  Over the last decade it has been established that a quark-gluon plasma (QGP)
is formed in ultrarelativistic A+A collisions at RHIC energies. In recent
years, detector upgrades have enabled the detailed study of this hot and dense
matter. Important probes, among others, are direct photons and heavy flavor
observables. Although the RHIC d+Au program was originally undertaken to study
initial state and cold nuclear matter effects, recent measurements at both RHIC
(d+Au) and the LHC (p+Pb) have found evidence for collective phenomena in these
small systems.
