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Continuing investment in fundamental weakly-coupled science, primarily through neutrino experiments and dark matter searches, prompts the question: is the maximum possible scientific information going to be extracted from these experiments? Are there new creative uses of the existing and planned facilities that would advance our knowledge of fundamental physics? Are there physics targets that have been overlooked by the current approach? This workshop will attempt to advance discussion of these topics, and concentrate on non-traditional ideas and alternative methods of probing new physics, both at underground laboratories and at high-intensity accelerators. The workshop aims to complement the large international conference, Topics in Astroparticle and Underground Physics 2017, to be held in Sudbury ON July 24-28, by directly preceding that meeting.

This tenth annual one-day symposium aims to provide an opportunity for condensed matter researchers in Southwest Ontario to gather and discuss informally their most recent research.  The general format of the meeting consists of 2 guest speakers and 5-7 contributed talks.  The names of the contributing speakers and title of their talks will be announced later.  Registration begins at 9:30 am.  The meeting is expected to start around 9:45 am and end between 5-5:30 pm.  A lunch will be provided by the Black Hole Bistro.

There will be two keynote speaker for the symposium; Professor Andrew Mackenzie from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids,Dresden and Professor Anders Sandvik from Boston University.  Their talk titles will be announced at a later date.

Registration for this event will open shortly.

In the past five years their have a been number of significant advances in the mathematics of QFT on manifolds with boundary.  The work of Cattaneo, Mnev, and Reshitihkin--beyond setting rigorous foundations--has led to many computable and salient examples.  Similarly, the work of Costello (specifically projects joint with Gwilliam and Si Li) provides a framework (and deformation/obstruction) for the observable theory of such theories with boundary/defects. There are related mathematical advances: constructible factorization algebras and higher category theory as pioneered by Lurie and the collaboration of Ayala, Francis, and Tanaka. The goal of the workshop is to bring together the leading experts in this multi-faceted subject.The structure of the workshop will be such as to maximize the exchange of knowledge and collaboration. More specifically, the morning sessions will consist of several lecture series, while the afternoons will be reserved for research working groups. The mornings will communicate the essential ideas and techniques surrounding bulk-boundary correspondences and perturbative AKSZ theories on manifolds with boundary/corners. The afternoons will be research driven and focus on specific problems within the following realms: the interaction of renormalization with cutting/pasting, aspects of the AdS/CFT correspondence, cohomological approaches to gravity, and the observable/defect theory of AKSZ type theories.