Call for Proposals - ESO Workshops 2018

Science workshops are an essential component of ESO's programmes. They represent a unique opportunity to promote and foster ideas and collaborations within ESO’s scientific community.

Every year, through the Directorate for Science, ESO provides support and funding to organise two workshops in Santiago (Chile) and four in Garching (Germany). These are usually held either at the ESO Headquarters in Garching or at the ESO building in Vitacura: in such cases, the workshops are supported by ESO.  Co-funding by ESO is also an option when the proposed Workshop is to take place elsewhere within the Member States.

With this call, we would like to invite the ESO community to team up with ESO staff and fellows in Chile and/or in Germany and submit proposals for ESO workshops to be held in 2018.  The proposal should describe the scientific area to be covered by the workshop and the format (e.g. expected number of participants, location, organising committee, keynote speakers) using the form provided.  Note that there is no need to contact potential SOC members or invited speakers formally at this stage. When planning your workshop, please take into account that ESO workshops strive to achieve gender balance in all aspects, including representation on the organising committees, session chairs, and through invitations to high quality speakers of both sexes in line with the gender balance in our research community.

In Garching, one Summer conference is traditionally organised jointly with the Max Planck Institutes, LMU, TUM and the Excellence Cluster.  A Joint Workshop offers an opportunity to reach a significantly wider audience:  if your proposed workshop could also fit within that scheme, please simply emphasise it in the form.

Proposed workshops will be evaluated by a committee of ESO Faculty astronomers. The selection committee will rank the proposals based on the scientific timeliness and the perceived benefit to ESO's programmes and community. If approved the workshop is co-chaired by both astronomers (external and ESO proposers) with the ESO staff acting as the local point of contact (LOC) for those workshops taking place at ESO premises.

A list of the ESO staff can be found at:

The workshop proposal form is available here in Word or LibreOffice format.

Proposals should be sent as PDF to Stella Chasiotis-Klingner (smckling@eso.org) by 13 April 2017.

For further information please contact Eric Emsellem (eric.emsellem@eso.org) or Claudio Melo (cmelo@eso.org)