IScAI 2010 |
Lunes 29 de Noviembre de 2010 12:40 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The International School for Advanced Instrumentation (IScAI) is a major international initiative in higher education that aims to become a centre of excellence to learn expertise in all areas related to the construction of cutting-edge scientific instrumentation, with a particular emphasis on astronomical instrumentation. The thrust of the IScAI is to educate the necessary workforce of specialized personnel in scientific instrumentation and facilitate the partnerships of universities, research institutes and high-tech companies in the construction of state-of-the-art instrumentation for the new generation of scientific facilities. The IScAI will also serve as a bridge between the intellectual resources and technology transfer capabilities of universities, research institutes and high-tech companies. The IScAI is a multicenter collaborative effort among high-tech companies and research institutions. The School is open to astronomers, physicists and engineers world-wide. IScAI-2010 The IScAI offers an intensive programme of courses and laboratory work in key areas related to the design and construction of scientific instrumentation. The laboratory work will be done at various research institutions and high-tech companies with world-class instrumentation programs in Europe and America. To download the brochure of the IScAI-2010 click on this link IScAI-2010 is funded by the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 grant “First Science with the GTC”, under the Consolider Ingenio 2010 Programme of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.
The IScAi is open to astronomers, physicists and engineers world-wide. The IScAI will offer the students:
The programme consists of five weeks of intensive course work on five different subjects (optics, mechanics, electronics, software
and management) related to the design and construction of astronomical instrumentation. These will be held at the headquarters of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in La Laguna, Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). The students will have the opportunity to practice the subjects learned in the courses in a course project, remotely supervised. Those students wishing to graduate from the IScAI 2010 will engage, for two and a half months, in a hands-on laboratory project to be done at a scientific institution or high-tech company assigned to each student. The assignment of the internships will be made by the IScAI Board of Directors considering the preferences expressed by the prospective students in the application form. There exists the possibility of enrolling in one or more IScAI courses without graduating. Students following this option will not carry out the hand-on laboratory work. From 2010 June 14th to July 16th IScAI participants will be able to take up to five intensive courses, to be held at the IAC headquarters in Tenerife (Canary Islands, Spain). The registration fee is 300 € per course. Financial aid can be requested to the IScAI Board of Directors. Those students wishing to graduate from the IScAI 2010 should attend and pass all of the following courses:
This outline of the course may be subject to change. The final program will be published in March 2010
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3. Electronics course syllabus:
4. Software course syllabus:
5. Management course syllabus:
Stephen Eikenberry is currently the Colonel Allan R. and Margaret G. Crow Term Professor of Astronomy at UF. He completed his PhD in Astronomy at Harvard University in 1997 under Dr. Giovanni Fazio, and from there moved to the Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Prize Fellowship in Physics at Caltech. He moved next to an Assistant Professorship (1998) and then tenured Associate Professorship (2002) in Astronomy at Cornell University, where he also won an NSF CAREER award in 2000. In 2003, he left Cornell to become a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida. Eikenberry has designed and built a number of infrared and optical instruments for astronomical telescopes, including serving as Principal Investigator for the FLAMINGOS-2 near-infrared imager/spectrograph for Gemini Observatory and the Wide-field InfraRed Camera for Palomar Observatory. Dario Mancini got is degree as Electric Engineer in 1984. Up to 1990 he was associate professor of advanced robotics, electronics, power electronics, mechanics and fluidodynamics at the Federico II University of Naples. He became astronomer in 1987, associate astronomer in 1994 and full astronomer in 2000. Along his career he fully designed, built and was in charge of several telescopes and instruments as TNG (Telescopio Nazionale Galileo), VIMOS (VIsual Multi Object Spectrograph), VST (VLT SUrvey Telescope), or TT#1 (1.6m altaz robotic telescope). He worked in the field of space applications and recently designed moon self deployable autonomous telescopes for the study of the solar system and of the Universe in the In Situ Sensing Program (ASI). He designed and built advanced control and drive systems for Antarctica. He is currently the Director of the Castelgrande Astronomical Observatory. He combined his activities with his research work in the field of fast optical photometry, exoplanet search, deep field imaging and asteroid mapping. Nicolás Cardiel López is currently the Astrophysics Department Chair at UCM. He started to get involved in software development during his PhD Thesis Project, when he created a data reduction package called Reduceme, specially tuned for spectroscopic observations. That package incorporated the novelty of using a parallel treatment of data and errors throughout the whole data reduction. Since then, he has always been involved in the development of astronomical software, most of which is publicly available. More recently, he is leading the development of the data processing pipelines of EMIR and FRIDA, two future instruments for GTC. He has combined this software development with his research work in the study of stellar population in galaxies. For several years he worked as a resident astronomer at the Calar Alto Observatory. José Javier Díaz García received a B.Sc. in Physics (Electronics) from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Madrid, Spain, in 