ALMA Cycle 8 Proposals Preparation Workshop
Online workshop, Chile, March 15-26
One year of the pandemic has revealed the usage of video conference platforms as a powerful tool to carry out Science workshops, with multiple options to organize international conferences in different ways, from live events to pre-recorded talks, and a set of different tools to do Q&A and panel discussions sessions. While this has been extremely useful to continue sharing with the community the latest advances in Astronomy, the thing most difficult to replace was the social interaction and the capability to initiate new collaborations.
The main aim of this workshop is to offer a virtual space to foster new scientific collaborations between the Vitacura campus and the Chilean community. Participants will bring and participate in new common scientific ideas with the purpose of writing ALMA Cycle 8 Science proposals together.
The ESO Office for Science Chile and the Joint ALMA Observatory invites all astronomers working at a Chilean institution to participate in this event, which is free of charge.
Workshop format
The workshop will take place in a virtual format and it will be divided into two different events:
- A prior discussion of the proposed ideas divided into Working groups based on different ALMA science categories (March 15-23)
o 1 – Cosmology and the high redshift universe
o 2 – Galaxies and galactic nuclei
o 3 – ISM, star formation and astrochemistry
o 4 – Circumstellar disks, exoplanets and the solar system
o 5 – Stellar evolution and the Sun
- Presentation and follow-up discussions of the matured ideas to all the registered participants (March 24-26).
While there is no need to be an expert on ALMA to attend this workshop, the main purpose of it is not educational, but focuses on fostering new scientific collaborations between the Vitacura campus and the Chilean community. In any case, a set of introductory talks on ALMA Cycle 8 capabilities and the presentation of different science cases will be pre-recorded and accessible to the attendees at the beginning of the workshop. Note after the Cycle 8 ALMA Call for proposals is out, there will be a Community Day as part of the Astronomy in Chile Educator Ambassadors Program, with training purposes and fully oriented to non-experts in ALMA.
Registration
Interested participants need to fill this form to participate in the workshop. At the time of the registration, participants will need to specify only a draft title of the science case that may become an ALMA proposal under a specific science category. It is also possible to participate at a co-author level, or express the need for help on the technical side from interested collaborators, which may come from experts at the JAO/ESO or experts from the Chilean community. No registration fee is needed.
Online platforms
Proposed ideas under a specific ALMA science category, as indicated in the registration form, will be collected by the workshop organizers in a dedicated slack channel. Registered participants will be able to join there their favorite ideas, which will be extensively discussed via zoom once the working groups are set up.
A dedicated slack channel on “ALMA technical questions” will be available during the workshop for specific technical questions, which will be answered by personnel of the observatory.
Code of conduct
Since ESO Chile is one of the main sponsors of this activity, all registered participants need to follow and agree on the ESO Code of Conduct for Workshops & Conferences.
