Corfu - IBS Workshop: Gravity and Cosmology by the Sea

7 Sept 2026, 08:00 → 11 Sept 2026, 21:00 Europe/Athens

Andronikos Paliathanasis, Emmanuel Saridakis (National Observatory of Athens), Kostas Dialektopoulos (University of Malta), Amare Abebe (North-West University), Sebastian Bahamonde (IBS-CTPU), Nils Albin Nilsson (IBS-CTPU), Masahide Yamaguchi (IBS-CTPU)

The Corfu - IBS Workshop "Gravity and Cosmology by the Sea" is co-organized by the IAASARS of National Observatory of Athens, the Cosmology, Gravity and Astroparticle Physics Group of the Center for Theoretical Physics of the Universe (Institute for Basic Science) in Daejeon,  South Korea, the PDE of Ionian Islands, the Mathematical Physics and Computational Statistics Research Laboratory of Ionian University, the Center for Space Research of North-West University, the Institute of System Science of Durban University of Technology and the Institute for Space Sciences and Astronomy of the University of Malta.

The Venue of the Workshop is located at the Venetian Salt Warehouses hosted by the Environmental Education Center (K.E.P.E.A Corfu) in Lefkimmi located in South Corfu, in September 7-11, 2026. 

The aim of the workshop is to bring together researchers from different areas of theoretical, observational and mathematical physics to discuss recent developments in gravity and cosmology. The workshop encourages the exchange of ideas, in-depth discussion of modern theoretical approaches, the presentation of new results, and collaboration leading to joint research activities. 

To allow meaningful interaction, only a few talks will be scheduled, leaving plenty of time for discussion and hands on collaboration among participants. In particular, thematic groups of 5-10 participants guided by one chairperson will be formed, with the goal of initiating one on more publications. Additionally, the workshop scientific results will be published in a White Paper, with all participants as co-authors.

The topics of the workshop, and the corresponding thematic groups, are:

Dark Sector: Dark Energy and Dark Matter Cosmological Tensions Machine Learning Techniques and Data Analysis in Cosmology Inflation Modified theories of gravity Combining Astrophysics and Cosmology Quantum Gravity and Cosmology Mathematical Relativity Compact Objects Gravitational waves

Invited Speakers 

• Marika Asgari (University of Newcastle)
• Rebecca Briffa (University of Malta)
• Martin Bucher (Universite de Paris, CNRS)
• Sante Carloni (University of Genova)
• Christos Charmousis (University of Paris-Saclay)
• Peter Dunsby (University of Cape Town)
• Drazen Glavan (Prague Institute)
• Maria-Jose Guzman (University of Tartu)
• Elisa Maggio (INFN, Rome)
• Orlando Luongo (University of Camernino)
• Ignacy Sawicki (CEICO, Prague)
• Alexander Vikman (CEICO, Prague)

 

 

Registered participants should pay a fee of 300 euros though bank transfer to the Bank Account of the National Observatory of Athens - GR63 0172 0520 0050 5211 8428 712 (BIC: PIRBGRAA, Account Beneficiary: EIDIKOS LOGARIASMOS KONDYLION EREVNAS TOU ET). The fee covers the coffee breaks and two meals (lunch and dinner) for all conference days.

 

 

   

 

Monday 7 September

09:00 → 09:40 Registration

09:40 → 10:00 Opening Remarks

10:00 → 10:50 Plenary Talk: Martin Bucher

Convener: Masahide Yamaguchi (IBS-CTPU)

10:00 Probing the Universe with the 21 cm Hyperfine Transition of Atomic Hydrogen

Speaker: Prof. Martin Bucher (APC, Université Paris Cité/CNRS)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee Break

11:20 → 13:00 Plenary Talk

Convener: Masahide Yamaguchi (IBS-CTPU)

11:20 Building a photometric probe LSS analysis

Speaker: Prof. Marika Asgari (Newcastle University)

12:10 Stability and causality in acoustic geometry

Speaker: Prof. Ignacy Sawicki (CEICO)

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks B

Convener: Georg Trenkler (IBS CTPU-CGA)

15:00 Dark Matter–Independent Orbital Decay Bounds on Ultralight Bosons from OJ287

Speaker: Huiyu ZHU (Institute for Basic Science)

