A highlight for theoreticians
Because of the d… virus, the Hub had to give up a lot of it’s usual activities—public events, teatime, winter school, teatime, workshops, visitors, and teatime had to be postponed or even cancelled.
Yet, our intrepid PostDoc Jan Korbel decided to stick to his plans together with David Wolpert form the Santa Fe Institute. And so it happened that we just have held our first online workshop on “stochastic thermodynamics of complex systems,” which took place from May 27 to 29, 2020 at the Hub … as well as in Santa Fe, Tokyo, Barcelona, Luxembourg, Warshaw, Davis (Calif/USA), Maryland, Stuttgart, Pisa, Zurich, Nottingham, and Leipzig (speaker-wise). In addition, non-speaking participants from all around the world attended the Zoom sessions or followed the livestream on Facebook.
Early (early!) morning = late (late!) night…
“The workshop had 21 speakers, and about 150 non-speaking participants,” Jan summarizes the setting. “On the first day, 259 people attended the Zoom sessions, on the second day 204, on the third day still 143 people.” The Facebook stream had more than 1,000 view(er)s during the three days of the workshop.
“We had participants from more than 25 countries in more than 18 time zones,” says Jan—which meant, some had to get up before sunrise while others had to wait until late, late nite.
It seems as if the effort paid off: The response on the workshop was very positive indeed, on some parts even enthusiastic.
Female voices missing
We have to mention a downer though: Only men have spoken!
The organizers are well aware of this. “If we do organize a second round of this workshop next year,” Jan points out, “we will make sure to have female speakers, too!” Jan is already collecting names.
So, people: If you are—or know—a female expert in stochastic thermodynamics of complex systems who could be interested in participating, don’t hesitate to contact us!
Get talks, slides, and a summary
For all those who could not make it to the workshop but would have loved to, we provide comprehensive material:
Find a short summary of the workshop, including the results of a workshop feedback, in Jan’s and David’s workshop report.
The event page also offers the program and sessions with speakers and links to their slides.
We uploaded 19 talks to our Youtube channel: Follow this link to the playlist “CSH Online Workshop Stochastic Thermodynamics.”