The Aspen Center for Physics free lectures for 2018 will begin Wednesday with New York University professor Eric Vanden-Elinden discussing "Prediction and Control of Extreme Events, from Rogue Waves to Protein Folding."

The nine-part series, sponsored by the Nick and Magge DeWolf Foundation, continues through March 28 with leading scientists discussing some of the latest breakthroughs in science.

Wednesday's lecture is scheduled to begin at 5:30 p.m. at the Wheeler Opera House. It will be preceded at 4:30 p.m. by an informal "Physics Café" in the mezzanine lobby with physicists Amish Patel and Jasna Brujic.

The schedule for the rest of the season includes:

Jan. 17, "The Dark Energy of Quantum Materials," Laura H Greene, National High Field Magnet Lab

Jan. 24,"Tidal Disruption Events: How One Star's Death Gives Life to a Black Hole," Erin Kara, University of Maryland

Jan. 31, "The Physics of Flocking," M Cristina Marchetti, Syracuse University

Feb. 7, "Searching for Cosmic Dawn," Cynthia Chiang, Princeton University

March 7, "Field Theory Dualities and Strongly Correlated Matter," speaker TBA

March 14, "Advances in Quantum Algorithms and Computation," speaker TBA

March 21, "Quantum Knot Homology and Supersymmetric Gauge Theories," speaker TBA

March 28, "The Particle Frontier," speaker TBA

All talks are held at the Wheeler Opera House, except for the March 21 event, which will be hosted at the Aspen Center for Physics.

Lectures also will be posted on the web at aspenphys.org and on the AspenPhysics Youtube channel.