NYRIA WORKSHOP 2020

Virtual

Date: 26th - 30th October 2020
Venue: Virtual
Local Organizers: NYRIA Team

From the 26th to 29th of October, the Network for Young Researchers for Instrumentation in Astronomy (NYRIA) met for its yearly workshop, as it has done every year since 2015. But this time, like many other conferences and workshops, we had to adapt the workshop to be fully virtual. This was not an easy task, and we dedicated many hours to the organisation and planning, but I have to say that we were extremely happy with the results.

The NYRIA workshops are organised by and for early career researchers working in the field of instrumentation for ground-based visible-infrared astronomy, with the idea of creating strong connections among the participants. This in turn leads to enhanced knowledge of the whole instrumentation field and encourages cross discipline collaborations.


Picture of the Organizing Committee, from top left:
Robert Harris, Lisa Bardou, Saavidra Perera, Cyprien Lanthermann, Angela Cortes,
Faustine Cantalloube, Bachar Wehbe, Kalyan Radhakrishnan and Garima Singh.


For the 2020 edition, we received a total of 120 applications, from which we selected 25 participants from people already working in the area of ground-based visible-infrared instrumentation. This is the standard number for our workshops, as one of the key points is that all the participants have to present their work, and must be able to easily interact with each other. The difference this year was we invited all the applicants to listen to the talks and accessibility panel, to try to encourage further participation. The organising committee was composed of nine people from across Europe, who organised the entire event via regular zoom meetings.

During the workshop, we used zoom as a platform for the meetings and we used slack for rapid communication between the attendees, and the questions for the talks. In addition, we made use of the gather.town for the informal social discussions between participants, allowing them to enjoy a beer in the garden, or a coffee in the park.

We requested our participants to create an introduction video of 1 minute, presenting themselves. After delivering a short welcome presentation about NYRIA, we started the compilation of the introductory videos of the participants. This was a great way to make acquaintance with the participants and encounter impressive displays of creativity and artistry.

Informal social meetings at Gather.town
(here is the virtual beer garden).

One of the key activities was an accessibility panel with Amelia Ortiz-Gil, Faustine Cantalloube and Nicolas Bonne. Here we learnt about the challenges of making astronomy accessible to the blind and visually impaired community, as well as the work being done to overcome this barrier. In particular We learnt that by adapting our behaviour we not only make things more accessible for one group, but for everyone.

As networking is core to the purpose of our workshops, we separated into different groups for several of the activities, with the idea of making them more efficient and reducing the amount of people per activity to encourage people to communicate. This required us to have sessions in parallel and for this purpose we used four different zoom rooms. The activities chosen for this year were an “inspirational talk from senior instrument scientists”, “virtual tours of facilities and telescopes” and “The importance of outreach”, plus the coffee breaks that allow the time to get all the people back to the main activities.

After the workshop, we created a questionnaire that will help us improve. We still don't know where it will take place next year, maybe virtually again, but we hope to meet in person soon.

Now we hope we have new members to join our crusade, help and motivate researchers in the instrumentation for ground based astronomy. If you have questions, do not hesitate to contact us.

Written by: Angela Cortes
Links to check out: