The UV-QG group is actively collaborating with members of three African institutions: the University of Cape Town and North-West University, from South Africa, and The British University in Egypt, from Egypt (obviously). This collaboration is supported by the internationalization program i-COOP of CSIC through the grant COOPB23096, and is aligned with the commitment of members of the UV-QG group to contribute to the strengthening of the scientific-technical training capacities of developing countries, facilitating scientific exchanges and internships at the Department of Theoretical Physics & IFIC. 

As part of the activities of this project, in September 8-10, 2025 we are organizing a workshop on compact objects, cosmology, and metric-affine gravity, to highlight ongoing research of the project members and collaborators. In this occasion, we will count with participation of the following invited speakers: Dr. Renier Hough (NWU), Dr. Gamal G. Lamee Nashed (BUE), Dr. Ángel Rincón (SUO), and Dr. Cristián Erices (UCC).

The workshop will be held at the Seminar Room of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Valencia (Burjassot Campus) in hybrid format to facilitate the remote participation and attendance of the national and international community working in the field of compact objects, cosmology, metric-affine geometry, and modified theories of gravity. As usual, all talks and discussions will be broadcast live via our YouTube channel. l. If you are interested in participating in the live sessions, let us know by email (at gonzalo.olmo@uv.es with subject "i-COOP meeting") to receive the corresponding ZOOM link. 

The main topic of the workshop revolves around the notion of compact astrophysical objects, cosmology, and modified gravity, with a focus on metric-affine geometry. 

Besides our colleagues from UCT, NWU, and BUE, the workshop will count with the participation of Dr. Carlos Alberto Santos de Almeida (UFC, Brazil), Dr. Ángel Rincón (SUO, Czech Republic), Dr. Renan B. Magalhães (UFMA, Brazil), Dr. Leandro Lessa (UFMA, Brazil), Dr. Paulo J.F. Porfirio (UFPB, Brazil), and the PhD/MSc students Alana Carolina Lima dos Santos (UFC, Brazil), Javier Marañón (UV-CSIC), Caio C.R. Evangelista (UFC, Brazil), Anderson Bragado de Queiroz (UFC, Brazil), ....  

About our special guests: 

 Dr. Gamal G.L. Nashed: He got his PhD in 1998 from Saitama university (Tokyo, Japan) on theoretical physics (energy and momentum in modified theories). After finishing his Ph.D,  has been a Faculty  staff  in the Department of Mathematics  at the University of  Ain Shams University (Cairo, Egypt) since 1998 till 2012. Since 2012, he became a member of the Centre of Theoretical Physics specialized in deriving black hole solutions in modified theories of gravity such as f(T), f(R), f(G), etc.  He has published more than 190 peer-reviewed papers with groundbreaking contributions in the field of black holes, specially discussing  horizons, multi-horizons, thermodynamics, and other related aspects. 

Dr. Renier Hough earned his PhD in Physics from North-West University (South Africa) in 2024, where he advanced large-scale cosmological simulations by updating Simba’s stellar-feedback and chemical-enrichment models. He is now a postdoctoral fellow at NWU, supervised by Prof. Amare Abebe, focusing on modified-gravity cosmologies and building a fully featured hydrodynamical simulation pipeline for MG, motivated by a simple question: have MG theories been implemented in these simulations? Renier has co-authored seven peer-reviewed papers and served as a referee. His interests are strongly computational: designing robust code, running simulations at scale, and turning complex outputs into clear, quantitative visualisations. He is also passionate about outreach and enjoys sharing the wonders of our Universe.
 Dr. Ángel Rincón: after completing his postgraduate training specialising in gravitation and cosmology at the University of Cape Town, Amare  Abebe joined the North-West University as a postdoctoral research fellow in 2014 and has remained there ever since, where he is now a professor of physics. His research interests and experience include cosmological perturbations and large-scale structure formation, especially in the context of modified gravity theories. More recent interests include interacting dark fluid cosmological models and tensions in cosmology.

 Dr. Cristián Erices: he received his PhD in Physics from the University of Concepción, Chile. He pursued postdoctoral research at the Center for Scientific Studies and subsequently at the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. His research primarily focuses on modified gravity theories, analytical black hole solutions, and their thermodynamic properties. He is currently a researcher at the Center for Research in Space Sciences and Theoretical Physics at Universidad Central de Chile

The workshop programme appears below. Click on each item for more information (do not forget to select the dates of the meeting to see the schedule).  

Access to the videos of previous meetings on our YouTube channel:

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

• Gonzalo J. Olmo.
• María A. Lledó.

