Some challenges for the landscape
Thomas Van Riet (Leuven University)

I will present a bird's view on how string theory tackles the question of vacuum energy. The talk is intended to be pedagogical and aimed at a general audience of theoretical physicists (No string theory knowledge is required.). I will first explain how vacuum energy can be computed in certain corners of string theory and what one might hope to deduce from this. Near the end I will specify to the problem of constructing de Sitter vacua of string theory and I will discuss whether this has been successful or not.