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RESEARCH SPOTLIGHT

Shedding Light on Dark Matter Workshop
Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics, Department of Physics, Department of Astronomy
and Center for Scientific Computation & Mathematical Modeling

April 2 -4, 2009

Recent observational results on the nature of dark matter have motivated new research activity in the fundamental nature of dark matter. In a workshop organized by the Maryland Center for Fundamental Physics (MCFP), Center for Scientific Computation and Mathematical Modeling (CSCAMM) and Department of Astronomy, physicists and astronomers gathered to present results on the latest observational evidence for dark matter and the implications to the theories of structure formation and their ultimate relation to fundamental theories tied to the nature of dark matter. The workshop featured twenty-one speakers from institutions across the US. Over forty scientists from the University of Maryland and regional institutions attended the meeting, hosted at CSIC by CSCAMM.

The hunt for the nature of dark matter followed leads from indications for its nature in two ways: one, its behavior in the formation of structure in the universe and, two, novel indications for its annihilation and or decay from unexpected astroparticle observations.

On the astroparticle and particle cosmology side, the workshop heard from results by Howard A. Baer (University of Oklahoma), Sarah Eno (UMD), Doug Finkbeiner (Harvard), Carter Hall (UMD), Kara Hoffman (UMD), Dan Hooper (Fermilab), Manoj Kaplinghat (UC Irvine), Andrey Katz (UMD), Savvas Koushiappas (Brown), XiaoJun Bi (IHEP China), Euh-Suk Seo (UMD) and David Thomson (Goddard SFC). From the related astrophysical and astronomical work, the workshop heard from Marla Geha (Yale), Riccardo Giovanelli (Cornell), Andrey Kravtsov (U. Chicago), Adam Lidz (Harvard), Stacy McGaugh (UMD), Rachel Kuzio de Naray (UC Irvine), Massimo Ricotti (UMD), Louis Strigari (Stanford) and Rosemary Wyse (Johns Hopkins).

The presentations led to much active discussion of current and future prospects for determining the nature of dark matter. With such success and intense interest, the workshop is slated to become an annual event as a regional meeting on cosmology and astroparticle physics.

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