News: 20140113: We invite the community to propose talks and posters during the meeting. See the meeting website for details at see http://www.great-esf.eu/events/Geneva-Jul14/

The ESA cornerstone mission Gaia iwas successfully launched in Dec 2013. Gaia will provide an unprecedented all-sky astrometric, photometric, and spectroscopic survey that promises to not only revolutionise our understanding of the formation history of the Milky Way, but that will also have a significant impact on many other areas of astronomy ranging from solar system science to quasars.

The key goals of this symposium will be for the Gaia project to provide the science community with the latest performance estimates for Gaia, to interact with the community to refine the delivery of the Gaia data products, and to give the community the opportunity to present the latest science results from activities carried out by and in the Gaia/GREAT community.

GREAT (an initiative of the ESA Gaia Project, Gaia Science Team and DPAC Executive) is a pan-European research network involving over 1000 researchers in 20+ countries with a common interest in maximising the science potential of Gaia. It is funded as an ESF research network programme (http://www.great-esf.eu) and an EU FP7 Marie-Curie Initial Training Network (http://www.great-itn.eu). GREAT has supported science activity in the form of ~40 conferences, workshops and schools together with numerous exchange visits (see http://great.ast.cam.ac.uk/Greatwiki/GaiaScienceMeetings). Its working groups cover topic areas where Gaia will have major impact (e.g. modelling, distance scales, hot massive stars, end states of stellar evolution, exoplanets, solar system, statistics, to name but a few - see http://great.ast.cam.ac.uk/Greatwiki/ CategoryWorkgroups). The GREAT network is fully open to all European (and indeed world wide) astronomers.

GREAT plenary meetings have run since the kickoff meeting in 2009, allowing members of the GREAT and wider community to participate in a dynamic fashion. They are structured around Gaia updates, presentations from related organisations (e.g. ESO), reports from new initiatives, and new science results from the network activities. In 2013, the GREAT plenary was held at the EWASS in Turku - in the form of a Science Symposium (S11) and Special Meeting (SM4). The full programme included a number of high visibility science presentations (see http://great.ast.cam.ac.uk/Greatwiki/GreatMeet- PM6).

This meeting will follow a similar format to last year - where the community will be able to actively participate in the creation of the programme, and the meeting.

Programme
The programme is available at the meeting website - see http://www.great-esf.eu/events/Geneva-Jul14/

Invited speakers
The speakers and programme will be available at the meeting website - see http://www.great-esf.eu/events/Geneva-Jul14/

Scientific organizers
The co-Chairs are Nicholas Walton (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, UK) and Timo Prusti (ESTEC, ESA). The organising committee consists of: Conny Aerts (Leuven, B), Joao Alves (Vienna, AT), Anthony Brown (Leiden, NL), Josef Durech (Prague, CZ), Laurent Eyer (Geneva, CH), Eva Grebel (Heidelberg, D), Carme Jordi (Barcelona, E), Lennart Lindegren (Lund, S), Francois Mignard (Nice, F), Andre Moitinho de Almeida (Lisbon, P), Karri Muinonen (Helsinki, FI), Dimitri Pourbaix (Brussels, B), Sofia Randich (Arcetri, I). In addition Orlagh Creevey (IAS, PAris, F) (and co-chair Sp2) participates in the SOC.

Contact
Nicholas A Walton (naw @ ast.cam.ac.uk)