Call for Proposals - ESO Workshops 2023

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 workshops in Santiago (Chile) and 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.

ESO may co-fund one or more Workshops elsewhere within the Member States. All Member States’ astronomers are encouraged to propose for a workshop. ESO is seeking in particular the involvement of astronomers in countries who joined the organisation more recently and who did miss past occasions. With this call, all ESO community is invited to submit proposals for workshops to be held in 2023. Community astronomers can submit their proposals alone or teaming up with ESO staff and fellows in Chile and/or in Germany.

In Garching, the former tradition to organise a Summer conference jointly with the Max Planck Institutes, LMU, TUM and the ORIGINS Cluster can be resumed. 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.

Note that ESO has implemented a Code of Conduct for Workshops and Conferences, which applies to all meetings funded by ESO, hosted at ESO premises or organised as online events.

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 has inserted diversity and inclusion as one of the core goals of the organisation. As such, ESO strives to achieve diversity in all its form including, but not exclusively, gender and career stages in every organisational aspects, including representation on the organising committees, session chairs, and through invitations to high quality speakers. To monitor the success of this policy the Offices for Science will be collecting demographic information of participants for all 2023 ESO Workshops.

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 and if the workshop is co-chaired by both astronomers (external and ESO proposers), the ESO staff will act 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 Proposals should be sent by 5 September 2022. For further information please contact Paola Andreani (pandrean@eso.org) or Itziar De Gregorio Monsalvo (idegrego@eso.org).