Call for Expressions of Interest to organise Symposia and Special Sessions

Deadline: Friday, 1st August 2014

The European Week of Astronomy and Space Science (EWASS 2015) will take place in La Laguna, in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, from 22 - 26 June 2015. The meeting will be organised at the University of La Laguna's Guajara Campus by the European Astronomical Society (EAS), in collaboration with the Spanish Astronomical Society (SEA), the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, and the Universidad de La Laguna.

We now invite proposals from colleagues who are interested in organising a Symposium or a Special Session.

A broad range of parallel sessions can be accommodated as:

(A) Symposia
which normally consist of up to 6 blocks of 1.5 hours, stretching over 2 days, although exceptionally and in well-justified cases these symposia can be slightly longer,
(B) Special Sessions
consisting of up to 3 blocks of 1.5 hours on the same day.

Proposers should strive to make their proposals of interest to large fractions of the European astronomical community. All proposals should be submitted as plain text email, with of the order of 500 words, and should include the following information:

  1. Title and type of proposed session
  2. Summary of the goal(s) of the session
  3. Names of organisers (at least two persons)
  4. Justification for proposed duration of the session (how many 1.5-hour blocks?)
  5. Anticipated audience size
  6. Possible review talks and possible speakers
  7. Whether or not you plan to accept posters

Organisers of EWASS sessions are benefitting from the logistic support of the EWASS conference including the disposal of the venue room, registration handling, the portal for abstract submission and reviewing, and the hosting of a web page on the EWASS website. Organisers should not count on additional support from EWASS for attending the conference, neither for themselves nor for their invited speakers.

Note that the IAU has already selected the Symposia and Focus Meetings for the IAU General Assembly in Hawaii, in August 2015, see http://www.iau.org/science/meetings/future/

Proposals should be sent to the SOC Chairs: Cathie Clarke <cclarke @ ast.cam.ac.uk> and Johan Knapen <jhk @ iac.es>, for review by the SOC.

Applicants will be notified in September about the outcome of the selection. Individuals within the European Astronomy and Space Science communities, as well as EU sponsored networks, are strongly encouraged to propose and organise sessions.

The deadline for submitting Expressions of Interest is: Friday, 1 August 2014.

EWASS 2015 : European Week of Astronomy and Space Science