History

Online seminar created at LSU in 2006 becomes the official seminar  of the International Society of Loop Quantum Gravity

An online seminar launched at Louisiana State University in 2006 —  long before remote collaboration tools became commonplace — has now  been designated the official seminar of the International Society of  Loop Quantum Gravity.

Before going to college in the late 1980's, Prof. Jorge Pullin,  Hearne Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, went for  two years to night school and became a TV repairman. He made house  calls and claims that fixing a family's TV in their living room,  with them watching, is the hardest thing he has done. Perhaps due to  that background, he has always had a side interest in technology —  even as he pursues some of the deepest questions in physics. Pullin  is one of the leading architects of loop quantum gravity, a theory  that seeks to reconcile Einstein's general relativity with quantum  mechanics, and one of the most pursued approaches to  non-perturbative quantum gravity in the world today. He noted in  2006 that technologies were converging that would allow seminars to  be held in his area of interest across groups spread among countries  and continents.

At that time, Skype existed but only allowed a few callers. Zoom did  not exist. There were other technologies like the "Access Grid" (in  which LSU's CCT was a pioneer), but these required specialized  hardware and even support personnel, so it would have left many  small groups at other universities out. With his TV repairman's  practical approach, Pullin opted for a hybrid technology. The audio  went synchronously in real time via a telephone bridge. LSU had a  very good one at the time and Ric Simmons (currently Executive  Director of Research Education and Technologies/HPC at LSU) was an  enormous help with it. Groups would commonly use Polycom or other  speakerphones for audio. The slides were delivered in advance via a  website that Pullin maintained. Given the technologies of the time,  it was deemed that synchronous video was not worth the effort. The  speakers had to indicate "now let's move to slide number..." as they  spoke.

The seminars started in June 2006. Over twenty years, it has hosted  more than 350 talks, becoming the place where results in loop  quantum gravity are announced to the world.

Today the seminar runs on Zoom. Intellectual oversight has been  determined for several years by a committee drawn from members of  the international community. That arrangement will continue, and the  administration of the series will be taken over by the Society. The  International Society brings together researchers in loop quantum  gravity, an approach to reconcile Einstein's general relativity with  the quantum theory, and is pursued by several hundred researchers  worldwide, many of whom connect every two weeks to the seminar.