Photo of this post by Jeroen van Nierop on Unsplash

In the year 2024 the UV-QG group has initiated a collaboration with members of three African institutions: the University of Cape Town and North-West University, from South Africa, and The British University in Egypt, from Egypt (obviously). This collaboration is possible thanks to the economic support of the internationalization program i-COOP of CSIC through the grant COOPB23096. This initiative is aligned with the commitment of members of the UV-QG group to contribute to the strengthening of the scientific-technical training capacities of developing countries, facilitating scientific exchanges and internships at the Department of Theoretical Physics & IFIC, a joint research center of the University of Valencia and the Spanish Research Council (CSIC). 

As part of the activities of this project, in June 5-6 of the current year 2024 we are organizing a workshop to discuss about compact objects and metric-affine gravity, which will hopefully serve as a starting point for new research and collaborations among the participants. In this first meeting, we will have the participation of the coordinators from the three involved foreign institutions: Dr. Álvaro de la Cruz Dombriz (UCT),  Dr. Amare Abebe Gidelew (NWU), and Dr. Gamal G. Lamee Nashed (BUE).

The workshop will be held at the Seminar Room of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Valencia (Burjassot Campus) in hybrid format to facilitate the remote participation and attendance of the national and international community working in the field of compact objects, metric-affine geometry, and modified theories of gravity. As usual, all talks and discussions will be broadcast live via our YouTube channel. If you are interested in participating in the live sessions, let us know by email (at gonzalo.olmo@uv.es with subject "i-COOP meeting") to receive the corresponding ZOOM link. 

Welcome to the website of the 7th edition of the Winter Workshop on Theoretical Physics. This event will take place at the Lise Meitner auditorium of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Valencia (Spain) on December 11-13, 2023. 

Direct links to the talks: 

Meeting ID: 933 4313 5081
Access Code: 19051915

Direct links to the talks: 

Though still struggling with the COVID-19 nightmare, we are back and ready to face a new edition of the Valencia Winter Workshop on Theoretical Physics. This time this event will take place at the Seminar Room of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Valencia and, at the same time, it will be broadcasted live from our BigBlueButton meeting room and also via our YouTube channel. On site and online participation is thus very welcome. 

Like in previous editions, this meeting is intended to bring together researchers with common interests on the geometric structure of space-time, quantum properties of gravity, cosmology, and astrophysics who collaborate with the host group via active projects (FunFiCO-777740, i-COOP20462, PROMETEO 2020/079, FIS2017-84440-C2- 1-P,  PID2020-116567GB-C21, …) or have close ties with them. 

Fundamental questions about the foundations of gravitation, the role of quantized fields in curved space-times, cosmological and astrophysical signatures of gravity within and beyond General Relativity, and recent developments on other topics, will be reviewed in a series of invited/contributed talks, and open discussions. 

The idea of the workshop is to encourage everyone, from seniors to less-experienced students and postdocs, to present some results obtained during the year 2021 that they find particularly relevant/interesting/easy to discuss in a relaxed atmosphere, possibly using the pdf of a paper already on arXiv or some scanned handwritten notes of a current work in progress, and addressing a few simple questions: 

1. What is it about?
2. Why is it important? (An explanation of what is unique and/or timely about this topic and the difference it might make with respect to previous work). 
3. Perspectives. 

The contributions are NOT expected to last 60 minutes. Rather 15-25 minute conceptual presentations with minimal calculations (if possible) are encouraged for everyone. The subsequent discussion and questions could extend as much as needed, depending on the audience participation. To be more concrete, for students we expect talks of about 20' (+10' of discussion), and for postdocs/seniors up to 30'(+15' of discussion) at most. All non-essential calculations could be provided to those interested for their individual analysis. The idea is to have talks not too focused on technicalities (if the topic allows, obviously) but have more discussions which could lead to new works/collaborations in 2022 and beyond. 

The workshop programme appears below: Click on each item for more information.  

If you are an online speaker or simply want to participate in the discussions, please join us via BigBlueButton (no need to install anything, just click).

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

• Flavio Bombacigno.
• Florencia A. Teppa Pannia.
• Gonzalo J. Olmo.  
• Andreu S. Masó. 
• Antonio Ferreiro de Aguiar.
• Sergi Nadal. 
• Adrià Delhom I Latorre. 
• Pau Beltrán Palau.

This meeting is organized by the Quantum Black Holes, Supergravity and Cosmology group at the Department of Theoretical Physics & IFIC of the University of Valencia & CSIC, Spain.

Photo of this post by  Pepe Serrador, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons.

