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Prospects in Theoretical Physics 2025: Gravitational Waves from Theory to Observation, July 14-25, 2025, Princeton

PiTP is an intensive two-week summer program designed for advanced graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. The program will be held from July 14-25, 2025 at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ. The school will explore the field of gravitational wave physics and astrophysics, bridging the gap between theory and observation. Gravitational waves offer a unique window into the Universe, allowing us to probe extreme astrophysical environments and primordial cosmological epochs. Gravitational waves also allow for powerful tests of general relativity in the strong field regime.

Over the last decade, the direct detection of gravitational waves has opened up new avenues of research, driving rapid advancements in theoretical modeling, observational techniques, and data analysis. The school will provide a comprehensive overview of the field’s current state, covering key theoretical tools, the latest developments in modeling gravitational wave sources, and state-of-the-art methods in data analysis. These tools are essential for extracting physical insights from current observations and will be a critical foundation for interpreting data from more sensitive upcoming detectors.
PiTP Program Details

The APPLICATION deadline is Sunday, March 1, 2025 at 11:59 pm (Eastern Standard Time). If you have not received your PhD, one letter of recommendation from your thesis advisor is required and should be uploaded with the application or with this reference form.

For housing, travel, and other administrative PiTP information please see the FAQ page.

Topics will include:

Waveform models, Numerical Relativity, Gravitational Wave Searches, Parameter Estimation, Pulsar Timing Arrays, Astrophysics of Gravitational Wave Sources and interpretation of current observational data.

Preliminary Program Lecturers

Bruce Allen (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics)
Emanuele Berti (Johns Hopkins University)
Neil Cornish (Montana State University)
Maya Fishbach (University of Toronto)
Luis Lehner (Perimeter Institute)
Chiara Mingarelli (Yale University)
Patricia Schmidt (University of Birmingham)
Tejaswi Venumadhav Nerella (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Barak Zackay (Weizmann Institute)
Matias Zaldarriaga (Institute for Advanced Study)

Organizing Committee

Maya Fishbach (Toronto); Tejaswi Venumadhav Nerella (UCSB); Frans Pretorius (Princeton); Barak Zackay (Weizmann); Matias Zaldarriaga (IAS)

If you have questions regarding the PiTP program, please send an email to: pitp(at)ias.edu.

School Website

2nd Annual Workshop on Self-Force and Amplitudes, September 9-12, 2025, Southampton

The 2nd Annual Workshop on Self-Force and Amplitudes will be hosted by the Gravitational Waves Group at the University of Southampton from 9th - 12th September 2025. 

Recent developments in perturbative quantum field theory have offered new insights into the classical two-body dynamics in the post-Minkowskian expansion (i.e., expansion in Newton’s constant), leveraging efficient computational techniques traditionally used for collider physics. At the same time, the gravitational self-force expansion has allowed the gravitational-wave community to develop a description of the two-body dynamics which is fully non-perturbative in the coupling, while being accurate only in the limit of small mass ratios.

There are exciting prospects in uniting these two complementary approaches, possibly yielding powerful new modeling methods for gravitational-wave astronomy and new insights into the connections between gravity and quantum field theory. There have recently been notable steps toward this goal, but much more remains to be done to fully benefit from synergies between the two methods. This workshop is a sequel to the event held at the Higgs Centre in Edinburgh in 2024, which brought together experts from both communities to establish new collaborations.

Topics will include

using data from scattering scenarios to inform models of gravitationally bound systems
using the self-force expansion to determine unknown high-order terms in the post-Minkowskian series, and vice versa
using self-force results to inform resummations of post-Minkowskian calculations, and vice versa
validating and informing resummation techniques using numerical relativity simulations of scattering orbits
describing Kerr black holes with amplitudes and point particles
investigating double copy structures in classical gravity and black hole perturbation theory

Due to limited space, registration will be moderated.

