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

The UNSW Nuclear Innovation Centre is dedicated to advancing Australia's nuclear technology for global impact. It is a cross-disciplinary, cross-industry hub for improving Australia’s nuclear science industry, which includes interests in medicine, irradiated materials, waste management, space exploration and mining. 

Gold sponsors

   

 

Silver sponsors

 

 

Sponsorship_Prospectus_AIP_NPP.pdf

Sunday 18 January

17:00 → 19:30 BBQ on Physics Lawn

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

18:00 A new idea for relating the asymmetric dark matter mass scale to the proton mass

Speaker: Rafael Perez

18:00 A new idea for relating the asymmetric dark matter mass scale to the proton mass

Speaker: Rafael Perez

18:00 All-orders inclusion of relativistic effects in atomic structure theory

Speaker: Andoni Skoufris (The University of Queensland)

18:00 Charm Baryon Mixing and SU(3) Flavour Symmetry Breaking from Lattice QCD

Speaker: Lula Abdirashid Ali (University of Adelaide)

18:00 Constraining the nuclear magnetisation distribution with muonic atoms

Speaker: Thakur Giriraj Hiranandani (the University of Queensland)

18:00 Coulomb Excitation Studies of Dysprosium-162

Speaker: Thomas Perissinotto (The Australian National University)

18:00 Direct Detection of Dark Photons

Speaker: Narise Williams (The University of Physics)

18:00 Effect of the Weak Quadrupole Moment in Atoms and Molecules

Speaker: Shannon Ray (University of Queensland)

18:00 Effectively dark matter

Speaker: Laura Fang (The University of Melbourne)

18:00 Fission of Pre-Actinide Nuclei

Speaker: Tony Tran (The Australian National University)

18:00 How Long Do Neutrons Live?

Speaker: Joshua Perks (The University of Adelaide)

18:00 Investigation of excitation energy dependence of fission modes in actinides through transfer-induced fission

Speaker: Hyeonseop Lee (Australian National University)

18:00 Machine Learning for Radiation Simulation in Time Sensitive Applications

Speaker: James Stuchbery (Department of Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications, Research School of Physics, Australian National University.)

18:00 Modelling Energy Dissipation in a Time-Dependent Coupled Channels Model for Fusion

Speaker: Maggie Webber (Australian National University)

18:00 Neutrino masses and their temperament

Speaker: James Vandeleur (University of New South Wales (UNSW))

18:00 Non-Perturbative Spinor Tunnelling in Interacting Quantum Fields

Speaker: Max Fleming

18:00 ORGAN-Low : Probing Sub-μeV Axion Dark Matter with Optimised Haloscope Design

Speaker: Raj Aryan Singh (Swinburne University of Technology)

18:00 Pepperpot Profiling: Probing Beam Properties with Pepperpot Devices

Speaker: Ryan Stewart

18:00 Probing nuclear structure via hyperfine splitting in Yb-173

Speaker: Jayden Hasted (The University of Queensland)

18:00 Probing the Pion using Lattice QCD

Speaker: Ian Van Schalkwyk

18:00 QED Radiation in Hadron Decays

Speaker: Giacomo Morgante (Monash University)

18:00 ResNet Makes Event Reconstruction at Hyper-Kamiokande Faster and More Accurate

Speaker: Andrew Atta (Monash University)

18:00 Searching for a new fission mode in 220Ra

Speaker: Misty Lakelin

18:00 Searching for triaxial deformation in highly exotic nuclei towards the neutron drip line

Speaker: Luke Johnstone

18:00 Shell Model Investigations Around N = 28

Speaker: Aditya Babu (Australian National University)

18:00 Spin tagging of b-hadrons

Speaker: Alexander Jelavic (Monash University)

18:00 The Cancellation of IR Divergences at Zero and Finite Temperature

Speaker: Marko Beocanin (University of New South Wales)

18:00 Toponium? Yay or Nay…

Speaker: Amelia Lovison (Adelaide University (AU))

18:00 UAV borne organic scintillation detectors for radiation surveys

Speaker: Aithan Roufos (University of Adelaide)

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))

18:15 → 19:15 Academic careers panel discussion

Convener: Theresa Fruth (University of Sydney)

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 Industry 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)