1989. He joined ENTEL and participated in the development of an automatic system to control the availability of resources for Telefónica Spain. He works at the IAC since 1990 and has participated in the development of many different instruments for astronomy. He has also collaborated with the Physiology Department of the University of La Laguna in a project of sensorial substitution for the blind people. His research interest is currently focused in detectors, adaptive optics, electronic systems, integration and control applied to astrophysics instrumentation. He is also involved in project management of instrumentation programmes. María Luisa García Vargas got the phD in Astrophysics in 1991 at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. During 8 years she had different researching and teaching positions at UAM. At that time, she carried out the integration and commissioning of a 0.5m telescope and its instrumentation, at UAM observatory, to be used for teaching purposes. From 1991 to 1994 she had the responsibility of the teaching direction and the development of several experiments and instrumental projects. After that, she took a position at ESAC (Villafranca del Castillo, Madrid) as Resident Astronomer to work in the scientific operation of the spatial telescope International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) of ESA. Students wishing to graduate from the IScAI 2010 will engage, from 2010 September 27th to December 10th, in a hands-on laboratory project to be done at the laboratories of a partner company or scientific institution in Europe or America, carrying out a technical project in collaboration with their experienced instrumentation teams. High-tech companies or scientific institutions hosting IScAI students will provide all required laboratory equipment and assign tutors who will supervise the progress of the students during their internship. Internships will be assigned to each student by the IScAI Board of Directors, considering the preferences expressed by prospective students in the application form. The areas for instrumentation projects offered for IScAI 2010 include: - Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) – La Laguna, S/C de Tenerife, Spain:
- University of Florida (UF) – Gainesville, Florida, USA:
- Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) – Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain:
- Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)– México D.F. / Ensenada, Mexico:
- Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE) – Tonantzintla, Puebla, Mexico:
- Centro de AstroBiología (CAB) – Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain:
- Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA) Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain: - Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING) - La Palma, S/C de Tenerife, Spain:
- GMV – Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain:
- NTE-SENER – Lliçà d'Amunt, Barcelona, Spain:
- LIDAX – Torrejón de Ardoz, Madrid, Spain:
- FRACTAL SLNE (in colaboration with UCM)– Ciudad Universitaria, Madrid, Spain:
- EADS Astrium Crisa – Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain:
- IDOM - Bilbao, Spain: Student's performance will be evaluated during the class work , during the course project and during the internship. A student must successfully complete the course work before starting the internship. Evaluation of the course work will be done by each professor through individual homework exercises, laboratory practices and, at the end of the classes, the course project. Evaluation of the lab work carried out during the internship will be done by the IScAI Board of Directors after:
Students will have to submit the written report to the IScAI Administrative Manager before 2010 December 10th. Final evaluation of the overall performance of the student in all activities of the IScAI will be done by the IScAI Board of Directors. Those students interested in attending the IScAI have the following participation options:
All students will receive a certificate with the title, number of hours and final grades of the courses attended. By 2010 March 8th we will contact the applicants in order to:
In addition to the course work, various complementary activities will take place, including monographic conferences by invited speakers and a visit to the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC). Companies and IScAI: The IScAI is open to world-wide high-tech companies with expertise in cutting-edge scientific instrumentation interested in participating in 2010 edition. Recent years have seen a dramatic increase in the development of instrumentation for the new generation of large ground-based observatories. In the early 1990's, the budgets for “large instruments” were typically in the range of 1M€ and small teams at the universities carried out their construction. By now, the current generation of instruments under construction or being planned for major observatories have budgets ranging from 20M€ to 70M€ – an increase of nearly 2 orders of magnitude in just over a decade. The instruments for the future generation of extremely large ground-based telescopes and space observatories will be even more complex and expensive. Likewise, the size and composition of the teams required to construct such instruments has changed dramatically, involving dozens of scientists and engineers from academic institutions and high-tech companies around the world. Participating companies in the IScAI will benefit from:
As a partner, a company is expected, first, to propose an internship project, and second, to host IScAI students during their internship to work in its laboratories carrying out the proposed project within an experienced technical team. Participating companies and companies will need to provide some information:
The participating institutions must also guarantee:
If you would like to learn more about how your company can become a partner in the IScAI 2010 or you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Mercedes Franqueira, the IScAI manager (at mmf[at]iac[dot]es), or the executive director of the IScAI 10, José Miguel Rodríguez Espinosa, (at jre[at]iac[dot]es), address: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ Vía Láctea s/n, E-38205 La Laguna, Spain.
