17th Italian-Korean Symposium for Relativistic Astrophysics
by Stefano Scopel

Stefano Scopel

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this year the 17th Italian-Korean Symposium for Relativistic Astrophysics was held from August 2 to 6 in a hybrid form: offline at Kunsan University, and online on Zoom.

The Italian-Korean Symposium is one the longest-running programs between the Asian countries and Europe. It was initiated in 1987 in Hanyang University and has since been held every two years, with the site alternating between Italy and Korea. For its entire history, the Italian organizer of the meeting has been Remo Ruffini, from The University La Sapienza/Rome and ICRANet/Pescara. This year, the main Korean organizer was the Center for Quantum Space Time (CQUeST) institute of Sogang University. The Symposium was also sponsored by the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (ICRA), the ICRA network (ICRANet), and the Asian Pacific Center of Theoretical Physics (APCTP), and also received the endorsement of the Division of Astrophysics, Cosmology and Gravitation of the Association of Asia Pacific Physical Society (AAPPS).

The symposium opened with a welcoming address given by president of Kunsan National University Byeong-Sun Kwak, and this was followed by a congratulatory address from Federico Failla, the Ambassador of Italy in Korea, after which Remo Ruffini gave participants and guests an overview of the history of the meeting. Failla stressed in particular the symposium's important role in establishing and strengthening scientific relations between Italy and Korea, while Ruffini expressed his hope to intensify relations between ICRANet and CQUeST and Sogang University. In his closing remarks on the last day of the meeting, director of CQUeST Stefano Scopel confirmed that the center will continue to support the symposium in its future editions and will be signing a cooperation protocol with ICRANet in the near future to facilitate exchanges of students and researchers.

The IOC was formed by Remo Ruffini (ICRA-Sapienza University Rome/ICRANet, Co-Chair), Rong-Gen Cai (ITP, China), Pisin Chen (LeCosPA, National Taiwan University), Misao Sasaki (IPMU, Japan), Jun Luo (Sun Yat-Sen University), Sang Pyo Kim (Kunsan National University), Bum-Hoon Lee (CQUeST, Sogang University, Chair), Changhwan Lee (Pusan National University) and Hyungwon Lee (Inje University). Members of the LOC were Wontae Kim (CQUeST, Sogang University), Jeong-Hyuck Park (CQUeST, Sogang University), Wonwoo Lee (CQUeST, Sogang University), Jin Young Kim (Kunsan National University), Jiwan Kim (Kunsan National University), Bogeun Gwak (Dongguk University), and Imtak Jeon (APCTP).

The meeting was attended by approximately 50 physicists, including offline and online participants, with a program of 28 plenary talks on Astrophysics, Cosmology, and Gravitation. Speakers included Remo Ruffini (Rome University La Sapienza/ICRANet), Dong-Hoon Kim (Seoul National University, Korea), Lang Liu (Institute of Theoretical Physics, China), Chen-Te Ma (APCTP, Korea), Daniele Gregoris (Jiangsu University of Science and Technology, China), Soroush Shakeri (Isfahan University of Technology, Iran), She-Sheng Xue (Rome University La Sapienza/ICRANet), Mu-In Park (Sogang University, Korea), Lu Yin (Sogang University, Korea), Chan Park (National Institute of Mathematical Science, Korea), Chang-Hwan Lee (Pusan National University, Korea), Eoin O Colgain (Sogang University, Korea), Rahim Moradi (ICRANet, Italy), Carlos Raul Arguelles (ICRANet, Italy), Wonwoo Lee (CQUeST, Sogang University), Dong-han Yeom (Pusan National University, Korea), Jin Young Kim (Kunsan National University, Korea), Pisin Chen (National Taiwan University and Stanford University, USA), Maria Giovanna Daniotti (ICRANet, Italy), Liang Li (ICRANet, Italy), Hochoel Lee (Sogang University, Korea), Myeonghwan Oh (Kyungpook National University, Korea), Davood Rafiel Karkevandi (Isfahan University of Technology, Iran), Narek Sahakyan (ICRANet, Italy), Jorge Rueda (ICRANet, Italy), Sung-Won Kim (Ewha Womans University, Italy), Mahdis Ghodrati (APCTP, Korea), and Sang Pyo Kim (Kunsan National University, Korea). Presentations will be published by the proceedings of the Journal of the Korean Physical Society (JKPS).

The Italian participants and all other participants who were not based in Korea joined the meeting via Zoom conference calls. Due to the time difference between Italy and Korea, the meeting was held every afternoon starting from 4pm. In parallel with the Italian-Korean Symposium, CQUeST organized the Workshop for Cosmology and Quantum Space Time 2021 (CQUeST 2021) that was held every morning during the same week.

As the two meetings had similar target audiences, joint participation was encouraged by distributing the same Zoom link for both.

The next Italian-Korean Symposium for Relativistic Astrophysics will be held in Italy in the summer of 2023 (Figs. 7 and 8).

Fig. 7: H.E. the Ambassador of Italy Federico Failla addresses the opening session of the symposium via video conference. Professor Byeong-Sun Kwak, the President of Kunsan University, is sitting at the far right of the picture

Fig. 8: Screen capture from the Zoom session of the meeting