In the year 2020 the UV-QG group started a collaboration with members of the University of Cape Town (UCT) at the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics, and the UCT Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre (ACGC). This collaboration was possible thanks to the economic support of the internationalization program i-COOP of CSIC through the grant COOPB20462. 

As part of the activities of this project, in December 2020 members of UCT participated in our 4th Valencia Winter Workshop, and in May 2021 we organized for them the 1^st i-School and Conference on Metric-Affine Gravity, both of which were held completely online due to mobility restrictions caused by the COVID-19 epidemics. 

Now that vaccines are allowing some relaxation on international mobility, two members of the UCT team, namely, Dr. Álvaro de la Cruz Dombriz and Dr. Jahed Abedi, will visit us in Valencia during the week of November 15-19, 2021. For this occasion, we are organizing a Workshop on Black Holes, Cosmology, and Metric-Affine Gravity, which will take place in a hybrid format on November 18-19. Some talks will be delivered at the Seminar Room of the Department of Theoretical Physics of the University of Valencia in Burjassot and others will be delivered remotely. As usual, everything will be broadcasted live from our Big Blue Button meeting room and also via our YouTube channel. 

Besides our colleagues from UCT, this week we will also have Dr. Fabio Moretti (Sapienza, Università di Roma), who will also join us for this event. Dr. Moretti collaborates with Simon Boudet (visiting us from September to December, 2021), Flavio Bombacigno, and Gonzalo J. Olmo on topics related with metric-affine gravity and gravitational waves. 

If you want to know more about our special guests of this event, here you have a short bio of them: 

Dr. Álvaro de la Cruz Dombriz:  

Since August 2015, Álvaro (Aranjuez, 1980) has been a Faculty Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town (UCT) and a member of the UCT Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravity Centre (ACGC) at UCT. Previously, awarded a PhD at the Complutense University of Madrid (2010, Summa cum Laude) on theoretical and observational constraints in extended theories of gravity. Subsequently held a postdoctoral fellow post at the UCT Cosmology and Gravity group and obtained a Marie Curie postdoctoral contract at the ICE-IEEC Barcelona. 

Álvaro’s publications include more than 50 peer-reviewed articles with seminal contributions in the areas of cosmological large-scale structures, foundations of theories beyond Einsteinian gravity, particularly on Scalar-Tensor gravity theories, and indirect methods of dark matter detections.

To date, Álvaro has been member of the scientific teams for seventeen research funded projects. Since 2016 he has been a member of two running EU-COST actions and along the course of his career he has been the Principal Investigator (PI) for six funded research projects in both Europe and South Africa.

In 2017 he was appointed as an Associate in the SKA Cosmology and Gravitational Waves collaboration and was honoured with the Young Researcher Award, (UCT College of Fellows, 2017) and the Claude Leon Foundation Merit Award for Early-career Researchers (2018).

Dr. Jahed Abedi: 

Jahed Abedi, a postdoctoral researcher from UCT and University of Stavanger, is a black hole physicist, working on gravitational physics in both observational side such as searching for GW echoes and QNMs in LIGO/Virgo data and theoretical side such as BH perturbations, QNMs, and QFT in curved space-time.
 

Dr. Fabio Moretti: 

Fabio Moretti obtained his PhD in 2021 at the University of Rome "La Sapienza", with a thesis on gravitational waves in modified theory of gravity. His principal interests cover propagation and interaction of gravitational waves with astrophysical media in extensions of general relativity, with special emphasis on additional polarizations and settling of dispersive/dissipative phenomena. He is also involved in compact objects physics, where he mainly deals with the role of additional scalar degrees of freedom in stellar structure and evolution.

The workshop programme appears below. Click on each item for more information.  

If you are an online speaker or simply want to participate in the discussions, please join us via BigBlueButton (no need to install anything, just click).

Direct links to the talks: 

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

• Flavio Bombacigno. 
• Florencia A. Teppa Pannia.
• Andreu Masó.
• Gonzalo J. Olmo.
• Silvia Pla García. 

Photo of this post by Andreas Selter on Unsplash

Esta semana el programa Pegando la Hebra de Plaza Radio ha entrevistado a nuestra compañera María A. Lledó (Marian). En esta entrevista habla de sus dos pasiones: la física teórica y la poesía.

No os perdáis su descripción de la teoría de cuerdas, de los problemas entre teoría cuántica y relatividad general, y otras cuestiones relacionadas con agujeros negros y el espacio-tiempo.  

Para escucharlo, haz click sobre esta imagen:

Photo de cabecera by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash