1. Short News
2. Upcoming Hel.A.S. Elections
3. Retirement of prominent Hel.A.S. members
4. JWST conference advertisement
5. Student and Postdoctoral Research Opportunities Abroad
6. Upcoming Astronomy Meetings in Greece
7. About this Newsletter

The GC wishes to all members of Hel.A.S. a Happy, Healthy and Productive NEW YEAR 2020!

The Society would like to congratulate Konstantina Anastasopoulou who recently completed her PhD at the Dept. of Physics of the Univ. of Crete under the supervision of Prof. Andreas Zezas. Her thesis was entitled “Ultra-luminous X-ray sources and X-ray luminosity scaling relations in nearby galaxies”. The Society extends its best wishes to Dr. Anastasopoulou for further successes in her professional pursuits.

The Governing Council of Hel.A.S. will convene in January to arrange the date for the next (38th) General Assembly (GA) of the Society, that should take place around the end of June, 2020. The forthcoming GA will see the election of a new Governing Council for the term 2020 – 2022. All Society Members will receive the official announcement of the elections by the end of January 2020. 
  According to Article 29 of the Hel.A.S. Constitution, all Ordinary Members of the Society who have no outstanding membership fees may nominate themselves or other Ordinary Members for the Council. The nominations have to be returned to the Secretary of the Society by February 28th 2020. The call for nominations as well as the necessary forms will become available online at the “News & Events” section of the Society’s web site. More information on the General Assembly and the elections will become available in following Newsletters.

On December 31, 2019, two members of our Society retired from their positions as Research Personnel of the Institute for Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Applications and Remote Sensing of the National Observatory of Athens. These members are: I. Bellas-Velidis and A. Dapergolas.
On behalf of all Society members, the President and the G.C. would like to thank the above colleagues for their contribution to the Society and to the advancement of Greek astronomy. Furthermore, we wish them a seamless continuation of their creative work for many years to come.

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: < br /> http://astro.phys.uoa.gr/jwst2020.html
The registration will remain 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)

• 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.

• PHAROS Conference 2020 – the multi-messenger physics and astrophysics of neutron stars
  30 March to 3 April 2020 Patras, Greece

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 February 1, 2020.  Please send your announcements (e.g., appointments / departures, job openings, research opportunities, awards, conferences in Greece) or comments before January 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.