Originally developed at CERN as a tool to help scientists share information, the world wide web continues to be an important mode of communication for scientific inquiry. Rich science databases in a variety of fields are publicly available, and can provide a catalyst for learning. Schools, universities and science centers can act as mediators, organizing information – tailored to the needs of their communities – across scientific disciplines and providing tools for understanding complex scientific research, making science understandable and interesting to the public.

The LA@CERN (Learning with ATLAS@CERN) project brings together expertise from frontier scientific research, educational research in formal and informal science learning, and user communities across Europe. The LA@CERN consortium designs, develops, tests, implements and disseminates an innovative pedagogical framework that supports effective "dialogue" between scientific research and communities, at the moment when the new gigantic detector ATLAS is starting operation at CERN, to explore the fundamental building blocks and forces of nature, and to probe deeper into matter than ever before.

The project represents a reversal of science teaching pedagogy from mainly deductive to inquiry-based approach that provides the means to increase interest in science. The approach emphasizes curiosity and observations followed by problem solving and experimentation in both real and virtual settings. These pedagogical concepts and learning practices are addressed by implementing a set of missions (learning scenarios) tailored to the needs of the diverse groups of learners, employing advanced and interactive visualization technologies and also personalized ubiquitous learning paradigms in order to enhance the effectiveness and quality of the learning process. In the framework of these missions, users interact with a series of educational analysis tools that allow them to manipulate data and make their own discoveries. The developed web based educational environment facilitate the proposed process by providing access to near real-time data and interactive analysis tools, 3D and 2D animations of physical processes in a game-like approach, teacher-resources, student-centered materials, applications for educational projects and collaborative activities.

The Scientific Computing Laboratory of the Institute of Physics Belgrade (University of Athens subcontractor) is the principal developer of HYPATIA and HYPATIA Simplified Version applications and maintains the official HYPATIA web page. All applications and codes developed within LA@CERN are available as open source software. SCL provides and maintains the project’s source code repository.

Topological phases are phases of condensed matter that are gapped (require finite energy to be excited from a ground state) and are characterized by numbers or topological invariants related to quantum numbers of their quasiparticle excitations. By the experimental discovery of the fractional quantum Hall effect they came into existence as new phases of matter that support excitations; quasiparticles that accumulate these nontrivial, fixed numbers under the operation of quasiparticle exchange. Due to their topological nature; robustness to any local perturbation the applicability of topological phases is foreseen in the modern field of quantum computing for the storage and manipulation of information by using the braiding rules (the rules of exchange) of quasiparticles of definite, special topological phases
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Our project is a search for stable topological phases, candidates for the computing devices, in the context of multi-component quantum Hall systems and rapidly rotating Fermi gases. Our approach will be mainly numerical based on the long tradition and experience that tell us that detection of topological phases can be trusted on the basis of finite (small) system numerical calculations, but will also use the deep insights that stem from the connection of the topological phases in 2+1 dimension and the quantum field theories in 1+1 dimension.

The Science for Peace and Security Programme offers grants to scientists in NATO, Partner and Mediterranean Dialogue countries to collaborate on priority research areas. The aim of the NATO Reintegration Grant is to support the reintegration of young Partner country scientists in their home countries after conducting research in NATO countries. Reintegration Grants are intended to give the returning fellow the means necessary to start a scientific career in his home country and to establish a research team in the research institution of his choice.

A Reintegration Grant, awarded to Dr. Darko Tanaskovic, is intended to support research activity on “Electronic Structure Calculations of Complex Materials”. Thermodynamic and transport properties of novel strongly correlated materials, like high-temperature superconductors, heavy fermions, transition metal oxides, and actinides, will be calculated using dynamical mean-field theory and its very recent extension “LDA+DMFT”. The proposed research is a direct continuation of the successful collaboration with Prof. Vladimir Dobrosavljevic from National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, USA. It draws upon the expertise gained during the applicants doctoral studies at Florida State University. The high performance computing resources at the Institute of Physics in Belgrade will greatly facilitate the fulfillment of the proposed program.