The Department of Physics in Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences will begin registering attendees for PAVI14—an international conference in modern nuclear physics, occurring every 2-3 years—on March 3, 2014.

Aimed at scientists, teachers, and students in physics and related fields, PAVI14 will take place on July 14-19, 2014, in various venues throughout Skaneateles, N.Y. (approximately 20 miles west of SU). For more information and to register for the conference, please call 315-443-3901 or visit pavi14.syr.edu.

The conference is co-sponsored by SU’s physics department; the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (a.k.a. Jefferson Lab) in Newport News, Va.; and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz in Germany. Local organizers include SU Professors Paul Souder and A. Alan Middleton, the latter of whom is chair of the physics department.

“We’re extremely honored to host this international conference,” says Middleton, an expert in theoretical condensed matter and computational physics. “More than 70 attendees from all over the world will converge on Central New York for a week of cutting-edge lectures and workshops. There really isn’t anything else like it in our field."

Souder agrees, saying that PAVI14 is designed to foster scientific exchanges among theoretical and computational physicists. “Our intention is to discuss new ideas, to address some of the problems of and solutions to the research in our field, and to promote a high standard of research and educational activities for attendees,” says Souder, a co-recipient of this year’s National Nuclear Physicist Award from Jefferson Lab.

Past conferences, which have been held in Greece, Germany, and France, have addressed dozens of topics; PAVI14 expects to be no different. Presentations are likely to explore such wide-ranging areas as atomic and Hadronic parity violation; the standard model of particle physics; the Higgs boson and neutrino particles; and quantum chromodynamics, to name a few.

“This conference reinforces our status as a leader in experimental research,” says Souder, who specializes in medium-energy particle physics. “Since much of what we do at SU is interdisciplinary and takes place on the global stage, it’s only fitting that we organize something on this scale.”  

Housed in The College, the Department of Physics has been educating students and carrying out research for more than 125 years. Graduate and undergraduate opportunities are available in fields ranging from biological and condensed matter physics, to cosmology and particle physics, to gravitational wave detection and astrophysics.