OAD Regional Offices Activities - IAU Office of Astronomy for Development

Regional Offices Activities: JAN-MAR 2023

The website has been updated with activities related to the solar eclipse in October and the reports from all past periods from 2014-2020
In February, the office organised the first hackathon in the Andean Region attended by 25 undergraduate and graduate students of sciences and engineering.
The upcoming IV Workshop Astronomía en los Andes will focus on “Engaged communities in development through Astrotourism”. The main goal of this IV Workshop is to promote high-quality, responsible and innovative tourism of stars in the Andean Region, especially in rural areas where it could become a real driving force for local economies.

The office organized, with the Jordanian Astronomical Society (JAS), the Arab Union for Astronomy and Space Science (AUASS) and some other Jordanian & Arab institutions, several public lectures, seminars, and courses via Zoom
In January, a conference on the “Important Figures in the History of the Arab-Islamic Civilization in Science and Geography” was organized with the cooperation of the Jordanian Society for the History of Science. 150 participants joined from several Arab countries.

The East African Office convened a special session on the African Dark Sky and Astro-tourism Strategy at the annual African Astronomical Society conference in March
The office presented its activities to the Ugandan Parliament Science and Technology Standing Committee, which visited the Space Science and Geospatial Institute in Ethiopia on February 14, 2023
The office director participated in the X-Vision 23 COSPAR & IAU I-HOW capacity building workshops in South Africa

Preparations are ongoing for the Astro Ecology activity, which will be held in Mongolia in May 2023.
A 5-day Science Teacher Training was conducted in Shanghai in March
Attended the annual conference of Chinese Space Survey Telescope in March

The office is preparing for upcoming visits within the Erasmus+ Twinning programme

With funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation, the office has issued a call for mini grants for a Women and Girls in Astronomy Program

The office is planning the annual PLOAD meeting in Brazil in October around the time of annular eclipse
Outreach presentations were organised in Mozambique
Participated in 3 asteroid search campaigns in Mozambique, Portugal
OruMbya project funded by the OAD has started activities in Brazil
Organization of a national art exhibition on African, Afro-Brazilian and Indigenous cosmologies

SEA+ Translation project continues in Cambodia and Timor-Leste. This project is aimed to encourage the people in SEA region and beyond to get the astronomy booklets in their own languages

An International Women’s Day event was held at the Byurakan Astrophysical Observatory (BAO) by UN: DigitALL: Innovation and technology for gender equality
The office participated in the largest regional event Digitec Expo 2023; Astronomy related digital technologies: robotic telescopes, digital receivers, virtual observatories
The IAU HOW-I Workshop in Radio Astronomy 2023 will take place in July 2023 in Erciyes University in Kayseri, Turkey

BIUST-MPG African Astronomy School will be held in Botswana from 26 June to 7 July 2023
African Geophysical Society conference to be hosted by the Physics Society of Zambia in Lusaka from 3-5 October 2023. Prior to that there will be an International Summer school on space weather supported by the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI)
Astroscience Exploration Network conference will be held on 1-2 June 2023 in Lusaka

PAPSSN Mobility Program: The 3rd call for the selection of participants has concluded
VASCO Citizen science is ongoing with the verification of some identified candidates which have transients.
Participated in Women and girls in Astronomy celebrations