Strings, Gravity and Cosmology at the Perimeter Institute

Tomorrow afternoon I'm heading off to the Perimeter Institute (PI) to deliver a couple of lectures on cosmology at their Summer School on Strings, Gravity and Cosmology. The Perimeter Institute is an interesting place - a collection of theoretical physicists, working on foundational issues in a variety of different areas, from a variety of different directions. The facility was founded by Mike Lazaridis of Research in Motion (RIM) - the people who brought you the Blackberry handheld - and is funded from private donations by Lazaridis and two other RIM executives. This alone makes PI rather unusual.

The summer school should be fun, although I can only stay for a couple of days and will unfortunately miss what is sure to be a tremendous public lecture about string theory on Friday by Rob Myers. As well as giving a couple of talks, I'll also get to see some physicist friends (one of whom occasionally comments on my blog using the name "cvj") and see Perimeter's fancy new building. All of this will leave me with very little time for blogging, so I might be a little scarce for the next two days (I'll try though).