Invited speakers

Leor Barack
Poul Daamgard
Thibault Damour
Gustav Jakobsen
Dimitrios Kosmopoulos
Oliver Long
Julio Parra-Martinez
Nabha Shah
Canxin Shi
Davide Usseglio
Maarten van de Meent
Pierre Vanhove
Chris Whittall
Mao Zeng
more to come…

Workshop Website

APCTP Workshop on Gravitational Waves 2025, April 20-25, Taipei

The workshop APCTP-GW2025 aims to bring together researchers from the Asia Pacific region who are working on various aspects of the rapidly advancing field of GW astronomy. Set in the beautiful backdrop of Taipei in the spring, participants will not only engage in discussions but also enjoy the excellent weather, vibrant culture, and authentic traditional cuisine.

Gravitational waves (GWs) are transforming our understanding of the Universe, offering a revolutionary window into cosmic phenomena that were previously inaccessible through traditional astronomical observations. The LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA consortium’s observations of hundreds of transient GW events from merging stellar mass black holes and neutron stars during the last decade have inaugurated the era of GW Astronomy by deepening our knowledge of these extreme stars of Einstein’s General Relativity. Rapidly maturing Pulsar Timing Array efforts have provided glimpses of nanohertz GWs, offering new insights into high-energy phenomena in the early Universe and supermassive black hole binaries. The upcoming/proposed GW observatories like SKA, LIGO-India, LISA, Taiji/TianQin, ET, CE, and LILA are expected to address some of the most pressing challenges in modern cosmology, such as the Hubble tension and the nature of inflation in the early Universe while providing ultra-sensitive tests for Einstein’s universe.

Invited Speakers

Alvin Chua (NUS)
Anna Heffernan (UIB)*
Che-Yu Chen (RIKEN)
Feng-Li Lin (NTNU)
George Hobbs (CSIRO)
Jai-chan Hwang (IBS)
Otto Hannuksela (CUHK)
Ryan Shannon (Swinburne)
Sarah Vigeland (UWM)
Takahiro Tanaka (Kyoto U.)
Tjonnie Li (KU Leuven)
Vicharit Yingcharoenrat (Chulalongkorn U.)
Xiao Xue (IFAE)
Xingjiang Zhu (BNU)
Yuki Inoue (NCU)
More To Be Confirmed*

Dates and Venue

20 – 25 April, 2025
Institute of Physics, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
Registration deadline: 1st March 2025
No registration fee, but slots are limited
Contributed talks and posters are welcome

Code of Conduct

The organizers are committed to ensuring that this workshop is a positive, inclusive, and enriching experience for all participants. We aim to foster an environment free from harassment and discrimination, welcoming individuals of all genders, sexual orientations, disabilities, physical appearances, body sizes, ethnicities, nationalities, religions, and ages. Harassment of any kind will not be tolerated. Thank you for helping us create a supportive and collaborative community.

Scientific Organising Committee

Achamveedu Gopakumar (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research)
Ian Vega (National Institute of Physics, University of the Philippines Diliman)
Kin-Wang Ng (Academia Sinica)
Reginald Christian Bernardo (APCTP)
Stephen Appleby (APCTP)

Workshop Website

Workshop on “Gravitational Wave Cosmology”, February 19-21, 2025 in Brussels

The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts working in diverse fields of observational cosmology to address pressing questions that the new observations are currently bringing such as:
  • How can we distinguish cosmological sources from the detected Pulsar Timing Array signal?
  • What is the nature of the Hubble tension: systematic errors or a sign for new physics?
  • How will gravitational waves standard sirens contribute in the near future?
  • How to distinguish the primordial gravitational wave background from the astrophysical background?
  • Which notable multi-messenger signatures should be searched for ?

Invited Speakers

James Alvey (Cambridge U., UK)
Dillon Brout (Boston U., USA)
François Foucart (U. New Hampshire, USA)
Gabriele Franciolini (CERN, Switzerland)
Wendy Freedman (Chicago U., USA)
Archisman Ghosh (Ghent U., Belgium)
Rachel Gray (Glasgow U., Scotland)
Stefan Hild (Maastricht U., The Netherlands)
Tanja Hinderer (Utrecht U., The Netherlands)
Justin Janquart (UCLouvain, Belgium)
Mansi Kasliwal (Caltech, USA)
Julien Lesgourgues (RWTH U., Germany)
Chiara Mingarelli (Yale U., USA)
Andrea Mitridate (DESY, Germany)
Antonella Palmese (Carnegie Mellon U., USA )
Adam Riess (Johns Hopkins U., USA)
Mairi Sakellariadou (Kings’s College London, UK)

Scientific and Organising Committee

Giacomo Bruno (UCLouvain, Belgium)
Sébastien Clesse (ULB, Brussels, Belgium)
Geoffrey Compère (ULB, Brussels, Belgium)
Archisman Ghosh (Ghent U., Belgium)
Alberto Marrioti (VUB, Brussels, Belgium)
Samaya Nissanke (UvA, The Netherlands)
Nick Van Remortel (Antwerp U., Belgium)
Alex Sevrin (VUB, Brussels, Belgium)

Practical information for attendees
Registration

Attendance is free of charge but registration is required (limited space).

