May 2025 - TOPICS
Short News Register to the 17th Hel.A.S. Conference ESA Science Programme Announcements Job opportunities The 1st POSYDON School Upcoming Astronomy Meetings and Schools in Greece About this Newsletter
1. Short News
We would like to congratulate Prof. K. Kokkotas for being recently named Fellow of the International Society on General Relativity and Gravitation. Prof. Kokkotas (University of Tubingen, Germany) was recognized “for his fundamental contributions to our understanding of the perturbative response of black holes and for the development of a series of techniques aimed at extracting physical information from radiating compact stars.” The Society extends its best wishes for further successes in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Prof. Maria Petropoulou for receiving the Bodossaki Distinguished Young Scientist Award 2025 in the field of Basic Sciences: Physics. The Society extends its best wishes for further successes in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Elias Koulouridis for his recent promotion to Researcher Grade B at the National Observatory of Athens. The Society extends its best wishes for further successes in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Eleni Nikou for successfully completing her PhD thesis at the George Mason University in Fairfax (VA, USA) under the supervision of Prof. Jie Zhang. The thesis was entitled "Understanding the Structure and Evolution of Coronal Mass Ejections using STEREO and Exploring their Magnetic Origin". She was also awarded an NRC Fellowship and has been an NRC Research Associate at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. since October 2024. The Society extends its best wishes to Dr. Nikou for further successes in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Gonzalo Munoz-Sanchez for successfully completing his PhD thesis at the Physics Department of the University of Athens and the National Observatory of Athens under the supervision of Dr. Alceste Bonanos. The thesis was entitled "Episodic mass loss in extreme red supergiants". He has recently moved to ESO Santiago in Chile under an ESO Scientific Visitor Programme. The Society extends its best wishes to Dr. Munoz-Sanchez for further successes in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Evgenia Koumpia who has been recently appointed System Astronomer at ALMA Observatory. The Society extends its best wishes for further successes in her professional pursuits.
2. Register to the 17th Hel.A.S. Conference We would like to encourage our members to submit their abstracts and register to the 17th Hel.A.S. Conference. Deadline for abstract submission: 11 May 2025 Deadline for abstract submission: 9 June 2025 For more updates, check the conference webpage.
3. ESA Science Programme Announcements
1. 6th Announcement of Opportunity (AO-6) for participation in the CHEOPS Guest Observers (GO) Programme.     Deadline: 8 May 2025     Details: CHEOPS Guest Observers Programme 2. Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for an "Interdisciplinary Scientist" and "Guest Investigators" in the BepiColombo Mission    Deadline for Letters of Intent: 20 May 2025, 12:00 (noon) CEST    Deadline for Proposals: 10 June 2025, 12:00 (noon) CEST    Details: LINK 3. 11th Announcement of Opportunity for "Science Planners" in the NASA-led IRIS Mission     Deadline: 27 May 2025, 12:00 (noon) CEST     Details: LINK
4. Job Opportunities
2 PhD positions and 1 Postdoctoral Researcher position will soon be available at the Academy of Athens as part of the HFRI funded project "Gravitational Wave Events with Neutron Stars: From Nuclear Physics to Cosmology" (PI: A. Nathanail). Students nearing completion of their Master's degree are eligible and encouraged to apply. Interested candidates are encouraged to reach out Dr. Nathanail for further details (email).
5. The 1st POSYDON School
We would like to inform our members about the first POSYDON School. The school is targeted to researchers of all stages giving a chance to learn about the capabilities of the binary population synthesis code POSYDON. The school is hosted at the new NSF-Simons SkAI Hub located in the John Hancock Center in Chicago, Illinois from Sept. 23 -26th, 2025. Deadline for registration: May 16 2025 For more information, visit the school  webpage.
6. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings and Schools in Greece
UniverseAI: Exploring the Universe with Artificial Intelligence June 2-6, 2025, Amphitheater G. Karabatzos, Harokopio University of Athens, Greece 2025 Summer School for Astrostatistics in Crete 16-20 June, Department of Physics, University of Crete, Heraklion 17th Hel.A.S. Conference 30 June - 2 July 2025, Conference and Cultural Center of the University of Patras, Greece Second Summer School in Observational Astrophysics 9-12 July 2025, Kryoneri, Corinthos Extragalactic Jets in Crete 2025 25 - 29 August 2025, Heraklion, Crete
7. 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 June 1, 2025. Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before May 25, 2025. 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.