School of complexity in Brussels

Thursday Jan 21 and Friday Jan 22 I have spent in Brussels, Universite Libre. There was a scientific school (!) for master students. I find the idea astonishing: if something like this happens in Delft, it usually consists of two-three lectures of a VERY popular level, a sort you can read in kindergarten without risking to tire kids. There in Brussel it was entirely different: all the lecturers invited kept presentation at scientific level. The students have been warned: the school is called "Understanding and exploiting COMPLEXITY at the nanoscale". Yet the attendance was spectacular, despite the fact that it was an examination week. I really love that French-speaking people are not afraid of looking clever.

Except me, the lectures came from statistical physics community, and their definition of "nanoscale" was rather different from others: they concern situations were the fluctuations of would-be macroscopic quantities are visible. For instance, this includes population genetics presented by Luca Peliti.  There was an interesting series of experimental lectures by Sergio Ciliberto.  I was talking about quantum transport, as usual.

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