## Nature of the New Boson: a lonely Higgs, or the first of many cousins?

The SPA is very pleased to welcome Prof. James Olsen, co-leader of the CMS Higgs group and  faculty member of the Princeton University Physics Department,  for the first Colloquium of the New Year 2014.

Colloquium of the  School of Physics and Astronomy (SPA)

#### "Nature of the New Boson: a lonely Higgs, or the first of many cousins?"

by Prof. James Olsen

Friday 17th January,  David Sizer Lecture Theatre, Bancroft  Building , 16.30-17.30

## School Colloquium series of the School of Physics and Astronomy

Friday, 13th December 2013, 16:30, GO Jones Lecture Theatre

Professor Massimo Bianchi from the Universita' di Roma "Tor Vergata"  and INFN sezione di Roma II will give the next seminar in the series.  He is an internationally renowned string theorist, with seminal contributions in numerous  foundational branches of string theory, most recently in the remarkable holographic emergence of gravity. Professor Bianchi is currently Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Queen Mary, University of London.

Title of Lecture : String Theory - Even if it is not true,  it is well-conceived.

## Postdoctoral position in CRST

The School of Physics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London has been awarded funding for a Postdoctoral Research Assistant position in the CRST.  Applicants with interests in any of the following areas are encouraged to apply:

## Post-doctoral position in String Theory

There is an opening for a post-doctoral position in string theory, starting in September 2014, shared between the string theory group of QMUL, London and the high energy theory group at  WITS university, Johannesburg.  For full details see inSPIRE and AcademicJobsOnline.

## Maths/Physics Dialogue

### We have started a series of Maths/Physics seminars at the interfaces of theoretical physics with mathematics.

This was launched with a talk by Prof Shahn Majid hosted by the string  theory group titled "Gravity induced by quantum space-time.'' Dr Sanjaye Ramgoolam from string theory gave a talk on "Combinatorics of four-dimensional quiver gauge theories and two-dimensional topological field theories", in the quantum algebras seminar in Maths. The series will continue with talks from Maths in Physics and vice versa, as well as invited talks by external speakers hosted jointly by Maths and Physics. The next talk in the series is by Dr Behrang Noohi (see the CRST seminar page).

## Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to Francois Englert and Peter Higgs, "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider".

## Two new academic staff members in CRST

We are very pleased to announce that CRST will welcome two new academic members of staff from October 2013: Dr Constantinos Papageorgakis (Rutgers), who will join the group as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, and Dr Donovan Young (NORDITA), who will take on a three-year Lectureship in CRST.