Welcome to Theory Canada 8

Theory Canada is a satellite conference to the annual Congress of the Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP). It serves as a venue for the Canadian theoretical physics community to meet, interact, and share new research results with colleagues from across the country. This event involves both the exchange of new results and ideas with colleagues working in the same subfield of theoretical physics, and also the cross-fertilization between different areas. This was seen as particularly important given Canada's geographical expanse, and the relative isolation in which some researchers find themselves.

The Theory Canada 8 conference in 2013 will consist of five thematic oral sessions and a poster session. Each oral session will comprise two 30-minute talks and five 20-minute talks (including time for questions). The talks are intended to be comprehensible to researchers in theoretical physics who are non-experts in the field. Each session will include a coffee break. The conference will begin with a reception on the evening of May 23rd and a banquet will be held on campus on May 24th. Former Canadian astronaut, Dr. Bjarni Tryggvason, will be the banquet speaker.

The sessions and invited speakers are:

• Theoretical Condensed Matter 
• Andre-Marie Tremblay (U. Sherbrooke)
• Adrian del Maestro (U. Vermont)

• Gravitation and Cosmology
• Eric Poisson (Guelph U.)
• Robert Brandenberger (McGill U.)

• Quantum Information
• Patrick Hayden (McGill U.)
• David Poulin (U. Sherbrooke)

• Mathematical Physics
• Noah Graham (Middlebury College)
• Luc Vinet (U. Montréal)

• String Theory, Quantum Gravity, and Subatomic Theory
• Cliff Burgess (Perimeter Institute)
• Amanda Peet (U. Toronto)

After their talk, participants are strongly encouraged to provide PDFs of their presentations so that they can be placed online for future reference.

A block of rooms has been reserved at the Paterson Hall residence of Bishop’s University; please see the Accommodations tab at the top of the page.

The banquet will be held during the evening of Friday, May 24^th. Note that the banquet is free for all participants.

We are very pleased to announce that Dr. Bjarni Tryggvason has agreed to be the after-banquet speaker. Bjarni is a Canadian engineer who pursued a career as an astronaut with the Canadian Space Agency. He served as a Payload Specialist on Space Shuttle mission STS-85 in 1997, a 12-day mission to study changes in the Earth’s atmosphere. On February 22, 2009, he piloted a replica of Alexander Graham Bell's Silver Dart, from the ice on Baddeck Bay, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. The flight commemorated the centennial of the first flight in Canada and the British Empire.

Bjarni is a delightful speaker who will discuss some of his fascinating life experiences.