The AstroTwinCoLO 2014 Meeting was the second event celebrated as part of the Astronomy Twinning Program between the University of Antioquia (Colombia) and Leiden Observatory (Leiden). The meeting was held in Medellin (Colombia) between August 19-29, 2014. The goal was to continue with a 5-year long collaboration effort between the two institutions that started in 2013. We had the specific goal of diversifying the courses offered by UofA to its undergrad astronomy students by having two visiting LO professors per year who teach specific topics and become part of the official astronomy program, and allowing for the visit of UofA students to carry on small research projects under the supervision of LO researchers (at least 1 per year).
The program in 2014, funded by OAD, was successful, and we had one course on gravitational lensing and one of interferometry. 38 students followed the courses and presented the exam. 20 of them obtained a passing grade. As part of our commitment with task force 3, two public lectures were held at the Medellin planetarium by the lecturers (Profs. Kuijken and LePoole), with high a attendance by the general public. This followed the same scheme as the twinning activities in 2013 and 2014, which were funded by Colombian official institutions and NWO-OAD. We are starting preparations for a fourth year in 2016. The undergrad program in Astronomy has recently started graduating its first students. At least four of them have been accepted to pursue a Master program in astronomy at the Leiden Observatory, partly due to their participation and commitment in our twinning program. The presence of Colombian graduate students in the Netherlands has significantly increased in recent years as a result of this collaboration. All lectures from all courses have been streamed live and have been recorded. They can be found in the link below.
website : https://sites.google.com/site/astrotwincolo/about
Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=astrotwincolo