15:15 TBA

Speaker: M Hassaine

15:30 Constraining Dark Matter with Early-Universe 21-cm Signals

Speaker: Dr Hyunbae Park (IBS-CTPU)

15:45 Gravitational Waves from Supermassive Black Hole Binaries: towards Multi-Messenger Astrophysics and Cosmology

Speaker: Dr Boris Goncharov

16:00 Fermionic propagation in an exotic modified Schwarzschild black hole

Speaker: Prof. Berta Cuadros-Melgar (UNESP)

16:15 Testing Fundamental Physics with Seismology: The FuSe COST Action

Speaker: Dr Velimir Ilic

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks Α

Convener: Sebastian Bahamonde (University of Tartu)

15:00 Quantum particles and cosmological singularities

Speaker: Prof. Alexander Kamenshchik (University of Bologna)

15:15 Gauge Independent Effective Field Equations for Quantum Gravity

Speaker: Richard Woodard

15:30 First Indications from Leading Logarithms Quantum Gravity

Speaker: Shun-Pei Miao (National Cheng Kung University)

15:45 Kerr-Newman spacetime energy in general parallel relativity

Speaker: Laur Järv (University of Tartu)

Järv_Corfu_2026.pdf

16:00 Bounds on nonlinear effective field theories via resurgent relative entropy

Speaker: Pietro Conzinu

16:15 Beyond j=1: Observational Constraints on Almost-LCDM Cosmologies

Speaker: Dr Jess Worsley (University of Cape Town)

16:30 Relaxation of a Vlasov gas to an inhomogeneous state due to phase-space mixing in an axisymmetric potential

Speaker: Dr Merce Guerrero (University of Tartu)

16:45 → 17:15 Coffee Break

17:15 → 18:15 Afternoon Session: Workshop

17:15 Primordial Black Holes

Speaker: Theodoros Papanikolaou (University of Patras, Greece)

17:15 Theoretical consistency and well-posedness of modified gravity theories

Speaker: Alexander Vikman (Czech Academy of Sciences (CZ))

18:15 → 19:00 Free Discussion

19:00 → 21:00 Dinner

Tuesday 8 September

09:00 → 16:00 Excursion

Boat trip to Paxos

16:00 → 17:00 Afternoon Session: Workshop

17:00 → 19:00 Dinner

19:30 → 21:00 Public Talk

Speaker: Emmanuel Saridakis

21:00 → 22:30 Telescope Night Under the Stars

Wednesday 9 September

10:00 → 10:50 Plenary Talk

Convener: Andronikos Paliathanasis

10:00 TBA

Speaker: Dr Drazen Glavan (Utrecht University)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee Break

11:20 → 13:00 Plenary Talk

Convener: Andronikos Paliathanasis

11:20 TBA

Speaker: Prof. Orlando Luongo (University of Camerino)

12:10 Quantum Stable Ghost

Speaker: Prof. Alexander Vikman (CEICO)

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks B

Convener: Nils Albin Nilsson (IBS-CTPU)

15:00 Primary black-hole scalar charges and kinetic screening in K-essence-Gauss-Bonnet gravity

Speaker: Georg Trenkler (IBS CTPU-CGA)

15:15 Magnetically assisted primordial scalar perturbations: Scalar-Induced Gravitational Waves

Speaker: Theodoros Papanikolaou (University of Patras, Greece)

15:30 Spontaneous Scalarization and the Thermodynamic Phase Structure of Charged Black Holes

Speaker: STELLA KIORPELIDI (Centro de Investigación en Ciencias del Espacio y Física Teórica (CICEF), Universidad Central de Chile)

15:45 New Dynamical Black Hole Solutions: Extending the Spectrum of Exact Primordial Objects

Speaker: Adolfo Cisterna (Institute of Theoretical Physics, Charles University)

16:00 Defying the Curvature Singularity: EGB Gravity reshapes Cosmology

Speaker: Chevarra Hansraj (Stellenbosch University)

16:15 Revisiting the matter creation process: observational constraints on gravitationally induced dark energy and the Hubble tension

Speaker: Tiziano Schiavone (SISSA, Trieste)

16:30 UV-complete Quintom models: Solving the Dynamical Dark Energy puzzle in a minimal way

