December 2024 - TOPICS
Short News A New 1.0 m Telescope at Skinakas Observatory The 2025 "Best PhD thesis Prize - Emilios Harlaftis" Travel Grants Job opportunities Check your contact information! Upcoming Astronomy Meetings and Schools in Greece About this Newsletter
1. Short News
The Society would like to congratulate Prof. Vasiliki Pavlidou of the Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH who has been awarded a highly competitive European Research Council Synergy Grant for the project mw-atlas, with a total budget of 10 million €, in collaboration with Dr. Torsten Enßlin of the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) Max Planck Society in Garching, Germany and Prof. Philipp Mertsch of the RWTH Aachen University, Germany. The project aims to create the first three-dimensional, comprehensive atlas of our Milky Way galaxy. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. The Society would like to congratulate Prof. Maria Charisi, Associated Research Fellow at the Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH, and Assistant Professor at Washington State University, in the USA, for receiving the 2024 L'ORÉAL-UNESCO Greek Award for Women in Science. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in her professional pursuits. The Society would like to congratulate Dr. Evangelos Paouris for being promoted to Senior Scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits. The Society would like to congratulate Prof. Spyros Patsourakos for being elected as full Professor at the Department of Physics, University of Ioannina. The Society extends its best wishes for further success in his professional pursuits.
2.  A new 1.0 m Telescope at Skinakas Observatory
The Institute of Astrophysics - FORTH, would like to inform the community that a new optical telescope with a 1.0m mirror has been installed at Skinakas Observatory. The new Ritchey–Chrétien telescope, built by ASA Astrosysteme GbmH in Austria, was partially funded by a 500,000 Euro donation of the Committee «Greece 2021». It will be used mainly for the ERC Project Bootes, as well as for projects related to space telecom using lasers and space traffic management. Pictures of the new telescope are available here.
3. The 2025 "Best PhD thesis Prize - Emilios Harlaftis"
On September 1, 2020 the Governing Council of Hel.A.S. accepted a generous offer by the family of Dr. Emilios Harlaftis, an active member of our Society who passed away at an early age in 2005, and unanimously decided to rename “Best PhD thesis Prize" awarded by the Society every two years, to “Best PhD thesis Prize- Emilios Harlaftis”. The statues and application procedure of the award remain as in the past. Applications for the "2025 Best PhD thesis Prize - Emilios Harlaftis" are now open. They are restricted to Junior members of the Society, who have successfully defended their Ph.D. thesis between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2024. The application deadline is January 31, 2025. Additional information is available here.
4.  Travel Grants
We would like to inform the Junior members of our Society that we are accepting applications for financial support for meetings occurring during the calendar year's second half (January - June 2025). Priority will be given to Junior members who have no access to other sources of funding for their participation in conferences or workshops. The deadline for submitting the application is December 15, 2024. The application form is available here. In addition to the application form, which is submitted by the junior members themselves, the PhD supervisor should also send via email to the Secretary an endorsement letter supporting the application (for more details, see https://helas.gr/events.php). A unique identification number will be assigned to each application. The results of each cycle will be announced in the newsletter after the evaluation is completed.
5. Job Opportunities
11 PhD positions on the feeding and feedback cycle of supermassive black holes are available at 10 astronomy groups across Europe from September 2025 as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Doctorate Network TALES (Time-domain Analysis to study the Life-cycle and Evolution of Supermassive black holes). Details and application information can be found at the links below: https://euraxess.ec.europa.eu/jobs/280409 https://www.star.bris.ac.uk/TALES/ or via email to Antonis Georgakakis (age@noa.gr). The mw-atlas project invites applications for PhD positions, to be held at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany, at RWTH Aachen University in Aachen, Germany, and at the Institute for Astrophysics - FORTH at Heraklion, Crete. Funded by an ERC Synergy grant, mw-atlas aspires to construct the first self-consistent, comprehensive, three-dimensional atlas of the Milky Way in all of its components, based on available and upcoming multi-wavelength datasets, on the physical interconnections between components, on the mathematical framework of Information Field Theory, and its usage in medical imaging or Earth monitoring. For more information, check the job advertisements link1 , link2.
6. Check your contact information!
All members of the Society are strongly encouraged to review their contact details in the online directory of the Society and inform the Secretary for any updates/corrections that may be needed.
7. 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 17th Hel.A.S. Conference 30 June - 2 July 2025, Conference and Cultural Center of the University of Patras, Greece
8. 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 December 1, 2024. Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before November 25, 2024. 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.