Active galactic nuclei (AGN) provide a unifying framework for studying black hole growth, relativistic jets, galaxy evolution, and high-energy particle acceleration across cosmic time.
Held on the occasion of the retirement of Paolo Padovani from the European Southern Observatory, this conference will examine the evolution of AGN research from early work on unified schemes of radio-loud sources and BL Lac samples to recent developments in multi-wavelength surveys and multi-messenger observations. The scientific program will cover AGN evolution and black-hole mass demographics; unified schemes for radio-loud AGN; the physical and observational diversity of blazars; the origin of radio emission in both jetted and non-jetted systems; deep surveys; the role of star-forming galaxies and AGN in the cosmic X-ray and gamma-ray backgrounds; and the connection between accretion flows, jets, and large-scale outflows. The conference will also examine newer developments, including lepto-hadronic modeling, candidate neutrino-emitting AGN, and the multiwavelength identification of extreme particle accelerators.
The goal of the meeting is to synthesize multi-wavelength and multi-messenger insights into AGN within a coherent framework while recognizing the scientific contributions that have shaped this field.