NEW Virtual Series from KITP: The Art of Doing Science

This month, KITP announced a new public event series that aims to demystify the day-to-day work of the physicists behind the headlines. The Art of Doing Science series will be held virtually even as the institute transitions to more in-person activities, providing an event accessible to all who would like to continue to attend its world-class science programming regardless of physical location. The recordings will also be available to watch on KITP’s YouTube channel after the events.

The virtual conversation hosted by KITP features a panel of up-and-coming physics stars sharing exciting insights about their work, illuminating the many ways science is done and the unexpected detours that inevitably arise on that path to achieving new breakthroughs. This series will serve, over time, to accelerate and expand the public’s understanding of what it means to really ‘do physics’.

The inaugural webinar hosted at 5:00 pm PT on Wednesday, September 1st will feature an impressive panel of early-career scientists from KITP, Caltech and NASA. The researchers will discuss the merging neutron stars of GW170817, which sent ripples out through the fabric of spacetime, producing a signal detected by Earth-based gravitational-wave observatories. The stars’ ultimate coalescence then triggered a cosmic explosion whose light was captured by traditional telescopes, making GW170817 the first event ever observed in both light and gravitational radiation. This discovery, which followed decades of preparation by the scientific community, pushed us closer to answering fundamental questions in astrophysics, such as the origin of the Universe’s heaviest elements and nature of exotic, ultra-dense neutron stars.

The event is free and attendees can register at the event website here: https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/outreach/the-art-of-doing-science

About the KITP:

Established in 1979 with a grant from the National Science Foundation, The Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) serves the diverse goals of theoretical physics via a unique structure and mode of operation in Kohn Hall at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

The combination of visiting research programs with a small permanent faculty, deputy director, and early-career scientists like postdoctoral and graduate fellows enables interactions among visiting scientists to occur with lasting impact. As a largely peer-managed institute, with essential input from the community in the planning and implementation of its research programs, KITP responds to new scientific opportunities, encourages transformational research, and promotes diversity by ensuring broad opportunities and representation. KITP strives to reach out to new scientific communities and to foster inter-disciplinary research. The primary goal is to promote scientific progress by bringing together accomplished researchers for sufficient time to form new collaborations and to carry out substantive research that will lead in new directions.

A 2007 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ranked KITP number one in its assessment of the impact of research conducted at a wide variety of different facilities, including national laboratories, research institutes, and major universities considered both as a whole, but also in terms of their individual best departments. In other words, research conducted in conjunction with KITP programming has had a greater effect on other researchers than research conducted anywhere else.