Mobility for ALMA Regional Centre Users

The ALMA Regional Centre (ARC) in Europe is a unique network of (sub-) millimetre astronomy centres of excellence, being established to support the European user community for the global Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) being commissioned in Chile. This Networking Activity will structure and strengthen the European user community, by means of supporting user visits to the seven nodes of the European ARC network for European ALMA users. This will directly strengthen the burgeoning ALMA community, as well as the RadioNet3 community as a whole. Moreover, it will broaden the European access to ALMA science. Encouraging mobility of the community across Europe will disseminate knowledge and enable innovative research partnerships. ALMA is a new and powerful instrument that is eagerly awaited by many in the RadioNet3 community and the ARC structure offers an unparalleled opportunity for European collaboration, if an effective means of exchanging expertise can be guaranteed.

The ALMA ARC nodes are structured around providing face-to-face user support at all stages where help might be required, i.e. ALMA proposal and observation preparation, data reduction and archival research. This Network Activity will mobilize users who require this help but do not have access to a local ARC node or who require expertise that is only available at an ARC node different from their local one. This mobility will remove gaps in ALMA support within Europe, allow European astronomers to make optimal use of the ARC Network and make them more effective in an internationally competitive environment. This Network Activity will strengthen the user community by exchanging good practices and by providing direct access to data from the world's main millimetre telescope, which is very much in the spirit of the RadioNet3 infrastructure capacities program. Note that ALMA is built and operated by a global collaboration (ESO for Europe), but that all astronomers will have a chance to submit successful proposals.

Please use this link to apply for travel funding through MARCUs

The leader of this activity is Martin Zwaan.