Nobel laureate Barry Barish among other eminent scientists in the 2022 Onassis Lectures in Physics | July 25–29 at the Foundation for Research and Technology in Heraklion, Crete

The 2022 Onassis Science Lectures, organized by the Onassis Foundation in partnership with FORTH, seek to further educate and to champion young and talented researchers, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduate students active in the natural sciences.

This year’s lectures will focus on gravitational waves, a phenomenon predicted by Albert Einstein on the basis of his general theory of relativity back in 1916 but first detected in 2015. The observation of gravitational waves has opened up a pioneering new field that is helping us to better understand the universe.

Keynote speaker for 2022 is Nobel laureate and Caltech professor Barry Barish (winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of gravitational waves). He will be joined by another eight scientists – leading lights in the field of gravitational waves working in the US, Italy, the UK, and Germany: Lisa Barsotti (Principal Research Scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute in the US), Marica Branchesi (Professor at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in Italy), Alessandra Buonanno (Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Germany), Matthew Evans (Professor at MIT in the US), Jan Harms (Professor at the Gran Sasso Science Institute in Italy), Erik Katsavounidis (Senior Research Scientist at MIT’s Kavli Institute in the US), Patrick Sutton (Professor at Cardiff University in the UK), and Stefano Vitale (Professor at the University of Trento in Italy).

The 2022 Onassis Lectures in Physics will be bringing 53 students from Greek and international institutions – selected for their academic excellence – to Heraklion, with the Onassis Foundation covering their travel and accommodation expenses in full. Another 12 students from institutions on Crete, and four students from other institutions – accepted on the basis of the same criteria – will also be attending, without financial aid.

This year’s event is the twenty-seventh to be held in Heraklion, on the island of Crete, since the Onassis Science Lectures Series was first launched back in 2001 by the Onassis Foundation in partnership with the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FORTH). Ever tackling topics at the forefront of current research, these lectures have firmly established themselves within the top tier of all such events held throughout the world.

Each set of lectures lasts one week. Speakers in previous years include 22 Nobel laureates, four Turing Award honorees, and Fields Medal winner Edward Witten. The aim of this initiative is to give young and talented researchers, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduate students – from Greece and around the globe – the opportunity to be primed in critical research concerns relating to their respective fields, guided by the world’s leading scientists.

The mission of the Onassis Foundation is to unleash the creativity and talent of all those seeking to advance their research in the best possible way, across the fields of education, healthcare, and culture.