SEPTEMBER 2020 - TOPICS

Members in New Positions Check your Address EAS Membership ORCID of HelAS members Astronomy Journal Impact Factors Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece About this Newsletter

1. Members in New Positions

We would like to congratulate Dr. Leonardos Gkouvelis, who recently moved from the Univ. of Liege (Belgium) to a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow position at the NASA/Ames Research Center (USA). The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Dimitris Millas, who recently moved from KU Leuven (Belgium) to a postdoctoral researcher position at the University College London (UK). The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Flora Stanley, who is moving from Chalmers University (Sweden), to a postdoctoral researcher position at the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris (France). The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Maria Petropoulou, who recently moved from Princeton University (USA) to an Assistant Professor position in theoretical astrophysics at the Dept. of Physics of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Despoina Skoulidou, who recently moved from the Univ. of Thessaloniki, to a postdoctoral researcher position at the Space Debris Office of ESA-ESOC (Germany). The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Petros Tzeferacos, who recently moved from the Univ. of Chicago (USA), to an Associate Professor position at the Dept. of Physics and Astronomy and a Senior Scientist position at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics of the University of Rochester (USA). Prof. Tzeferacos was also the recipient of the 2019 John Dawson Award, of the American Physical Society. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. We would like to congratulate Dr. Georgios Valogiannis, who, after completing his PhD at the Astronomy Department of Cornell University moved to a postdoctoral fellowship position at Harvard University (USA). The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits.

2. Check your Address

All members of the Society, in particular the ones that have moved to a new position over the past year, are encouraged to check the online directory of HelAS to verify that their contact details are correct. If you spot a mistake, please let the Secretary know about it.

3. EAS Membership

As we mentioned in the previews newsletter, all ordinary and junior members of our Society may become, if they wish, members of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) with no extra cost. On August 3, 2020 an e-mail was sent to all HelAS members who are not EAS members to request their consent to join EAS. The 72 members of HelAS who responded positively are listed here, while the 124 members of our Society who are already EAS members since 2018 are here. If your name does not appear in any of these two lists, and you wish to join EAS, please send an e-mail to the President of HelAS (president@helas.gr) before the 5th of September, 2020.

4. ORCID of HelAS members

We would like to inform our members that ORCID, the Open Researcher and Contributor ID, has been added as a field in the member directory. As most of you may know, over the past five years, ORCID, a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors, is being used extensively and it is often required from major journals and funding agencies in order to submit a paper or a proposal. We thus request all 184 members for which an ORCID was retrieved, to verify that the ORCID associated with their entry in the HelAS directory is correct. If you spot a mistake please inform the Secretary of our Society. Moreover, members who do not have an ORCID, are strongly encouraged to create one and send the information to the Secretary.. A simple tutorial on how this can be done is presented in the following video. It should be noted that recently NASA/ADS has also provided a tool so that papers of an author can be easily associated with her/his ORCID. Details on how this can be done are available here.

5. Astronomy Journal Impact Factors

We would like to inform our members that JCR (Clarivate Analytics) released the journal impact factors (IF) for the year 2019. Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A), in which Greece - via the support of HelAS - is a member country so that all scientists affiliated with Greek academic institutions may publish their results for free, has an IF of 5.636. It thus remains ahead of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (IF 5.356) which is the other major astronomy journal where one can publish with no page charges. Ahead of A&A is Nature Astronomy (IF 10.5), which is very selective but also free of charge. The IF for four main journals off IOP are also higher: The Astrophysical Journal Letters (IF 8.198), The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series (IF 7.950), The Astronomical Journal (IF 5.828) and The Astrophysical Journal (IF 5.745).

6. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece

Workshop on "Non-extensive statistical mechanics and kappa distributions" 12-16 July 2021, Chania, Island of Crete Alvio@80 Conference in honor of Alvio Renzini 5-10 September 2021, Kolymbari, Island of 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 October 1, 2020.  Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before September 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.