20th Asian Winter School
on Strings, Particles and Cosmology

About the School

The Asian Winter School (AWS) on Strings, Particles, and Cosmology is a pan-Asian initiative by high-energy theorists from China, India, Japan, and Korea. It provides young researchers in Asia with an opportunity to learn about recent developments in high-energy theory from leading experts.

Now in its 20th edition, the school is aimed at advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and active researchers. It offers a platform for participants to engage in discussions with world experts and foster collaborations with peers from different countries, continuing a tradition of building a vibrant regional community in theoretical physics.

This year’s school offers eight intensive mini-lecture courses and four colloquium talks on cutting-edge research, complemented by engaging public outreach events.

For any questions, please email us at aws2025@iiserb.ac.in.

Lecturers and Tentative Topics

• Simon Caron-Huot (McGill University, Canada)
  Causality Constraints on Effective Theories and Gravity
• Yiming Chen (Stanford University, USA)
  Black Holes and Chaos
• Shota Komatsu (CERN, Switzerland and Imperial College London, UK)
  Matrix Models and Holography
• Shiraz Minwalla (TIFR-Mumbai, India)
  CFT Entropy at High Energies and High Angular Momenta
• Enrico Pajer (University of Cambridge, UK)
  Cosmological Correlators
• Shruti Paranjape (Brown University, USA)
  Constructing Scattering Amplitudes
• Julio Parra-Martinez (IHES, France)
  Scattering Amplitudes and Effective Field Theory
• Renato Renner (ETH-Zurich, Switzerland)
  Black Hole Information and Paradoxes

Colloquium Speakers

• Amol Dighe (TIFR-Mumbai, India)
  What's the Deal With Neutrinos?
• Cristhian Garcia-Quintero (Online Talk) (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA)
  Interpreting the Latest Cosmological Data: Beyond the Standard Model or Systematics?
• Aninda Sinha (IISc Bengaluru, India)
  The Usefulness of Useless String Theory
• Ashoke Sen (ICTS-TIFR, India)
  The status of String Field Theory

Public Talks

• Ashoke Sen (ICTS-TIFR, India)
  Title: Search for a unified theory.
  Venue: Regional Science Center, Bhopal, India
  Time: 19th January 2026, 11am
• Shiraz Minwalla (TIFR-Mumbai, India)
  Title: The Search for Quantum Gravity
  Venue: IISER Bhopal
  Time: 13th January 2026, 6:30pm

Application

Participation in the school is by invitation only. The applications closed on 25th July 2025, and we are not taking new applications anymore.

Program Schedule

Participant List

Committees

Local Organising Committee

• Nabamita Banerjee (IISER Bhopal, India)
• Suvankar Dutta (IISER Bhopal, India)
• Raghu Mahajan (ICTS-TIFR, India)
• Arnab Rudra (IISER Bhopal, India)
• Rahul Shaw (IISER Bhopal, India)

Course Organising Committee

• Masazumi Honda (RIKEN iTHEMS, Japan)
• Toshifumi Noumi (U. Tokyo Komaba, Japan)
• Junggi Yoon (Kyung Hee University, South Korea)
• Heeyeon Kim (KAIST, South Korea)
• Yi Pang (Tianjiu University, China)
• Xin Wang (University of Science and Technology of China, China)
• Nabamita Banerjee (IISER Bhopal, India)
• Raghu Mahajan (ICTS-TIFR, India)

International Steering Committee

• Bin Chen (Peking University, China)
• Atish Dabholkar (ICTP, Italy)
• Rajesh Gopakumar (ICTS-TIFR, India)
• Koji Hashimoto (Kyoto University, Japan)
• Seok Kim (Seoul National University, Korea)
• Kimyeong Lee (KIAS, Korea)
• Ahmed Almheiri (NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE)
• Shiraz Minwalla (TIFR-Mumbai, India)
• Jun Nishimura (KEK, Japan)
• JianXin Lu (USTC, China)
• Hirosi Ooguri (Caltech, USA & Kavli IPMU, Japan)
• Ashoke Sen (ICTS-TIFR, India)
• Sang-Jin Sin (Hanyang University, Korea)
• Wei Song (Yau MSC, Tsinghua, China)
• Tadashi Takayanagi (Yukawa ITP, Japan)
• Agnese Bissi (ICTP, Italy)
• Spenta R. Wadia (ICTS-TIFR, India)
• Piljin Yi (KIAS, Korea)

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