Conversations Particles Matter
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Conversations Particles Matter: An Exploration of Collaborative Practices Summary This Conversations we explore the world’s greatest experiment with Dr Harry Cliff, Co-Curator of Collider and Particle Physicist. Associate Professor Phil Chan Aik Hui from the NUS Department of Physics will share his experiences from CERN while Professor Emmanuel Tsesmelis guides us through a live link up to the control room of Atlas, one of the four particle detectors at the Large Hadron Collider. Singapore playwright Eleanor Wong will present a recital from her recent Writer in Resident at the Centre for Quantum Technologies. We finish the day with a discussion between Vincenzo Napolano from Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics and Paolo Scoppola from embrio.net collective about their collaboration on the installation, ‘The Gift of Mass’. Programme 2.00pm: Welcome by Honor Harger, Executive Director of ArtScience Museum 2.10pm: Dr Harry Cliff, Co-Curator of Collider and Particle Physicist 2.40pm: Dr Phil Chan Aik Hui, Associate Professor, NUS Department of Physics 3.00pm: LIVE link up with CERN, virtual tour by Professor Emmanuel Tsesmelis 3.25pm: Q&A moderated by Hiroshi Limmell 3.35pm: Break 3.50pm: Welcome back by Honor Harger and introduction to the body of work done in the field of ArtScience. 4.00pm: Introduction by Jenny Hogan, Centre for Quantum Technologies at NUS 4.10pm: Eleanor Wong, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, NUS. 4.25pm: Session with Vincenzo Napolano, Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics and Paolo Scoppola, embrio.net collective, moderated by Dr Laura Longo, Associate Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media 5.00pm: Q&A moderate by Dr Laura Longo 5.15pm: Event Ends Honor Harger, Executive Director of ArtScience Museum Honor Harger is Executive Director of ArtScience Museum in Singapore. She is a New Zealand-born artist and curator who has a particular interest in art and science. Prior to arriving in Singapore in March 2014, she was artistic director of Lighthouse, a digital culture agency in Brighton, UK from 2010 to 2014. She has also worked at Tate Modern (UK) transmediale and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (Germany), Artspace (New Zealand), and many other arts organisations and festivals around the world. Honor writes the blog, Particle Decelerator, which collects together news from the worlds of science, art and technology, placing a special emphasis on the collision between the quantum and the cosmological. Her artistic practice is produced under the name r a d i o q u a l i a together with collaborator Adam Hyde. One of their main past projects was Radio Astronomy, a radio station broadcasting sounds from space. Honor has lectured widely including at the TED conference, LIFT in Geneva, the European Space Agency, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, California Institute of the Arts and the American Film Institute. Dr Harry Cliff, Co-Curator of Collider and Particle Physicist Dr Harry Cliff is a particle physicist at Cambridge and the Large Hadron Collider and Fellow of Modern Science at Science Museum in London. He spends half his time searching for signs of new physics at LHCb, one of the four big experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider and the other half at the Science Museum where he develops exhibitions, events and online content. He currently holds a joint fellowship between the Cavendish Lab at the University of Cambridge and the Science Museum. Dr Phil Chan Aik Hui, Associate Professor, NUS Department of Physics Associate Professor Chan is a theoretical high-energy particle physicist at the National University of Singapore, where he studies matter-antimatter annihilation and matter-matter scattering data obtained from the European colliders at CERN in Geneva. Professor Chan is the CERN-NUS EOI Co-ordinator and Deputy Head of the NUS Physics Department. Previously, he was also a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge University for History and Philosophy of Science. He is currently a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP), London, and the NUS Chair for General Education. Professor Emmanuel Tsesmelis, Senior Physicist, Director-General Unit, CERN Emmanuel Tsesmelis is an experimental particle physicist with a career spanning scientific research, academic teaching, science communication, international relations and management at CERN and at several universities. He is a Senior Physicist and Deputy Head of International Relations in CERN’s Director-General Unit and a Visiting Professor in Particle and Accelerator Physics at the University of Oxford. He undertook his studies in Athens, Melbourne and Dortmund. He completed his Ph.D. studies in experimental particle physics at the University of Dortmund, where he worked on the search for the charged Higgs boson at the UA2 experiment at CERN. From 1993 to 1998, he worked within CERN’s neutrino programme searching for quantum mechanical oscillations of one flavour of neutrino to another – in the NOMAD and SPY Collaborations and also on the design team for the neutrino beam to Gran Sasso, CNGS. In 1998 he joined the CMS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), one of the two experiments that have announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, and for the period 2005- 2008 he was Head of the LHC Experimental Areas. As a result of his research, he has co-authored a large number of scientific papers in refereed journals together with international collaborators. Eleanor Wong, Playwright and Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, NUS. Eleanor Wong is a published playwright and poet, whose works have been produced both locally and regionally. She was Writer in Residence at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) from September to December 2014. Eleanor has pursued parallel careers in law and media and is an Associate Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, where she is Vice Dean of Student Affairs and Director of Legal Skills Programme. Vincenzo Napolano, Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics Vincenzo Napolano has been Science Communications manager of the Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics, INFN, since 2008. He has participated to the dissemination and media communication of international projects and worldwide scientific result announcements, as the LHC start and the Higgs Boson discovery. He is interested in using new technologies and artistic languages to communicate science to young people and general public. He has been curator of scientific exhibitions and of several multimedia installations at the crossing between art and science, presented in Museums and Science Festivals in Italy and in several other countries. He is the author of articles for popularization’s magazines, websites, newspapers and has been engaged as guest or author in national Italian TV and Radio broadcasts. He has held lectures and talks in public events in Europe and US. Paolo Scoppola, embrio.net collective Paolo Scoppola creates interactive video installations based on natural interfaces. Born in Rome in 1971, his passion for music and drawing blossomed at school. He discovered his interest in photography later and then for computer science, which he went on to study at university. After graduating, he worked for ten years in the development of virtual reality applications and 3D software, also creating some musical projects for television productions and a series of photographic reportages. After a short period of lecturing at the Experimental Centre of Cinematography (Italian National Film School), he devoted his time to interactive video installations. Dr Laura Longo, Associate Professor, NTU School of Art, Design and Media Coming from a scientific background but working since more than 20 years with past human behaviour, called “cultures” by humanists, Laura Longo profits of her Anthropology education to make human knowledge more inclusive and truly more universal. She believes in the necessity to combine insights from various disciplines. This trans-disciplinary attitude persuades her professional life as museum Curator, firstly in the Prehistory Department of Natural History Museum and then as scientific coordinator for the Municipality Museums in Florence (archaeological site and art museums). At present Laura is Associate Professor at the ADM School, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. CERN At CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, physicists and engineers are probing the fundamental structure of the universe. They use the world's largest and most complex scientific instruments to study the basic constituents of matter – the fundamental particles. The particles are made to collide together at close to the speed of light. The process gives the physicists clues about how the particles interact, and provides insights into the fundamental laws of nature. The instruments used at CERN are purpose-built particle accelerators and detectors. Accelerators boost beams of particles to high energies before the beams are made to collide with each other or with stationary targets. Detectors observe and record the results of these collisions. Founded in 1954, the CERN laboratory sits astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. It was one of Europe's first joint ventures and now has 21 member states Centre for Quantum Technologies at NUS The Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore brings together quantum physicists and computer scientists to explore the quantum nature of reality and quantum possibilities in technology. Established in December 2007 as the city-state’s first Research Centre of Excellence, CQT now has some 200 staff and