Herzberg & Plenary Speakers

HERZBERG PUBLIC LECTURE – Virtual Event: 

Sunday, June 6, 18h00-19h15 EDT

Delegates and public attendees who registered online should have received an email with instructions for joining the Zoom webinar. The lecture will also be livestreamed here.

Photo Credits: Betsy Devine
Photo Credits: Betsy Devine

Frank Wilczek 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

View bio here. 

Register Now!

  • Congress delegates can register to attend by selecting the Herzberg lecture button on the registration form.
  • Public attendees and Congress delegates who haven’t already signed up can register through this Zoom webinar registration form.

“Quanta of the Third Kind: Anyons”

For many years physicists divided the world of quantum particles into two kingdoms – bosons and fermions. Anyons are particles with a sort of memory, that fall outside those kingdoms. In recent decades theorists have produced an enormous literature about the possible occurrence and properties of anyons. It is only in the last few months, however, that clear experimental confirmation has appeared. I will review the theoretical background and describe the breakthrough experiments.  Anyons will be central in a new and promising method of information processing: topological quantum computing.

PLENARY SPEAKERS:

Alejandro Adem, NSERC President

Monday, June 7 @ 11:00 – 11:30 EDT

NSERC Community Update

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Avery E. Broderick | University of Waterloo

Monday, June 7 @ 15:00 – 15:30 EDT

View bio here. 

“Unmasking Black Holes with the Event Horizon Telescope”
Black holes are, without question, one of the most bizarre and mysterious phenomena predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity.  They correspond to infinitely dense, compact regions in space and time, where gravity is so extreme that nothing, not even light, can escape from within.  And, their existence raises some of the most challenging questions about the nature of space and time.  Over the past few decades, astronomers have identified numerous tantalizing observations that suggested that black holes are real.  This past April, the search for confirmation changed dramatically with the publication of the first image ever taken of a black hole, rendering tangible what was previously only the purview of theory and science fiction.  I will describe how these observations were made, how the images were generated, how quantitative measurements were obtained, and what they all mean for gravity and black hole astronomy.
Kevin Hewitt
Anastasia Smolina

Kevin Hewitt & Anastasia Smolina | CAP EDI

Wednesday, June 9 @ 10:30 – 11:00 EDT

EDI Survey Presentation

View Kevin’s bio here. 

Brian-Wilson

Brian Wilson | University of Toronto 

Wednesday, June 9 @ 11:00 – 11:30 EDT

View bio here

“Cancer and Light: How optical sciences and engineering impact cancer research and patient care”

The multiple interactions of light with biomolecules, cells and tissues enable established and emerging techniques and technologies used in cancer research and patient care.  These approaches range from simple, point-of-care devices to complex, multifunctional platforms combined with complementary non-optical methods, including nanotechnologies, robotics, bioinformatics and machine learning. This seminar will use specific examples from current research to illustrate the biophysical and biological principles underlying the emerging fields of “onco-photonics” or “photo-oncology”.

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Alessandra Lanzara | University of California, Berkeley

Wednesday, June 9 @ 15:00 – 15:30 EDT

View bio here. 

“Leveraging Local Symmetry Breaking to Engineering Novel Materials”

The 20th century has been dominated by the realization that symmetry and symmetry breaking influence the forces that govern our universe and are keys to much of the novel phenomena observed in materials today.   Recently it has been realized that, even if the global symmetry of a system is retained, a local symmetry breaking can still drive a variety of novel fascinating behaviors.  In this talk I will present the effect that local breaking of inversion, translational and rotational symmetry can have in defining fundamental properties of matter from topological phases to superconductivity and how it can be used as a tuning parameter to control novel properties in van der Waals heterostructures.

Catherine Harrison (NSERC), Sara Ellison (Physics Evaluation Group Chair) & Rituparna Kanungo (Chair, CAP-NSERC Liaison Committee)

Thursday, June 10 @ 10:00 – 11:00 EDT

NSERC Community Update

author photo high res

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein | University of New Hampshire

Thursday, June 10 @ 11:00 – 11:30 EDT

View bio here.

“The Right to Know and Love the Night Sky”
 
In this talk, I will argue that treating the marginalization of certain groups in science as a workforce problem ignores the deeper issue: that wondering about the universe is a fundamental right. I will discuss what it means to create the conditions in which we all have a chance to know and love the night sky and all of the particles that populate it.
2021- Renée Horton-Photo

Renee Horton | NASA

Thursday, June 10 @ 15:00 – 15:30 EDT

View bio here

“Friction Stir Welding in the Aerospace Industry”

Abstract coming soon.