CHRIS ENGELBRECHT SUMMER SCHOOL
The Chris Engelbrecht Summer School is a South African series of Summer Schools in Theoretical Physics. The concept was conceived in the late 1970s and brought to fruition by the late Prof Chris Engelbrecht (photo above), after whom the series is now named.
Funding for the schools has been provided through the National Research Foundation (NRF) and its predecessor organisations. This was done firstly on an ad hoc basis and, of late, as part of the open research programme. The first school on ‘Quantum Optics’ was held in 1981 at Cathedral Peak in the Drakensberg. View the schools below.
32nd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School
The 32nd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School will take place in January 2024. NITheCS Associates were invited to submit proposals for the event.
Previous Summer Schools
1st Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1988
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2nd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1989
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3rd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1990
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4th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1991
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5th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1992
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6th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1993
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7th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1994
Field theory, topology and condensed matter physics
Tsitsikamma (1994)
Proceedings published in Springer Lecture Notes in Physics, Vol 456 (Ed HB Geyer)
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8th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1995
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9th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1996
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10th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1997
Density functionals: theory and applications
Venue: Meerensee
Proceedings published in Springer Lecture Notes in Physics, Vol 500 (Ed D Joubert)
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11th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1998
Venue: Cape Town
Proceedings published in Springer Lecture Notes in Physics, Vol 516 (Eds J Cleymans, HB Geyer and FG Scholtz)
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12th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 1999
‘Sandpiles, Random Systems and Random Walks: Analytic Methods and Simulation’
Venue: Devon Valley Hotel, Stellenbosch
Lecturers and topics:
P Bak, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark
‘Self-organised criticality in physics and elsewhere’
D Dhar, Tata Institute, Mumbai, India
‘The sandpile model of self-organized criticality’
P M Goldbart, University of Illinois, USA
‘Rubber, glass and other amorphous solids: a statistical mechanical view’
P Grassberger, Juelich and BUGH Wuppertal, Germany
‘Self-avoiding walks:from the renormalization group to proteins’
B Huckestein, University of Cologne, Germany
‘Localization-delocalization transitions’
K Mueller-Nedebock, University of Mainz, Germany
‘Random interactions in polymers’
R M Ziff, University of Michigan, USA
‘Percolation’
13th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2001
‘Quantum Computing, Communication and Decoherence’
Venue: Devon Valley Protea Hotel, Stellenbosch
D Bouwmeester, University of Oxford, UK
Introduction to fundamentals: superposition, qubits, entanglement and non-locality; quantum teleportation and the creation of entanglement.
I Cirac, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Quantum optical implementations for quantum computing, quantum error correction and purification of states
A Ekert, University of Oxford, UK
Quantum algorithms and logical gates; universality; cryptography
A Leggett, University of Illinois, USA
Entanglement; decoherence and various models of environment
D Loss, University of Basel, Switzerland
Devices for quantum computing and communication (semiconductors; quantum dots); spin qubits
W Zurek, Theory Group, Los Alamos, USA
Information transfer (measurement, entanglement); decoherence, chaos and entropy production; classical / quantum correspondence; Maxwell’s demon
14th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2002
‘Quantum gravity, String Theory and Cosmology’
Venue: Devon Valley, Stellenbosch
15th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2003
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16th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2004
‘Nanoscale Physics’
Venue: Alpine Heath Resort, Drakensberg
17th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2005
Advanced Scientific Computing
Venue: Alpine Heath Resort, Drakensberg
18th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2006
‘The Dark Side of the Universe’
- Testing the Concordance Model of Cosmology
- Compact Objects
- Gravitational Waves
Venue: Alpine Heath Resort, Drakensberg
19th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2007
Salt Rock Hotel, Dolphin Coast, KwaZulu-Natal
20th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2008
Soft Condensed Matter and Physics of Biological Systems
Venue: Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS)
21st Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2009
Nuclei and Nucleonic Systems – Exotic nuclei, halos, nuclear synthesis and more
Venue: Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS)
22nd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2010
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23rd Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2011
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24th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2012
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25th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2013
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26th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2014
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27th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2015
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28th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2016
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29th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2017
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30th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2018
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30th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2019
The 30th Chris Engelbrecht Summer School
and
the 9th CHPC Introductory Programming School
Date: 26 January – 06 February 2019
Venue: Premier Resort Sani Pass, Drakensberg
The School will start with a Basic Scientific Programming Course to introduce students to Linux (Ubuntu) Command line and bash scripting and the Python programming Language. This will be followed by introductions to topics as
- Foundations of Theoretical and Computational Physics,
- Foundations of Theoretical and Computational Biology,
- Foundations of Theoretical and Computational Chemistry,
- Foundations of Quantum Information Processing and Computation,
- Machine Learning as a Tool for Theoretical and Computational Science,
and advanced tutorials and workshops to put the theoretical material into practice. The School is structured in such a way to encourage students to actively solve challenging problems that the lectures will pose. Students will learn by doing!
School syllabus
- Introduction to Linux. It will cover a basic introduction to Linux command line, bash scripting and Introduction to PBS Pro and job submission at CHPC (Dr Krishna Govender, Centre for High-Performance Computing, CSIR).
- Introduction to Python Programming: It will cover basic of python and syntax, advanced function and using matplotlib with python and the use of advanced mathematical packages such as numpy and scipy (Dr Andrew Gill, Centre for High-Performance Computing, CSIR).
- Foundations of Theoretical Physics [Title to be confirmed] (Prof Neil Turok, Perimeter Institute)
- The Square Kilometer Array and Its Science: Indirect imaging in the SKA era; Real-time classification at SKA-scale for time domain astrophysics; Data-centric machine learning for SKA post-processing (Prof Anna Scaife, University of Manchester)
- Foundations of Quantum Technology (Prof Artur Ekert, National University of Singapore and University of Oxford)
- Foundations of Quantum Biology and Chemistry (Prof Birgitta Whaley, University of California, Berkeley)
- Computational Biology
31st Chris Engelbrecht Summer School in Theoretical Physics - 2020
‘Gravitational Waves’
Date: 20 – 29 January 2020
Venue: University of Cape Town
The Cosmology and Gravity Group Group at the University of Cape Town is hosting the 31st Chris Engelbrecht Summer School. This Summer School is motivated by recent advances in the field of gravitational wave science. The lecture series will cover a broad range of topics related to gravitational wave science, such as numerical simulation of gravitational wave sources, gravitational waves in modified gravity, cosmology and the gravitational wave background.
Speakers include:
- Rituparno Goswami (UKZN)
- Lavinia Heisenberg (EHT Zurich)
- Denis Pollney (Rhodes University)
- Alicia Sintes (UIB LIGO collaboration)
and more to be confirmed.