To register, please click on ‘Click HERE to register’ at the top right of the webpage. After registering you should receive an automatic response confirming that your registration has been submitted. This message is then followed by an email confirming your participation. If you experience any technical issues during registration, please contact Isabelle Van Geet (isabelle.vangeet(at)solvayinstitutes.be)

Workshop Website

EMRI Search and Inference within the LISA Global Fit – Part I, June 23–25 2025, APC Paris

When compact objects such as neutron stars or stellar-mass black holes venture into the vicinity of giant black holes, they can form highly asymmetric and strongly relativistic binary systems known as extreme-mass-ratio inspirals (EMRIs). EMRIs are some of the most promising gravitational-wave sources that the upcoming space mission LISA might observe, but also some of the most difficult to model, detect and characterise.

The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts in EMRI science and LISA data analysis, to assess the state of the art in the field and to further develop plans for the optimal extraction of science from such sources. The workshop will focus mainly on data analysis techniques for EMRI search and inference in the broader context of the LISA global fit, but will naturally extend to adjacent topics such as the construction of accurate and efficient waveform templates, and the impact of astrophysical environments on EMRI modelling and interpretation.

Workshop Website

Aspen Summer 2025: Physics in the Era of Nanohertz Gravitational Waves

We are excited to announce that our 2025 summer Aspen workshop proposal for "Physics in the Era of Nanohertz Gravitational Waves" has been accepted and applications are now open.
The program is scheduled for August 3-24, 2025. The application deadline is January 31, 2025; see https://aspenphys.org/summer-workshops/. We invite you to apply. Please also encourage other people who are active in the field to apply.

Be aware that we cannot guarantee admission to the workshop. Admission to the workshop is granted not by the workshop organizers, but by the Admissions Committee of the Center. Because of the constraints imposed by the rest of the Aspen Center for Physics program, they are usually not able to admit everyone who applies.

Aspen Center for Physics encourages participants, especially those early in their careers, those with families, and those from underrepresented groups, institutions, and countries, to apply for our summer program. The Center has a limited amount of additional financial support for participants who fall into these, and other, special categories and encourages applicants who need financial support to apply for it on their application.

Workshop Website

3rd LISA Sprint, April 28-30, 2025 in Huntsville

The Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) is a joint effort of ESA and NASA to develop and operate the first space-based observatory of gravitational waves (GWs) in the millihertz frequency band. To prepare for LISA observations and its unique data products, we are organizing the 3rd LISA Sprint in Huntsville, AL, from Monday April 28 to Wednesday April 30, 2025.

The meeting’s goals are two-fold:

  • Connect LISA data scientists with astronomers and astrophysicists who will incorporate LISA data products into their research.
  • Advance the research community’s readiness to capitalize on LISA observations.

Workshop Theme

The theme for this third meeting is Time Domain and Multimessenger Astronomy with LISA. During the workshop, small interdisciplinary teams of researchers will come together to make concrete progress on concise projects and goals related to this scientific area.

Participants are encouraged to propose ideas and contribute material that aligns with the workshop’s format. This is a hands-on workshop with no traditional talks—only brief project pitches and a final “show and tell” to share progress with the group.
Apply for the Meeting

Logistics

Information for planning your trip will be available soon. Stay tuned for more details on travel, accommodation, and venue information.

Who Should Attend?

This workshop is ideal for researchers, astronomers, astrophysicists, and data scientists who wish to engage with LISA’s data and contribute to the future of gravitational wave astronomy.

