Abstract: Recent measurements of the Hubble Constant (H_0) through distance ladder techniques have revealed a noticeable tension with the Planck H_0 value that was obtained under the assumption of the cosmological "standard model", i.e., a flat Lambda cold dark matter …

Chris Fassnacht (UC Davis) "Cosmological parameters from strong gravitational lenses" Read More »

Abstract: Many fundamental properties of neural networks are still not well understood. This talk studies two of these from an adversarial perspective. I begin with my main line of research and examine the apparently-fundamental susceptibility of neural networks to adversarial …

Nicholas Carlini (UCB) "Adversarial Machine Learning" Read More »

ABSTRACT: Weak-scale Supersymmetry can help to resolve several puzzles presented by the Standard Model, including the nature of dark matter and the naturalness of the Higgs mass, and has motivated a robust search program at the Large Hadron Collider. Searches …

Michael Hance (UCSC) "Searching for Compressed SUSY at the Energy Frontier" Read More »

Abstract: Cosmological inflation is the leading hypothesis to resolve the problems in the Big Bang theory. It predicts that primordial gravitational waves were created during the inflationary era, which then imprinted large-scale curl patterns in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) …

Masashi Hazumi (KEK) "LiteBIRD Satellite for Tests of Cosmic Inflation and Quantum Gravity" Read More »

April 2018 marks the 2nd data release (DR2) of the ESA Gaia space mission. A new era in astrometry begun. Accurate positions, proper motions and parallaxes for over a billion stars are now available on the sub-mas level. The properties …

Norbert Zacharias (USNO) "Impact of Gaia on Astrometry and Beyond" Read More »

ABSTRACT: This talk will present the first measurement of monoenergetic muon neutrino charged current interactions. The MiniBooNE experiment at Fermilab has been used to isolate and study 236 MeV muon neutrino events originating from charged kaon decay at rest. The …

Joshua Spitz (U. Michigan) " First Measurement of Monoenergetic Muon Neutrino Charged Current Interactions Read More »

ABSTRACT: The central puzzle that drives the field of quantum foundations is the measurement problem: what gives rise to the appearance of wave function collapse? While there is no single answer to this question that has wide acceptance, this is …

Adam Becker (UCB) "An Incomplete Survey of Proposed Solutions to the Quantum Measurement Problem" Read More »

Abstract The radiation environment at the High Luminosity LHC requires CMS to replace its silicon tracker with one that is more radiation hard and granular. The new tracker is designed twenty years after the original one, and has new unique …

Yuri Gershtein (Rutgers U.) "CMS Tracker for HL-LHC: an Exciting New Tool for Discovery" Read More »

ABSTRACT: Current cosmological measurements have left us with deep questions about our Universe: What caused the expansion of the Universe at the earliest times? How did structure form? What is Dark Energy and does it evolve with time? New experiments …

Laura Newburgh (Yale U.) "New Probes of Old Structure: Cosmology with 21cm Intensity Mapping and the Cosmic Microwave Background" Read More »

Abstract: The identification of hadronically decaying tau leptons at the LHC is challenging. I will review the methods for tau reconstruction at ATLAS and how the identification of tau leptons has enabled several interesting and novel measurements in exotics and …

Sinead Farrington (U. Warwick) "Physics with Taus" Read More »