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 2020.

Note that ESO has implemented a Code of Conduct for Workshops and Conferences, which applies to all meetings held at ESO premises. ESO-funded workshops that are held outside ESO premises are required to adopt their own codes of conduct.

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 in line with the gender balance in our research community. To monitor the success of this policy the Offices for Science will be collecting demographic information of participants for all 2020 ESO Workshops.

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:

• Chile: https://www.eso.org/sci/activities/santiago/personnel.html
• Germany: https://www.eso.org/sci/activities/garching/personnel.html

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 12 April 2019.

For further information please contact Paola Andreani (pandrean@eso.org) or Itziar De Gregorio Monsalvo (idegrego@eso.org).