Luis OS has published an opinion article in Jornal i “Uma solução à procura de um problema?” in portuguese, motivated by the Dia dos Cientistas on May 16 and the 1939 seminal essay “The usefulness of useless knowledge” by Abraham Lexner. The article is also available here, with additional supporting material.

From April 24 to April 27, epp team members Marija V, Jorge V, and Thomas G attended SPIE Prague 2017 to deliver several invited talks on two of the conferences ongoing within SPIE Prague 2017, in particular in  Laser Acceleration of Electrons, Protons, and Ions and Research Using Extreme Light: Entering New Frontiers with Petawatt-Class Lasers.

 

Luis OS has been elected fellow of the European Physical Society at the last meeting of the EPS Council. His citation reads “For his outstanding theoretical and numerical contributions in laser plasma interaction in the relativistic regime”. In 2017, the EPS elected three new fellows, increasing the total number of fellows to 85. Luis OS is the first Portuguese physicist elected to fellow status. The EPS was founded in 1968, with 42 national “EPS Member Societies” and 2500 individual members, representing more than 120,000 members all over Europe.

Our team was invited to present some of our ongoing projects at Futurália March 30 2017 as part of the FCT presence in the event. Besides lots of visitors it was an opportunity to showcase GoLP’s new merchandise.

New collectibles and merchandise from GoLP are now available!

We have started a new initiative to foster training in plasma physics using computer simulations taking advantage of a new set of self-contained PIC codes developed by Ricardo F taking advantage of all the know-how built around Osiris. The initiative is led by Jorge V and will soon be deployed in classes at IST, and opened to all the community. More information here.

The 10 years of the European Research Council are celebrated this week all over Europe #ERC10yrs. Thank you very much for the support to our group through Accelerates (AdG2010) and InPairs (AdG2015).
 

The radio show 90 segundos de ciência, featuring science made in Portugal, has highlighted the work of the epp team on pair production with ultra intense lasers and in astrophysics (episode 73). More information here.

Following our tradition (see News for the “2014 Natas” and News for the “2015 Natas”), the prizes for the winners of the image and video of 2016, the “natas” of visualization, were awarded to Fabio Cruz (left, and double winner after the 2014 award) and to Giannandrea Inchingolo (right), with the corresponding iPad Mini. As one of the previous winners Paulo Alves nicely described ““Nata” is a tasty Portuguese pastry that everybody likes. It’s as enjoyable as having our simulations running nicely on a big supercomputer. It can also mean being at the top, at a high level, important.” Many congratulations to the 2016 winners!

Marija Vranic has been awarded a FCT Post Doctoral Fellowship to work in our team. Many congratulations to Marija on this prestigious recognition!