WIN2017 at the University of California, Irvine

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This grant, under the direction of Professor Mu-Chun Chen of the University of California, Irvine, provides partial support for WIN2017: The 26th International Workshop on Weak Interactions and Neutrinos.Since their inception in 1973, the WIN workshops have become the major biannual international meetings in the field of neutrino physics. Neutrinos are subatomic particles which are extremely light and interact only weakly. As such, they play critical roles both in traditional elementary particle physics as well as astrophysics and early-universe cosmology. Although originally focused on neutrino physics and weak interactions, the scope of these biannual workshops has become much broader in recent years and now includes flavor physics (a poorly understood area within traditional particle physics) and astro-particle physics. WIN 2017 will take place at an especially important time, when major neutrino experiments worldwide are ramping up their operations. These experiments will open up the neutrino sector for detailed study, and are widely anticipated to yield profound new results concerning the fundamental building blocks of the natural world and the forces they experience. Thus, this grant advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science in one of its most fundamental directions: the discovery and understanding of new physical law. WIN 2017 will be the first WIN meeting held in the United States since 2003, and will be the last opportunity for an American WIN meeting until 2021. The requested funds will contribute to the training of junior researchers by allowing them to participate, gain valuable experience, present their research results, and boost their visibility within the larger scientific community.