Keynotes – 2016

 

Public lecture in the framework of the Vienna Lectures series:

 

Haresh Lalvani
Lalvani Studio, Pratt Institute, N.Y.
Artist, designer and professor of Architecture at Pratt Institute where he is also the co-director of the Center for Experimental Structures
Title: Morphological Universe

 

Keynote lectures:

On general relativity and gravitational waves

Peter Christian Aichelburg
Professor of Physics, University of Vienna.
Title: Symmetry principles in Einstein’s theory of Relativity

Peter C. Aichelburg was born in Vienna and educated in Austria, Switzerland, Venezuela and   Barbados. His university studies were in Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy culminating in a PhD in theoretical Physics (1967).  From 1980-2000 he was Associate, and from 2000 – 2007 Full Professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Univ. of Vienna. His Scientific Publications include those on the mathematical and geometrical implications of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.  He has given invited lectures both in Europe and overseas.  During the years 2000 – 2015 Professor Aichelburg was Chairman of the scientific advisory board to the European Forum Alpbach.

 

Benno Willke
Title: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Black Hole Merger – Dawn of a New Astronomy
Keywords: Gravitational waves, Black holes, Laser-interferometry

Apl. Prof. Dr. Benno Willke received his doctoral degree in physics from the University of Hannover, Germany in the field of plasma physics in 1992. In 1993, he joined the GEO collaboration and worked on the design and installation of the GEO600 gravitational wave detector. Awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation with a Feodor Lynen scholarship he spent one postdoctorial year (1997–1998) in the Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford University (USA) with research devoted toward the laser system of the LIGO gravitational wave detector. Back in Germany he continued to work on GEO600 with the main focus on the laser system and the interferometry. From 1998 to 2009 he chaired the lasers working group of the LIGO scientific collaboration (LSC) and was responsible for the development, fabrication and installation of the Advanced LIGO  laser subsystem and its stabilization. In 2014 he was appointed adjunct professor at the Leibniz Universität Hannover.
Benno Willke served on several executive and advisory committees of gravitational wave detector projects  (GEO, LIGO, LSC, EGO/Virgo), was member and PI in special research initiative of the German Research Foundation (SFB407, QUEST) and is associated with the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute).