mostly take place during term break, while smaller-scale focused programs on particular topics are also organized during the term. IAS Visitors Programs (IAS Visiting Professors, IAS Senior Visiting Fellows and IAS Visiting Fellows) for prestigious scholars to make regular visits to IAS on collaborative projects with HKUST faculty members. Sponsorship of Plenary / Invited Speakers of Activities for faculty members to help IAS build clusters of research activities and new initiatives at HKUST in the form of standalone conferences, workshops, seminars, symposiums, etc. Please browse our webpage at http://ias.ust.hk/proposal for further details, or contact our Director Prof Henry Tye and Executive Director Prof Che Ting Chan to discuss further (email: ias@ust.hk / tel: 2358 5968). Call for Proposals Date Event Organizer(s) / Speaker(s) 7 May 2015 IAS / School of Science Joint Lecture on Enantioselective Synthesis Shengming Ma Fudan University of Allenes: The Second Generation Technology and Application IAS Distinguished Lecture on Unexpected and Separate Connections Susan A. Martinis University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign of tRNA Synthetases to HIV and to Novel Antibiotics Karin Musier-Forsyth The Ohio State University 8 May 2015 IAS Quantitative Finance Seminar Series on Yesterday's Tomorrows: Robert I. Webb The University of Virginia Past Visions of Future Financial Markets 11 May 2015 IAS Distinguished Lecture on Malthus and the First Divergence - Hans-Joachim Voth University of Zurich How did Europe Pull Ahead of China after 1500? 13 May 2015 IAS Distinguished Lecture on Sustaining the Silicon Revolution: From 3D Transistors to 3D Integration Tsu-Jae King Liu University of California at Berkeley 31 May - 5 Jun 2015 Gordon Research Conference on String Theory & Cosmology: New Ideas Meet New Experimental Data Ulf Danielsson Uppsala University Gary Shiu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 14 - 19 Jun 2015 The 11th International Conference on Optical Probes of Conjugated Polymers and Organic Nanostructures Ching W. Tang The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Kam Sing Wong The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 4 - 5 Jun 2015 TUM-HKUST IAS Workshop on Blue Water Green Environment for Smart Cities Guanghao Chen The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 12 Jun 2015 IAS Distinguished Lecture on Inferences from Task Difficulty: Daphna Oyserman University of Southern California Metacognition and Identity Based Motivation 15 Jun 2015 IAS Seminar Series on Big Data - Predicting Stopout in MOOCS: Una-May O'Reilly Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mining Behavioral Data 5 Jun 2015 IAS Symposium on Aero/Fluid Dynamics and Acoustics Huihe Qiu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Kun Xu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Xin Zhang The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology 7 - 12 Jun 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Particle Physics: Prospects of Particle Physics at the 13TeV Large Hadron Collider John Ellis CERN and King’s College London Tao Liu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hitoshi Murayama The University of Tokyo and University of California at Berkeley The following events will take place between May and August 2015: Above is a partial list of our upcoming events. For further information, please visit http://ias.ust.hk/events 21 - 26 Jun 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Modulation of Neural Circuits & Behavior: Neuromodulatory Signaling Pathways that Modify the Function of Circuits Joy A. Alcedo Wayne State University Andres Villu Maricq The University of Utah Chung-Fang Wu The University of Iowa Yun Zhang Harvard University 28 Jun - 3 Jul 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Topological & Correlated Matter: Advances in Topological Phases of Matter in Crystalline Solids and Cold Atom Systems Yong-Baek Kim University of Toronto Tai-Kai Ng The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and The Hong Kong Academy for Gifted Education Nai Phuan Ong Princeton University Yayu Wang Tsinghua University 19 - 24 Jul 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Nano-Mechanical Interfaces: Theory, Computations and Experiments Narayan R. Aluru University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Julia R. Greer California Institute of Technology Yuan Lin The University of Hong Kong 25 - 26 Jul 2015 Gordon Research Seminar on Spin Dynamics in Nanostructures: Interplay of Spin, Charge and Lattice Dynamics Davide D. Bossini Radboud University Yunshan Y. Cao Delft University of Technology 26 - 31 Jul 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Spin Dynamics in Nanostructures: Nanoscale Spintronics with Magnons, Phonons, and Photons Gerrit E. W. Bauer Tohoku University Stuart Parkin IBM Almaden Research Center 1 - 2 Aug 2015 Gordon Research Seminar on Marine Molecular Ecology: Recent Developments in Marine Microbial Interactions: New Approaches and Techniques Ezequiel Marzinelli University of New South Wales Emma Rocke University of Cape Town 2 - 7 Aug 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Marine Molecular Ecology: Linking Molecular Mechanisms with Ecological Outcomes Stanley Lau The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Hongbin Liu The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Peter D. Steinberg University of New South Wales Curtis Suttle The University of British Columbia 5 - 10 Jul 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Posttranslational Modification Networks: Gaining a Proteomic Understanding of Cellular Regulation Mechanisms in Animals and Plants Alma L. Burlingame University of California at San Francisco Heribert Hirt King Abdullah University of Science and Technology Lan Huang University of California at Irvine Zhiyong Wang Carnegie Institution for Science Event Highlights May 2015 18 19 Merit Prize of HKUST Annual Photo Competition 2014 'HKUST Campus at Night' (view from IAS) by Cong Tian (alumnus of 2014) HKUST JOCKEY CLUB INSTITUTE for ADVANCED STUDY Lo Ka Chung Building, Lee Shau Kee Campus, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2358 5912 Fax: (852) 2719 6615 Email: ias@ust.hk Web: ias.ust.hk Online version is available at http://ias.ust.hk/newsletter