Speaker: KOUTROULIS FOTIOS fkoutroulis

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks Α

Convener: Mohammad Ali GORJI

15:00 Cosmological Consistency Triangles and Tension-Resolving Models

Speaker: Prof. Amare Abebe (North-West University)

15:15 Gaussian process reconstructions of quintom dark energy

Speaker: Prof. Xin Ren

15:30 The emergence of our Universe

We show how our Universe can emerge from a symmetry breaking of a multicomponent $W_3$ algebra, where the components in addition form a Jordan algebra. We discuss how symmetry breaking related to the Jordan algebras $H_3$(C) and $H_3$(O) over the complex and octonion numbers can lead to an extended four-dimensional spacetime, where the expansion of the Universe is governed by a modified Friedmann equation. We finally discuss how this modified Friedmann equation might explain a number of puzzling cosmological observations.

Speaker: Prof. Yoshiyuki Watabiki

15:45 Interacting Dark Energy: Background Theoretical and Observational Constraints after DESI DR2

Speaker: Marcel van der Westhuizen (North West University)

16:00 Beyond Goodness of Fit: Comparing ΛCDM and Quasi-Linear Coasting Cosmologies through Late-Time Growth

Speaker: Dávid Attila Ködmön (Eotvos Lorand University)

16:15 Beyond ΛCDM: Coupled dark sector dynamics and observations

Speaker: Trupti Patil (Korea Institute for Advanced Study (KIAS), Seoul, South Korea)

16:45 → 17:15 Coffee Break

17:15 → 18:15 Afternoon Session: Workshop

17:15 Compact objects in modified theories of gravity

Speaker: Christos Charmousis (Orsay)

17:15 Weak Lensing as a cosmological probe

Speaker: Marika Asgari (Newcastle University)

18:15 → 20:00 Free Discussion

Thursday 10 September

10:00 → 10:50 Plenary Talk

Convener: Emmanuel Saridakis

10:00 Cosmology in the MEMe Universe

Speaker: Prof. Sante Carloni (University of Genova)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee break

11:20 → 13:00 Plenary Talk

Convener: Emmanuel Saridakis

11:20 Beyond LCDM: Cosmographic closure, dynamical Dark Energy and Modified Gravity

Speaker: Prof. Peter Dunsby (University of Cape Town)

12:10 Testing general relativity with gravitational waves

Speaker: Elisa Maggio

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks A

Convener: Eve Dones

15:00 A barotropic alternative to Early Dark Energy for alleviating the H_0 tension

Speaker: YOURI CARLONI

15:15 Mapping the redshift drift at various redshifts through cosmography

Speaker: Anna Chiara Alfano (Scuola Superiore Meridionale)

15:30 Kosmulator: A Python framework for cosmological inference with MCMC

Speaker: Renier Hough (North West University)

15:45 A neutrino solution to the excess radio background mystery

Speaker: Pasquale Di Bari

16:00 Exploring Non-Canonical Early-Universe Physics with CosmoLattice 2.0

Speaker: Nicolás Loayza Romero (CEICO/FZU)

16:15 Covariant scalar-tensor theories beyond second derivatives

Speaker: Mohammad Ali GORJI

16:30 Testing Non-Minimally Coupled Dark Matter with Ultra-Diffuse Galaxy Kinematics

Speaker: Saboura sadat Zamani

15:00 → 16:45 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks B

Convener: Huiyu ZHU (Institute for Basic Science)

15:00 Closing the Infinite Hierarchy: Motivations of the Algebraic Closure Method in Inflationary Dynamics

Speaker: Vineshree Pillay

15:15 Formulation and Application of Eigenvalue Technique for Stochastic Inflation

Speaker: Swagat Saurav Mishra (University of Nottingham, UK)

15:30 Inflationary dynamics of non-minimally coupled f(R) matter-curvature theories

Speaker: Andreas Mantziris (IFJ-PAN)

15:45 Cartan Khronon cosmology with effective dark matter

Speaker: Dr Lucy Zheng (University of Tartu)

16:00 Gravitational Instantons in Spin(4) Gauge theory of space-time with a Cartan-Khronon field

Speaker: Stylianos Stelios Papadopoulos

16:15 Large-scale simulations of string-walls in the early universe

Speaker: Yuki Sakakihara (Yamagata University)

