The event will be held in Universidad San Francisco de Quito with the strategic support of Yachay Tech University.
Yachay Tech University and Universidad San Francisco de Quito organized the event “ICTP Physics Without Borders 2019 – High Energy Physics Day in Ecuador” under the coordination and participation of the Principal Investigators of the international collaborations CMS, LAGO, KM3NeT in Ecuador, and the International Center for Theoretical Physics (ICTP). In this event, an update of the research that is being developed in this area in Ecuador was carried out at an experimental level. Harold Yepes, Ph.D., professor of the School of Physical Sciences and Nanotechnology of Yachay Tech, gave a lecture about the opportunities within KM3NeT’s scientific programs, particularly in High Energy Physics. The conference had the approval, recognition and participation of SENESCYT.
The event was held at the facilities of Universidad San Francisco, on August 28 and 29, 2019. The conference was part of a group of conferences organized by the ICTP in different parts of the world, and was similar to events carried out in Bogotá and Lima. Yachay Tech University and Universidad San Francisco already have a previous collaboration in this field, through their joint participation in the Latin American Strategy Forum for large-scale Research Infrastructures (LASF4RI), representing Ecuador’s interests.
The lecture of Harold Yepes, Ph.D., focused on the current state of KM3NeT, a multidisciplinary observatory installed deep in the Mediterranean Sea. The professor addressed the technology, scaling and open opportunities that exist for participation not only in High Energy Physics (Space Sciences), but also in Earth Sciences and Marine Sciences. KM3NeT as an underwater multidisciplinary infrastructure has a neutrino detector of a cubic kilometer of volume gradually installed/scaled at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea, where Ecuadorian participation hopes to reach more and more relevance through institutional and governmental support. At the beginning of 2019, Yachay Tech University became a member institution, becoming the first in the history of Latin America to participate in this type of infrastructure.
In addition, the event had a workshop on data analysis in which a group of attendees received an introduction to data management in High Energy Physics. The 2019 Conference on High Energy Physics in Ecuador has been the perfect prelude to the great event in this field that will be held in 2020, the Latin American Symposium of High Energy Physics (SILAFAE), which Ecuador will host for the first time.