Project title: Regional School on Astrophysical Data Reduction
Project leader: Prof. Binil Aryal
Tribhuvan University has been offered opportunity to carry out research work in Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) since 2006 at the Central Department of Physics (CDP), Kathmandu, Nepal. To date 84 MSc thesis have been completed in the various areas of Astrophysics. About two dozen masters’ theses are published in the Journals MNRAS, A&A, and Ap&SS. CDP has offered Ph.D. program in Astrophysics since 2010. At present, five students are involved in Ph.D. and 18 are doing work for their Master’s dissertation. The research areas are mainly galaxy evolution, ISM and dark energy. Additional Information is available in http://astronepal.webs.com.
After completing their Masters’ thesis, ~50% students go abroad (mostly to the USA) to further their studies and research in A&A. The remaining students go to various colleges in Nepal to teach physics and astronomy at undergraduate level. They tend to forget what they learned during their Masters’ thesis because of their involvement in teaching. The aim of this school to get them together and finally prepare them for their Ph.D. project. In addition to these students, there are large number (more than 200) of Masters’ students majoring Astrophysics every year. Last year we had organized 4 days workshop NWAA2013. This workshop left a strong impact not only on participants, but also to the authorities of University as well as Government of Nepal. Because of the effective outcome of NWAA2013 (supported by the IAU), our department has recently convinced the Government of Nepal to support this particular area in the year 2014.
We have decided to organize a regional workshop in order to provide an extensive learning environment to the participants of Nepal and neighboring countries. We will focus on database, data reduction and problem identification which is commonly used A&A research. Ultimately, a beginning of fruitful research collaboration is needed for the better future, in this region.