Meeting Website

LVK Collaboration Meeting, March 24-27 2025, Melbourne

We are delighted to host the 2025 March LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration Meeting in Melbourne, Australia, from March 24th – 27th at the Pullman Melbourne Albert Park Hotel. This year’s meeting will be hosted by the ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery (OzGrav).

Why Melbourne?
Melbourne is a vibrant, multicultural city known for its rich arts scene, fantastic food, and innovative research institutions. As Australia’s scientific hub, Melbourne is the perfect backdrop for the LVK Collaboration Meeting, offering participants both professional and cultural experiences. The Pullman Melbourne Albert Park Hotel offers a picturesque location near the scenic Albert Park Lake, the venue offers state-of-the-art conference facilities, accommodating both large plenary sessions and smaller breakout discussions

Satellite Meetings:
Following the main conference, satellite meetings will be held on Friday the 28th of March, providing additional opportunities for in-depth workshops and discussions.

Whether you’re joining in person or online, we look forward to an engaging and inspiring collaboration!

Venue: Pullman Melbourne Albert Park Dates: March 24th-27th, 2025 (Satellite workshops on the 28th)

Meeting Website

11th Gulf Coast Gravity Meeting, April 11-12, 2025 at University of Mississippi

The GCGM returns to the University of Mississippi! The 11th Gulf Coast Gravity Meeting will be held at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, MS, on April 11 and 12, 2025. In keeping with its tradition, this will be an open, relaxed, and informal conference.

We are inviting researchers and students interested in all areas of gravitational physics: classical and quantum gravity, general relativistic astrophysics and cosmology, quantum cosmology, gravitational waves, and experimental gravity. Because this is a regional meeting, many attendees will be from the southeastern United States, but all are welcome.

Talks

Following the usual tradition all participants, and especially postdocs and graduate students, are encouraged to contribute short, introductory talks on their current research, with the aim of fostering communication and understanding among gravitational physicists with different backgrounds. A prize (sponsored by the APS Division of Gravitational Physics) will be awarded for the best talk given by a student at the meeting.
Deadlines
Prospective speakers should register by March 01 to receive full consideration. Late applicants will be considered at the discretion of the organizers. See the website for details.

Meeting Website

Geometric Foundations of Gravity 2025, June 30 – July 4 in Tatu

is a conference dedicated to the various approaches to gravity that venture beyond the basic formalism of general relativity, i.e., the description in terms of a massless metric field in Riemannian geometry derived from the Einstein-Hilbert action. The topics will range from the foundational issues to the applications in cosmology, gravitational waves, black holes, and other objects.

The meeting will take place on June 30 – July 4, 2025 in Tartu, Estonia. It is a continuation of a series of earlier conferences and workshops on the related subjects.

The topics under discussion include for instance:

  • Extensions of general relativity (metric-affine gravity, Poincare gauge gravity, scalar/vector/tensor gravity, teleparallel gravity, massive gravity, bi-metric gravity, etc)
  • Phenomenology of extended gravity (black holes, ordinary/neutron/boson/grava stars, gravitational waves, cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, galaxies, early universe etc)
  • Beyond Lorentzian geometry in classical and quantum gravity (doubly/deformed relativity, standard model extension, Hamilton geometry, Finsler geometry, etc).

The last day of the conference is planned for hands on tutorial workshops on using computer algebra in gravity theory calculations, focussing on free specialized software packages Cadabra and SymPy (tensor).

The conference is organized by the gravity research group at the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Tartu.

Invited speakers

  • Kirill Krasnov (Nottingham)
  • Prado Martín-Moruno (Madrid) TBC
  • Nicoleta Voicu (Brasov)
  • Thomas Złośnik (Gdansk)
  • TBA

Organizing committee

  • Sebastián Bahamonde (Tokyo)
  • Daniel Blixt (Napoli)
  • María José Guzmán Monsalve (Tartu)
  • Manuel Hohmann (Tartu)
  • Damianos Iosifidis (Tartu)
  • Laur Järv (Tartu)
  • Sotirios Karamitsos (Tartu)
  • Purnendu Karmakar (Tartu)
  • Tomi Koivisto (Tartu)
  • Christian Pfeifer (Bremen)
  • Margus Saal (Tartu)
  • Jorge G. Valcárcel (Pohang)
  • Aneta Wojnar (Wrocław)

Conference Website