Current partner companies in the IScAI 2010: Research Institutions and IScAI The IScAI is open to world wide scientific institutions with expertise in cutting-edge scientific instrumentation interested in participating in 2010 edition. As a partner, an institution is expected, first, to propose an internship project, and second, to host IScAI students during their internship to work in its laboratories carrying out the proposed project within an experienced technical team. Participating research institutions will need to provide the following information:
The participating institutions must also guarantee:
In the event that no other sources of funding are available, IScAI will provide the necessary financial aid for students during their internships. If you would like to learn more about how your institution can become a partner in the IScAI 2010 or you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Mercedes Franqueira, the IScAI manager (at mmf[at]iac[dot]es), or the executive director of the IScAI 2010, José Miguel Rodríguez Espinosa, (at jre[at]iac[dot]es), address: Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, C/ Vía Láctea s/n, E-38205 La Laguna, Spain.
Founding Research Institutions Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC, Spain) IAC / Universidad de La Laguna is the institution that has built more ground-based and space astronomical instrumentation in Spain. Several GTC instruments are under development at the IAC headquarters, for instance OSIRIS and EMIR. The IAC is also in charge of the control systems of FRIDA. The IAC has expert technical personnel in most areas of advanced technologies for astronomical instrumentation. Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM, Spain). The Universidad Complutense de Madrid houses a group specialized in Data Reduction Pipelines and control software. The UCM group is developing the EMIR and FRIDA pipelines. They have had a strong contribution in the design and implementation of the GTC telescope Data Processing Kit.
University of Florida (UF, USA). The University of Florida is one of the world's leaders in the construction of facility-class infrared astronomical instruments for large telescopes. Among the major instruments recently completed or in progress are T-ReCS and FLAMINGOS-2 for Gemini South, CanariCam and CIRCE for GTC. Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM, Mexico). The IA-UNAM is a top-class Astronomy research institution in Mexico, and is involved in state-of-the-art instrumentation projects. The IA-UNAM operates the Observatorio Astronómico Nacional in San Pedro Martir, Baja California (OAN/SPM), and it is a partner of the 10-m class GTC telescope consortium. It also runs a graduate program in Astrophysics and participates in activities for popularizing scientific and technological advances, promoting wide science interest in the country.
Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE, Mexico). INAOE is the lead Mexican institution for the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) and is partner of the GTC consortium. The institute is one of the research centers of the national science and technology council, CONACyT. With a staff of over 100 researchers in astrophysics, optics, electronics and computational sciences, INAOE is one of the most important research institutes in the country.
Partner Research Institutions
Centro de AstroBiología (INTA/CSIC, Spain). The CAB (Centre of Astrobiology) is a mixed center INTA-CSIC located in the INTA campus. It is associated with the Astrobiology Institute of the NASA. Its research activity is focused on the origin of life and its presence and influence in the Universe. CAB Scientists and technicians are specialized in subjects such as astronomy, fluid dynamics, geology, biochemistry, genetics, remote sensing, ecology, computer sciences, robotics, etc.
Instituto Nacional deTécnica Aeroespacial (INTA, Spain). INTA is a spanish public institution, specialized in aeronautic and aerospace research and development. Founded in 1942 within the Spanish Air Force, in 1977 came under the aegis of the Secretary of State for Defence of the Ministry of Defence, expanding the scope of its activities.
Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes (ING, Spain). The ING operates the 4.2 metre William Herschel Telescope (WHT), the 2.5 metre Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) and the 1.0 metre Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope (JKT) on behalf of the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) of the Netherlands, and the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain. The ING is located at the Observatorio del Roque de los Muchachos, La Palma, Spain.
Dr. José Miguel Rodríguez Espinosa (IAC) – Executive Director Dra. Esperanza Carrasco Licea (INAOE)
Dr. Jesús Gallego Maestro (UCM)
Dr. Ramón García López (IAC)
Dr. Rafael Guzmán (UF)
Dr. Artemio Herrero Davó (IAC)
M. Beatriz Sánchez y Sánchez (UNAM) |