What is Oz and the Emerging Quantum Gravity Research in Australia?

[marcus]

Florian Girelli is a good QG researcher. He is now at U Sydney in Australia and he seems to be in touch with other Oz people interested in QG. And somehow they seem to have money, as if the Oz establishment wants to get some QG going there.

The triennial GR conference was at U Sydney in 2007 and they got Renate Loll and Laurent Freidel as invited speakers. The sponsoring organisation GRG (general rel and gravitation) is strong in the QG department. I think U Sydney hosting the big GRG conference means they want to be on the map. Maybe build up their program.
I know this is vague, but it's a staw in the wind. Kind of interesting. I got this public circular announcement today.
========
I would like to let you know that the School of Physics at the University of
Sydney has one opening for a 3 years postdoc position, starting in January
2010.

It would be great if you could forward this information to the potential
candidates.

Information on the position can be found at
http://www.usyd.edu.au/research/fellowships/postdoctoral_research.shtml
(The applicant should have a "PhD award dated no earlier than 1 January 2004
and not later than 31 December 2008")
Interested candidates should first contact F. Girelli
girelli@physics.usyd.edu.au and S. Bartlett bartlett@physics.usyd.edu.au People interested in quantum gravity in USyd are F. Girelli (quantum gravity
and non-commutative geometry), S Bartlett (quantum relational observables
and quantum information), H. Westman (foundations of quantum mechanics,
general relativity). At the Macquarie University (also in Sydney) there is
D. Terno (working on black holes in QG and quantum information).

...
...
==endquote==

Danny Terno was at Perimeter and before that Haifa. His advisor at Haifa was Asher Peres. He's coauthored with Etera Livine. Cool. Hans Westman has been at foundations conferences at Perimeter giving keynote addresses and such. There are eight video lectures by him on Perimeter's pirsa.org.
http://pirsa.org/index.php?p=speaker&name=Hans_Westman
But mainly to gauge how strong the QG startup is down under one could just look at Girelli publications:
http://arxiv.org/find/grp_physics/1/au:+Girelli/0/1/0/all/0/1

 

[Jimmy Kaluhi]

Also at USyd there is Dean Rickles in the Unit for the History and Philosophy of Science, who has worked on a few papers and books on QG. He's got a grant from the ARC (Australian Research Council) to write a book on the history of QG, the summary for which includes:
"This research will greatly enhance Australia's position in this breakthrough science."

I'm in my first year of a BSc at Sydney with a particular interest in QG, so I can only hope this trend continues.

 

[MTd2]

Marcus, what is Oz?

 

[ccdantas]

Marcus, what is Oz?

Hi MTd2

See, e.g., here:


http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080731014435AAZHowE


Christine