Training

There is no science without communication and no successful scientists without good writing and communication skills. You can do the best science that exists, if you don’t write papers about it – papers that get cited! ­– and if you don’t give presentations that impress people, your science will likely be ignored. Moreover, if you do not write convincing proposals that appeal to non-specialists, you won’t get observing time, nor the coveted post-doc position and certainly not the very competitive but needed grants to fund your research. Finally, as a scientist, it is your duty and privilege to communicate your science to the general public, policy makers and the media, and like all the rest, this is something that needs to be learned. 

This course is an introduction about how to get your message across in the various supports you need to use as a scientist. It is aimed are junior scientists who are writing their first papers, but will also be helpful for colleagues with more experience. The skills learned in this course will be more generally applicable as well, whether or not you not plan to build a further career as an academic.

This course is taught by Henri Boffin (ESO) and Johan Knapen (IAC)

The tenth edition of the European Radio Interferometry School, ERIS2024, will be held in Granada, Spain, from Monday September 30th to Friday October 4th, 2024. ERIS will provide a week of lectures and tutorials on how to achieve scientific results from radio interferometry. The school is co-organised by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and JIVE - Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC. This school is sponsored by the OPTICON-RadioNET Pilot project and the Severo Ochoa training program of the IAA-CSIC.

The topics covered by the lectures/tutorials will include:

•    Calibration and imaging of continuum, spectral line and polarization data
•    Low frequency (LOFAR domain), cm-wave (e-MERLIN domain), decimetre-wave (HI/OH domain), high frequency (ALMA/IRAM domain), and VLBI interferometry
•    Extracting the information from astronomical data and interpreting the results
•    Choosing the most suitable array and observing plan for your project.

This course of our IAA SO Training programme will focus on how to impart scientific presentations. It will consist of a one hour lecture followed by up to four practical sessions every two weeks.

The participants have the opportunity to impart presentations that they have either given recently or that they are preparing for upcoming events. The SO Training team (coordinator and/or co-coordinators) as well as the audience will provide the speaker with feedback. Up to two presentations (not longer than 25 min) can be accommodated per session. The participation in the practical sessions is optional, but all participants are strongly encouraged to impart a presentation in the practical sessions and also to attend those by others to learn and help with feedback.

The sessions will take place bi-weekly on Tuesday afternoon.

Lecturer: Rainer Schödel, IAA-CSIC

Within the  Severo Ochoa Training Initiative of the IAA-CSIC we are offering the 2024 edition of "English for Academic Purposes", imparted by Ms. Marie Waltie of the University of Leipzig. The workshop will be in-person. Key aspects of the use of English for academic purposes will be highlighted and correct usage encouraged. Participants will comprehensively expand their competence in the academic use of English. The course will cover the following topics: 

• Common Errors in Academic English
• Writing up Results and Methods in English
• Pronunciation Practice in English
• Academic Discussions in English
• Presenting your Academic Project in English

Fundamental knowledge of the English language as well as high motivation of the participants is a requirement because the course will be interactive. We can accommodate up to 30 participants. In case of over-subscription, we will give preference to students and young postdocs and/or may lead selection interviews. If you are interested in participating, please register before 31 January 2024 indicating whether you are interested in an INDIVIDUAL session of 20-25 min.

Deep learning (DL) is a family of techniques widely used in multiple fields with excellent results. Unfortunately, due to its steep learning curve, its use is not as extended as desirable. Several domain-specific libraries have been developed to facilitate the use of these DL models with modest success. For the widespread adoption of these techniques, researchers should be able to design and use their own DL models. Image classification is one of the main problems in astrophysics. The de facto standard to tackle this problem is Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN), a concrete deep learning architecture. A good knowledge of this technique is essential for its proper application by researchers. These three sessions have been designed with a goal in mind: to gain confidence in using CNNs for image classification tasks. The tutor of this school is Dr Francisco Eduardo Sanchez Karhunen (Universidad de Sevilla).

This event is a discussion session on applications of near-infrared (NIR) interferometry. It will be given by Maria Koutoulaki.

Maria Koutoulaki is an expert in near-infrared (NIR) interferometry and her main research interests are in star formation and protoplanetary disks. We think it may be interesting for the IAA community, especially for PhD students, to learn more about this type of observations and see if one could apply it to their own projects.

We therefore invite you to this informal session on the 2nd of October at 10:00 at the sala polivalente next to the kitchen. The session should last about 1h. We encourage the students to attend and ask lots of questions!

Content

The main topics will be:

1) What is near-infrared interferometry?

2) What are the facilities out there?

3) Young Stellar Objects as seen through the eye of VLTI?

4) What can I do with it?

5) Discussion

SKA will be a world-leading facility and as such it aims to follow and lead best practices in scientific integrity such as those promoted by the Open Science movement. The concept of Open Science facilitates reproducibility of scientific studies by making data and methods more accessible, understandable and reusable. Furthermore, Open Science contributes to democratising information and to reducing inequalities in the access to infrastructures, hence impacting areas related to some of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Open Science is rooted in SKA’s foundational principles and the reproducibility of SKA science data products is one of the Observatory metrics for scientific success. The SKA Regional Center Network (SRCNet) will play a key role enabling big scientific collaborations and it will provide the framework to implement SKA Open Science policies. The school will provide a general overview of different aspects of Open Science and how it is connected to collaborative and sharing practices that are encouraged by the SKA Observatory. This school brings an opportunity to anyone from the astronomy and the SRCNet community to have a complete and detailed view of Open Science policies, tools, as well as the ongoing activities related to Open Science at the SKAO and the SRCNet. International experts will provide a detailed and updated view on each of the school topics, and lectures as well as tutorials and hands-on sessions will facilitate our understanding from a practical point of view, encouraging questions and discussion.​​