Awareness Conferences
These conferences, given by a small team of expert scientists and instrumentalists, present the "hot topics" in Astrophysics and the large facilities, on ground or in space, available (or planned), to help to solve the pending questions. They should encourage students to choose a PhD subject in Astrophysics and help astronomers, specially from the new EU (or accessing) countries, to broaden their horizons and raise their interest in the Access program.
The first such conference was held in Sofia (Bulgaria) in October 2009 (see the program).
A new one, addressing specifically students and engineers interested in Instrumentation, has been organised during the Jenam in Lisbon, on September 6, 2010. See http://www.jenam2010.org/ for details
(SPS1 Special Session 1 :
"Astronomy Challenges for Engineers and Computer Scientists" )
In 2011, we
have contributed to the school on "Opto-Mechanical
Design in Astronomy", in Potsdam (Germany), June 20-23, 2011
For details, see http://www.aip.de/SummerSchool2011/
We did also contribute to the Astrometry school in Antalya,
Turkey, Sept. 5-9, 2011.
For details, see http://www.tug.tubitak.gov.tr/aass/
In 2013, we
had an Awareness conference for Eastern Europe
participants, hosted in Bucharest in Romania from
September 23d to 28th. Details can be found here
.
The 2014 Conference
was hosted in Sofia (Bulgaria) from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1st. The
report is available here.
In 2015, the Conference and Practical School took
place at the Mazaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, from
Sept. 1. to 12.
The report and program can be found here.