CITA is pleased to host the International Summer Institute for Modeling in Astrophysics
Applications are now being accepted here for ISIMA 2014: Gravitational Dynamics
The deadline for graduate students is January 17, 2014
Application
This year’s program is on Gravitational Dynamics in the formation, evolution and fate of almost all celestial bodies, from asteroids, to planets and stars, galaxies, and clusters of galaxies. The study of gravitational dynamics has been revived in the past few decades thanks to advances in high-performance computing to simulate the evolution of the entire Solar System for billions of years, or visualize how a galaxy like the Milky Way assembles over time.
The PanSTARRs and LSST surveys will soon catalog the vast majority of sizeable solar system asteroids. The Kepler mission is discovering every year hundreds of extra-solar planetary systems. The GAIA mission is about to characterize the orbits of billions of stars within our galaxy. Unfortunately, this massive amount of data will only be useful if we have the computing power to interpret it.
ISIMA 2014 will invite students and faculty, theorists and observers, N-body specialists and analytical modelers from the three following areas: Planetary Dynamics, Globular Cluster Dynamics and Galactic Dynamics, to work alongside each other for 6 weeks. This will provide an ideal forum for the cross-pollination of ideas and techniques.
The main lecturers for the 1st week program will be Scott Tremaine (Planetary Dynamics), Douglas Heggie (Cluster Dynamics) and David Merritt (Galactic Dynamics).
The International Summer Institute for Modeling in Astrophysics brings together scientists with a wide breadth of technical skills and research interests to solve topical outstanding problems in astrophysics. It operates every summer for 6 weeks and is hosted alternatively by various institutions world-wide. Participants can come for a short period or for the whole duration of the program, and are encouraged to come back year after year.
It aims to build a unique friendly and supportive community among scientists at different stages of their career (graduate students, postdocs and established faculty) and from diverse backgrounds. It is a pluridisciplinary program and encourages participants to think outside the box, and provides every day the intellectual stimulus for the emergence of fundamental and innovative ideas. The program fosters excellence in both research and education. The participating ISIMA senior scientists are world-caliber researchers, dedicated to training the younger generation of PhD students and post-doctoral researchers.