For the past 14 years, Penn State has had first a Center and then an Institute for Gravitational Physics and Geometry. Researchers at the Institute came from physics, mathematics and astronomy and astrophysics backgrounds and have contributed actively to the interface of these disciplines. To create bridges between the theoretical work pursued at the institute and the rich science resulting from state of the art observations related to the highest energy phenomena in the universe, the scope of the institute has now been enlarged to encompass particle astrophysics. The greater institute is called the Institute for Gravitation and the Cosmos and was inaugurated through a 3-day international conference, August 9-11, which brought over 130 participants to the University Park campus of Penn State.
One of the highlights of the conference was the Forum on Science and Society, a plenary session, where the organizers explained the vision for the new institute. It will have three Centers: a Center for Fundamental Theory, a Center for Gravitational Wave Physics and a Center for Particle Astrophysics. By fostering an active exchange of ideas between these Centers, the Institute will strive to create new opportunities and open novel directions at the interface of these mature fields. The organizers gave a few examples to illustrate this vision. They will seek to bring together experts in loop quantum gravity, string theory and cosmology to address fundamental physical issues in the hope that this multi-pronged approach will reveal new avenues which transcend individual areas. Another example came from the fact that the new Institute has research groups dedicated to exploring the universe using all four fundamental forces of Nature: strong interactions through the Pierre Auger cosmic ray project, weak interactions through the IceCube neutrino experiment, electromagnetic through the Swift gamma ray burst explorer mission with its headquarters at Penn State, and gravitational interactions through the LIGO detector.
There were nine technical plenary lectures by international leaders in various fields covered by the Institute. Each morning featured three of these, each talk covering a key area in one of the three Centers. The speakers presented excellent overviews which could be appreciated by the diverse audience. The juxtaposition of talks from very different areas brought out not only the intellectual breadth but also common themes underlying apparently distinct areas.
Joe Polchinski (UC, Santa Barbara) spoke about the black
hole information loss issue; Slava Mukhanov (Munich)
summarized features of the inflationary scenario using a
model-independent paradigm; and Roger Penrose (Oxford and
Penn State) summarized ideas on the arrow of time, the nature of
the big bang and the necessity of information loss that he has
developed over the last three years. Frans Pretorius
(Princeton) gave an overview of the history and the current status
of the binary black hole problem; Cliff Will (Washington
University) described the unreasonable success of post-Newtonian
methods and Karsten Danzmann (AEI, Hannover) gave a survey
of the proposed multi-messenger gravitational wave astronomy. Jim Cronin (Chicago) provided a historical overview of cosmic-ray
astronomy with updates including the `break' in the spectrum near
eV; Thomas Gaisser (Bartol) discussed the
connections between cosmic ray and neutrino observations through
upcoming experiments such as IceCube and the Pierre Auger
projects; and Trevor Weekes (Whipple Observatory and
Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) reviewed the history of
ground-based TeV gamma-ray astronomy and provided updates
focusing on results from HESS and VERITAS.
These overviews brought out the spectacular progress that has occurred on both theoretical and observational fronts in recent years. The fact that several of the observational missions are likely to have major new results in the coming years brought out the excitement of the current state of fundamental physics.
The afternoons featured 13 parallel sessions; two on cosmology, four on approaches to quantum gravity, two on numerical relativity, two on gravitational waves and one each on observational issues in particle astrophysics, the origins of high energy particles, and astro-particle physics beyond the standard model. Typically, the lead talk was an invited contribution and set the stage for the session. In Cosmology, the lead speaker was Mark Trodden (Syracuse) who began by describing the current challenges and then gave a brief summary of the current ideas from particle physics as well gravity communities; in quantum gravity, Laurent Friedel (Perimeter) described how effective, low-energy theories arise from spin foam models in loop quantum gravity and how they naturally make contact with non-commutative field theories; and in numerical relativity, Manuel Tiglio (LSU) described new approaches to binary black hole evolutions. In particle astrophysics David Seckel (Bartol) discussed a variety of approaches that will be used to search for ``GZK'' neutrinos, emphasizing the advantages of radio-Cerenkov techniques; Kaixuan Ni (Yale) described cryogenic particle dark matter searches and constraints on WIMP models; and in the session on gravitational waves, Ben Owen (Penn State) described LIGO's diverse search methods for periodic signals from neutron stars and other Galactic sources, including the `Einstein@Home' project.
There were 45 contributed talks in various sessions featuring
many interesting results. For example, John Carrasco (UCLA)
described the intriguing results indicating that 
supergravity may after all be finite in 4 space-time dimensions;
Kevin Vandersloot (Portsmouth) explained how quantum
geometry effects in loop quantum cosmology manage to resolve the
big bang singularity and yet quickly fade away to ensure agreement
with classical general relativity; Yi Pan (Maryland)
explained how the effective one body approximation and numerical
relativity can be used, hand in hand, to develop better templates
for LIGO; Emmanouela Rantsiou (Northwestern) discussed
numerical simulations of black hole-neutron star mergers with
examples of the disrupted neutron star forming an extended tidal
tail; and Seon-Hee Seo (Penn State) described various data
analysis techniques used in IceCube to distinguish rare tau
neutrino interactions.
The Forum on Science and Society also featured short invited talks by Roger Penrose and three leaders from industry who are deeply involved in issues at the interface of science and society --Dr. Edward Frymoyer, a leader in the Fibre Channel Technology; Mr. Christopher Liedel, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the National Geographic Society, Chairman of the National Philanthropic Trust and the primary force behind creation of the FQXi, a community dedicated to fundamental issues in cosmology and physics; and Mr. Duane Valz, Vice President and Associate General Counsel for Global Patent Strategy at Yahoo! Inc. Each of these speakers emphasized the importance of strong and mutually beneficial relationship between the public and the scientific community. They stressed the significance of the role scientists play in society, the way they can promote a scientific temperament in society, how they can create public awareness of the fascinating research they are involved in, and how in turn the public can contribute to the sustenance of research. In particular, Chris Liedel explained the way National Geographic works closely with scientists at various universities and institutions to disseminate research to the general public and has funded fundamental research by using resources gained from its popular magazines and documentaries.
The conference banquet was a warm, festive occasion with a Mediterranean dinner. Several in the audience gave personal accounts of how the Penn State Institute has provided them with intellectual stimulation. In particular, the junior faculty in the Institute described the unique atmosphere that fosters their interdisciplinary research. There were also some suggestions as to what the Institute could do to enhance the public awareness of forefront science.
Many participants commented that the conference provided an unique perspective on a wide variety of forefront issues and brought out a surprising number of inter-relations.