FEBRUARY 2020 - TOPICS

Short News Elections of Hel.A.S. 2020 Summer school Alpbach Helping shape the COSPAR Athens 2022 Science Program JWST conference advertisement Academic position at SQU Student and Postdoctoral Research Opportunities Abroad Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. Short News

We would like to congratulate Prof. Ioannis A. Daglis, who has been appointed President of the Hellenic Space Centre (HSC). The Society extends its best wishes to Prof. Daglis for a fruitful service at the HSC. Verify your contact details. All members of the Society, in particular the younger ones who often move from one institution to another, are strongly encouraged to review their contact details (postal and e-mail address) in the directory of Hel.A.S. If you notice a mistake please inform the Secretary of the Society at "secretary@helas.gr" A letter appeared at the web page of our Society expressing our concerns about the light pollution that will affect the night sky if thousands of low-orbit satellites are to be deployed as planned. The French Astronomical Society addressed an open letter to the IAU about reducing the carbon footprint of the astronomical community. The text is available here and includes the signatures of many of our french colleagues.

2. Elections of Hel.A.S.

The Governing Council of Hel.A.S. announces that the next elections for the Council term 2020 - 2022 will take place during the second half of June 2020, along with the 38th General Assembly (GA) of the Society. The GA and the elections will take place at the Section of Astrophysics, Astronomy and Mechanics of the University of Athens. The date and time of the GA and the elections will be announced in a dedicated communication to Society's members in early February. At the same time, the call for nominations and the nomination form will appear at the "News and Events" section of the Society's website. More information on the forthcoming GA and the elections will become available in following Newsletters, while the voting package, containing ballots and instructions, will be sent by post to all Society members with voting rights in April 2020. All Ordinary Members of the Society who have no outstanding membership fees may nominate themselves or other Ordinary Members for the Council (Article 29 of the Hel.A.S. Constitution), under the requirement that all candidates will be staying in Greece during the time of their perspective service (Article 27). Please notice that the nomination forms have to be returned to the Secretary of the Society by post no later than February 29, 2020.

3. 2020 Summer School Alpbach

The 2020 Alpbach Summer School is entitled "Comparative Plasma Physics in the Universe" and will take place on July 14-23 at Alpbach/Tyrol Austria. The Summer school is open for application to young science and/or engineering students and graduates from among the member, associate and cooperating states of the European Space Agency. Applications should be submitted online until March 31, 2020. For more information please contact the National Point of Contact Dr. Anastasios Anastasiadis anastasi (@noa.gr) and consult the web page here.

4. Helping shape the COSPAR Athens 2022 Science Program

We wish to remind Society members that the abstract submission deadline for the 2020 COSPAR General Assembly in Sydney, Australia (August 15 - 22, 2020) expires on February 14 (see here for the registration). This will be the last General Assembly before the one in Athens, in July 2022. We encourage Hel.A.S. members to participate and promote COSPAR Athens 2022 to their respective communities. A very important item is to consider proposing and organizing potential meeting functions for COSPAR Athens 2022, such as sessions, symposia, or panel discussions. Proposals are submitted nominally during business meetings of COSPAR Commissions and Panels during the Assembly before the one of interest. Even though one may not be attending the 2020 General Assembly, one may proxy a colleague or a Division / Panel Chair in Sydney and submit a proposal for a session or panel discussion in Athens. The COSPAR Scientific Structure can be found here. We strongly encourage everyone interested in submitting a meeting function proposal for COSPAR Athens 2022 to contact their respective Commission / Panel Chairs for more information and to make sure their proposal is submitted during respective business meetings in Sydney.

5. JWST conference advertisement

In response to a pertinent ESA call, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, in collaboration with the Institute of Astrophysics-FORTH, will organise a Master Class for the use of the next generation James Webb Space Telescope. This 6.5m NASA/ESA telescope will operate in infrared wavelengths. The goal of the Master Class will be to familiarise the local astronomical community with the JWST scientific goals, instruments, and proposal preparation tools, so that Greek astronomers can competitively apply for JWST time. Given that the deadline for Cycle 1 Open Time proposals (1/5/2020) and the launch date (30/3/2021) are approaching, the workshop will take place on February 27 and 28, 2020. The workshop registration is free but mandatory through the website:  http://astro.phys.uoa.gr/jwst2020.html The registration remained open until January 12 2020. The workshop will be held at the Kostis Panamas building of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Academias 48, Athens. Contact: kdasyra (@phys.uoa.gr)

6. Academic position at SQU

The Department of Physics, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Muscat, Oman, invites applications for full-time faculty positions at the rank of Assistant/Associate Professor in Astronomy/Space Science. The candidate should have a PhD in Physics/Astronomy or a related field with proven experience in teaching. Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, teaching statement with objectives as well as a research statement and objectives to the appointment committee chair, Prof. Abraham George akgeorge (@squ.edu.om). Deadline: March 15th 2020. For more info contact Dr. Zach Ioannou zac (@squ.edu.om).

7. Student and Postdoctoral Research Opportunities Abroad

The list below may be refreshed or updated with further established lists: A postdoc position on outreach, within CERN's Fellowship programme. For more info look here. 13 PhD positions in the field of supermassive black-hole formation and evolution are available across Europe from Sept. 2020 as part of the recently accepted H2020 ITN programme BiD4BEST. Details can be found in the links below: https://wwwmpa.mpa-garching.mpg.de/~kdolag/BiD4BEST/index.html http://members.noa.gr/age/opp.html. or via email to Antonis Georgakakis age (@noa.gr). The "Applied Galactic Dynamics Summer School" will take place at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute, New York, (July 6th-August 14th). Interested Phd students can found more information here. The ESO Summer Research Programme provides an opportunity to students, not yet enrolled into a PhD programme, to carry out a research project at the ESO Headquarters in Garching (Germany) from 2nd July to 11th August. For more info consult here. Contact: summerresearch @eso.org The Institute for Fundamental Physics of the Universe (IFPU,  www.ifpu.it/), Trieste, Italy, invites applications for 5 postdoctoral research positions to start in the Fall of 2020. The topics are astroparticle physics, early universe, fundamental interaction etc. For more information look here. Any Member of the Society who wishes to contribute another credible link with opportunities, or individual opportunities that will, however, be shown in a single-liner format as above, is encouraged to contact the Secretary of the Society.

8. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece

PHAROS Conference 2020 - the multi-messenger physics and astrophysics of neutron stars 30 March to 3 April 2020 Patras, Greece Alvio@80 Conference in honor of Alvio Renzini 25-29 May 2020 Kolymbari, Island of Crete

9. About this Newsletter

This Newsletter was sent to all members of Hel.A.S. who have e-mail access. The next edition of the Newsletter will be mailed around March 1, 2020.  Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before February 25, 2020. If you do not wish to receive future issues of this Newsletter or the e-mail address to which it was sent is not your preferred one, please inform the Secretary of Hel.A.S. at secretary@helas.gr.