John Wheatley Award: ICTP-SAIFR (2021): A South American Center for Theoretical Physics

Throughout the world, institutes for theoretical physics are created to organize topical workshops and perform high-level research. But because of unstable funding and bureaucracy, there are very few such centers in Latin America. As director and vice-director of the ICTP in Trieste, F. Quevedo and S. Randjbar-Daemi invited me in 2010 to direct the first ICTP Partner Institute in São Paulo called the ICTP South American Institute for Fundamental Research (ICTP-SAIFR, ictp-saifr.org). With support from São Paulo State University (UNESP) and the São Paulo State Research Funding Agency (FAPESP), ICTP-SAIFR formed a scientific council chaired by IAS director P. Goddard and began activities in January 2012 in the IFT building of UNESP.

Over the last 9 years, ICTP-SAIFR has organized over 300 activities for over 6000 graduate students and 3000 researchers. In addition to workshops and programs in all areas of physics, ICTP-SAIFR regularly organizes two-week schools on advanced topics for PhD students from South America with invited international lecturers. Its researchers include P. Vieira (joint faculty with Perimeter Institute and winner of 2020 New Horizons Prize), R. Rosenfeld (president of Brazilian Physical Society), R. Sturani (member of LIGO) and R. Martinez-Garcia (Simons Foundation awardee and coordinator of new six-month training program in quantitative biology funded by private Serrapilheira Institute).

ICTP-SAIFR also organizes outreach activities including workshops for high-school teachers based on online classroom material on modern physics developed by Perimeter Institute and translated and adapted by ICTP-SAIFR. Over 3000 teachers have already participated, and with its recent APS Covid-19 Innovation Fund award, ICTP-SAIFR is now translating this material into Spanish and plans to expand these workshops throughout Latin America.