ALMA Cycle8 Preparation Workshop

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Online workshop, Chile, March 15-26. Please contact the LOC at almacycle8@eso.org should you have any question or issue.


Workshop rationale

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 groups based on different ALMA science categories (March 15-23).

o   Category 1 – Cosmology and the high redshift universe

o   Category 2 – Galaxies and galactic nuclei

o   Category 3 – ISM, star formation and astrochemistry

o   Category 4 – Circumstellar disks, exoplanets and the solar system

o   Category 5 – Stellar evolution and the Sun

-       Presentation and follow-up discussions of the matured ideas to all the registered participants (March 24-26). 

-       The workshop will finish with a social event where you will have the chance to meet all the participants via zoom and provide feedback on the organization of this workshop.

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 different science cases are accessible to the attendees below. In addition, 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.

Workshop guidelines

The guidelines for the workshop, including how the different working groups should be organized inside and outside Slack, can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16S5KseJ-A9rGo2tBNqGAQ59of9MVBJaU5LE6AO2QBZw/edit?usp=sharing

Introductory talks on ALMA Cycle 8 capabilities

Please find in the following YouTube links a set of pre-recorded presentations on how ALMA works, what it can do for your science, and practical science cases. The talks cover the main ALMA scientific topics:

List of proposal ideas

In order to aid the participants into selecting which ideas they would like to participate, a list with all the proposal titles and their corresponding PIs can be found here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Et_E9I_5GEyVqg5jKM6AjAJK3QCnwYaF/view?usp=sharing.

Online platforms

Once the working groups are created in Slack (the PIs are encouraged to create a dedicated slack channel for each proposal idea), registered participants will be able to express interest to join their favorite ideas. After the initial discussion, the PI of every proposal can lead the discussion outside Slack to a face-to-face discussion software like Zoom (or equivalent). In addition, participants can support the discussion with text editors like Google Docs if desired. Participants will need to use their personal accounts in all cases.

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.

Organizing Committee

  • Hugo Messias (co-chair)
  • Itziar de Gregorio-Monsalvo (co-chair)
  • Belen Alcalde
  • John Carpenter
  • Marie-Lou Gendron-Marsolais 
  • Kevin Harrington
  • Pei-Ying Hsieh
  • Liz Humphreys
  • Enrique Macias
  • James Miley
  • Alvaro Ribas
  • Alejandro Santamaria
  • Miguel Vioque
  • Chentao Yang

Contact: almacycle8@eso.org

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