16:30 Effects of non-minimal coupling to gravity on inflationary oscillons

Speaker: Andrea Iacobellis (Scuola Superiore Meridionale)

16:45 → 17:15 Coffee Break

17:15 → 18:15 Afternoon Session: Workshop

17:15 Isocurvature and 21cm cosmology

Speaker: Martin Bucher

17:15 Numerical Relativity in non-Riemannian gravity

Speaker: Maria Jose Guzman (University of Tartu)

18:15 → 19:00 Afternoon Session: Workshop

18:15 Entropy in Black Hole Thermodynamics

Speaker: Velimir Ilić

19:00 → 21:00 Dinner

Friday 11 September

10:00 → 10:50 Plenary Talk

Convener: Dr Konstantinos Dialektopoulos (Center for Gravitation and Cosmology, Yangzhou University)

10:00 Numerical relativity and hyperbolicity in teleparallel gravity

We will present recent progress in the 3+1 formulation of the metric teleparallel equivalent of general relativity (TEGR). In TEGR, we will discuss the linearized Hamilton's equations and their hyperbolicity properties. Although the original system of differential equations is not hyperbolic, we show that it can be recast as a strongly hyperbolic system through suitable variable redefinitions and the addition of constraints. Specializing the theory to spherical symmetry, we show recent attempts to formulate the resulting evolution equations and their properties. We stress the importance of strongly hyperbolic systems for numerical relativity applications, and discuss ongoing attempts towards numerical modeling. I will conclude by outlining how these results may extend to more general gravitational models, including general teleparallel gravity, scalar-torsion theories, scalar-nonmetricity theories, and related extensions.

Speaker: Dr Maria Jose Guzman (University of Tartu)

10:50 → 11:20 Coffee break

11:20 → 13:00 Plenary Talk: Plenary talks

Convener: Dr Konstantinos Dialektopoulos (Center for Gravitation and Cosmology, Yangzhou University)

11:20 Black holes with primary hair

Speaker: Prof. Christos Charmousis (Orsay)

12:10 An Agnostic Exploration of Novel Equation Structures for Dynamical Dark Energy

Speaker: Dr Rebecca Briffa (University of Malta)

13:00 → 15:00 Lunch break

15:00 → 16:30 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks A

Convener: Amare Abebe (North-West University)

15:00 Bootstrap for Features in Cosmological Correlators

Speaker: Yuhang Zhu

15:15 Noncomoving description of radial perturbations of stellar compact objects

Speaker: Fabrizio Esposito (University of Genoa)

15:30 Curvature-Induced Scalar Fluctuations: A Novel Pathway for Axion Dark Matter and a Universal Bound on the Duration of a Kination Era

Speaker: Dr Cem Eröncel (Istinye University)

15:45 Dynamics of the Bianchi V cosmological model with a monomial potential

Speaker: Prof. Genly Leon

16:00 Scalar perturbations from a two-field unified warm-inflationary cosmological model

Speaker: Tommaso Mengoni (University of Camerino)

16:15 Interacting dark energy models: constraints and implications

Speaker: Sudipta Das

15:00 → 16:30 Afternoon Session: Contributed Talks B

Convener: Hyunbae Park (IBS-CTPU)

15:00 xHam: a Mathematica package for Hamiltonian analysis

Speaker: Mr Joffrey Le Grix de la Salle (IJC Lab)

15:15 Primordial magnetogenesis from non-conformal coupling with a stealth scalar field

Speaker: A G Marino

15:30 Towards Bayesian Photometric Cosmic Chronometers

Speaker: Swaraj Pradhan (Institute of Space Sciences (ICE, CSIC), Barcelona)

15:45 Hairy rotating black hole solutions in scalar-tensor theories

Speaker: Hugo Candan (LUX, Observatoire de Paris PSL & IJCLab, Université Paris-Saclay)

16:00 Radiation-reaction effects at 3PN order in scalar-tensor theories

Speaker: Eve Dones

16:30 → 17:00 Coffee Break

17:00 → 18:00 Afternoon Session: Workshop

17:00 Dark energy after DESI

Speaker: Masahide Yamaguchi (IBS-CTPU)

18:00 → 19:00 Free Discussion: Closing Remarks

19:00 → 21:00 Dinner