Project leader: Jaime Forero-Romero, je.forero@uniandes.edu.co
Project location: Colombia
Project description:
We will host a one month school on the theoretical, numerical and observational aspects of cosmology. The school will bring together 4 researchers of international expertise and 25 students from Latin-America. The school will present current methods and research problems in cosmology. With this goal in mind it will tackle not only basic theoretical aspects, but also more advanced numerical and observational techniques.
The school will have a focus on the physics of tracers of large scale structure in the Universe and their interest for cosmological application. Furthermore, we have aimed at a large duration for the school. This has the purpose of giving time to the students to create friendship ties and delve deeply into the concepts presented in the school.
After different meetings since 2012, including the workshop “Astronomy en los Andes” (Bogota, 2013), Cosmology has been identified as the research area with the strongest potential for development in the Andean Region (loosely defined by Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Chile).
The reason is two-fold. First, there is a strong research tradition on the theoretical aspects of cosmology. Second, the collaborative nature of large projects in cutting-edge observational cosmology can open up the possibility of participation from Andean countries without a huge monetary investment. However, the capabilities in numerical and observational techniques must be developed for this area to grow. Besides, in the context the creation of the Andean Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (ROAD) it was agreed that the organization of schools for students in the region must have a large priority. It can not only improve the students preparation to do research, but it also will serve to connect the researchers in different countries.
About the project leader:
Jaime Forrero-Romero is Assistant Professor at the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. He obtained his PhD in astrophysics at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon (France) and was a postdoc at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics in Potsdam (Germany) and the Astronomy Department at UCBerkeley as a Gruber Fellow. He has also organised several international events.