Cambridge Extragalactic Transients Workshop

CosmicExplosions 2026

Cambridge, UK  |  27–31 July 2026

A week-long workshop on extragalactic transient inference and modelling. Featuring talks, discussion sessions, and hands-on software & tool demonstrations, bringing together observers, modellers, and software developers working on the transient sky.

📅 27–31 July 2026 🏠 KICC, Cambridge 👥 ~40–45 Participants 🎉 No Registration Fee

About the Workshop

Bringing together the extragalactic transients community for a week of science, discussion, and collaboration.

CosmicExplosions is an intimate, focused workshop hosted at the Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge (KICC). Space is deliberately kept small — limited to around 40–45 participants — to encourage substantive discussion and collaboration.

The programme spans the full width of extragalactic transient science: gamma-ray bursts and afterglows, kilonovae and multi-messenger astrophysics, superluminous supernovae, tidal disruption events, luminous fast blue optical transients, gravitational-wave follow-up, alert stream tools, and the software ecosystem that underpins all of this work.

Each morning features two or three talks; afternoons are reserved for guided discussion sessions and hands-on software demonstrations. The format is intentionally informal — there is plenty of time for open conversation and spontaneous collaboration.

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Dates

Monday 27 July – Friday 31 July 2026

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Venue

Ryle Room, KICC
Madingley Road, Cambridge CB3 0HA

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Format

~10–15 talks, discussion sessions, hands-on demos

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Participants

~40–45 (space limited)

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Registration Fee

None — the workshop is free to attend

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Registration

Closed (deadline: 31 January 2026)

Science Topics

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GRBs & Afterglows

Short and long GRBs, multi-wavelength modelling, optical follow-up strategies, population studies.

Kilonovae & Multi-Messenger

GW follow-up, kilonova modelling, r-process nucleosynthesis, multi-messenger inference.

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Supernovae & LFBOTs

Superluminous SNe, fast blue optical transients, binary-driven transients, engine models.

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TDEs

Tidal disruption events, black hole mass estimates, LSST-era science, photometric classification.

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Software & Tools

Redback, Bayesian inference, alert streams, data repositories, population synthesis codes.

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Future Surveys

Rubin/LSST, Einstein Telescope, next-generation follow-up strategies and broker ecosystems.

Organiser

NS

Nikhil Sarin

Senior Fellow, Kavli Institute for Cosmology Cambridge

nsarin.astro@gmail.com

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