The HERD 9th international WORKSHOP (online) happened between 22-23 February Manel Martínez, Luis Fariña and Javier Rico were attending

The US patent application based on the photon counting invention has been allowed.

“[Baryogenesis via gauge field production from a relaxing Higgs](https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.13650)” by Y. Cado, B. von Harling, E. Masso and M. Quiros has been submitted to JHEP.

“[Startup Qilimanjaro—towards a European full-stack coherent quantum annealer platform](https://epjquantumtechnology.springeropen.com/articles/10.1140/epjqt/s40507-021-00094-y)” has been published in EPJ Quantum Technology in a Special Issue on Quantum Industry.

“[Study of scintillation light collection, production and propagation in a 4 tonne dual-phase LArTPC ](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-0221/16/03/P03007)” which is based on the light detection system provided by CIEAMT/IFAE. The 4 tonne detector was the prototype stage before the 700 tonne protoDUNE-DP detector for which CIEMAT/IFAE also provided the PMTs.

“[Searches for Compact Binary Coalescence Events using Neural Networks in LIGO/Virgo Second Observation Period](https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.10702)” by A. Menendez et al., has been accepted for publication in Physical Review D.

Last Thursday the CLUE (Cherenkov Light Ultraviolet Experiment) container arrived at IFAE from the ORM. It now occupies the place where the Barcelona Raman LIDAR was placed. It will become a R&D platform for developing LIDAR for cherenkov astronomy and various other possible applications.

George Zahariade has joined the Theory Group. His research interests lie at the interface of general relativity and quantum field theory.

The ATLAS Trigger and Data acquisition week is taking place online this week.Several members of the IFAE team are attending and also giving presentations about the status of the Level-1 topological trigger simulation.

The GW group at IFAE is giving 2 presentations in the 55th Rencontres de Moriond 2021: Gravitation.

The project “Simulating the expansion of the COVID-19 outbreak: a risk forecast tool considering socioeconomic and gender inequalities in Barcelona” led by Pere Masjuan awarded a Scientific Research Awards by the Barcelona city council.

IFAE was awarded financial support in the AGAUR call “Replegar-se per créixer: l’impacte de les pandèmies en un món sense fronteres visibles” (PANDÈMIES-2020) for the project ‘A powerful stochastic tool to assess the impact of the COVID-19 in Catalonia integrating detailed demographic and mobility data’