2026 NUPP summer school

18 Jan 2026, 16:00 → 23 Jan 2026, 18:00 Australia/Sydney

University of New South Wales

AJ Mitchell (Australian National University), Dipan Sengupta (University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia), James Zanotti (The University of Adelaide), Michael Schmidt (UNSW Sydney), Theresa Fruth (University of Sydney)

Approximately 15-20 years ago, NUPP leaders in academia hosted an annual Summer School for PhD students that rotated between hosts and venues across the country. The NUPP community came together at the 2024 AIP Congress and identified professional development of our HDR students as an immediate strategic priority. In 2026, the NUPP Executive Committee aims to reimagine this tradition with a Postgraduate Summer School designed to foster community, deepen knowledge, and equip students with the skills required to thrive in today’s diverse and evolving job markets.

The 2026 NUPP Summer School program will include:

• A residential experience designed to build connections between students from experiment and theory, different research areas of interest and home institutions from across the nation.
• Lectures and workshops from subject matter experts in nuclear and
  particle physics.
• Mentoring and guidance in careers with input from industry.
• An excursion to the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology
  Organisation site at Lucas Heights, NSW. 

 

The summer school will consist of two days of introductory courses in

• Basics of QFT and the SM (Archil Kobakhidze)
• Introduction to colliders and detectors (Ulrik Egede)
• Introduction to theoretical nuclear physics (Cedric Simenel)
• Accelerator physics (Suzie Sheehy)

an excursion to ANSTO and two days of advanced courses on

• lattice QCD (Ross Young)
• dark matter direct detection (Ciaran O'Hare + Theresa Fruth)
• flavour physics (Ulrik Egede)
• neutrino physics (Innes Bigaran)

 

In addition to the lecture program, there will be social activities, student presentations and a careers night.

The summer school will be held in Old Main Building on the Kensington campus of UNSW in rooms G31 (lectures), 229 (workshops), G59/G60 (other activities).

We are grateful for sponsorship from

Platinum sponsors

Gold sponsors

   

 

Silver sponsors

 

 

Sponsorship_Prospectus_AIP_NPP.pdf

Sunday 18 January

17:00 → 19:30 BBQ

Monday 19 January

09:00 → 13:00 Lectures

09:00 QFT/SM

Speaker: Prof. Archil Kobakhidze

11:00 Coffee break

11:30 Accelerators

Speaker: Dr Suzie Sheehy (University of Oxford and University of Melbourne)

13:00 → 14:00 lunch break

14:00 → 18:00 Lectures

14:00 Colliders and detectors

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

16:00 coffee break

16:30 Nuclear theory

Speaker: Cedric Simenel

18:00 → 19:30 Poster session

Tuesday 20 January

09:00 → 13:00 Lectures

09:00 Accelerators

Speaker: Dr Suzie Sheehy (University of Oxford and University of Melbourne)

11:00 coffee break

11:30 QFT/SM

Speaker: Prof. Archil Kobakhidze

13:00 → 14:00 lunch break

14:00 → 18:00 Lectures

14:00 Nuclear theory

Speaker: Cedric Simenel

16:00 coffee break

16:30 Colliders and detectors

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

18:00 → 19:30 Poster session

Wednesday 21 January

08:30 → 17:30 ANSTO

Thursday 22 January

09:00 → 13:00 Lectures

09:00 Flavour physics

Speaker: Ulrik Egede (Monash University (AU))

11:00 coffee break

11:30 Neutrino physics

Speaker: Dr Innes Bigaran (Fermilab and Northwestern University)

13:00 → 14:00 lunch break

14:00 → 18:00 Lectures

14:00 lattice QCD

Speaker: Ross Young

16:00 coffee break

16:30 Neutrino physics

Speaker: Dr Innes Bigaran (Fermilab and Northwestern University)

18:00 → 20:00 Careers night

Friday 23 January

09:00 → 13:00 Lectures

09:00 DM direct detection

Speaker: Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney)

11:00 coffee break

11:30 DM direct detection

Speaker: Theresa Fruth (University of Sydney)

13:00 → 14:00 lunch break

14:00 → 18:00 Lectures

14:00 Geant4

Speaker: Dr Lindsey Bignell (Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, The Australian National University)

16:00 Coffee break

16:30 Geant4

Speaker: Dr Lindsey Bignell (Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, The Australian National University)