We propose a unique project of strategic partnership between Czech Republic, Slovakia and Spain for the higher education and research in astronomy. These three countries, represented here by their top institutions and universities, have almost opposite infrastructure/background and complementary requirements for education and mobility in this area. Spain has European foremost observation facilities with diverse international community and temporary outgoing needs for Spanish students. Czech Republic and Slovakia lack such facilities. Their astronomical community is more homogeneous with a need for more foreign students and researchers. Modern astronomical research requires extensive knowledge of observing techniques and modern instrumentation. Large observatories can provide the instrumentation but the process of observing time application is extremely competitive and the subscription rates are sometimes reaching a factor 10. Only good observing proposals and skilled proposers are rewarded by allocation of observing time. Typically, in the university courses the knowledge about instrumentation and observing techniques is offered only in special seminars and even young postdoctoral staff might be short of opportunity to get familiar with the hands on telescope approach. On the other hand, mobility is crucial for astronomic careers and without mobility and working experience abroad, young researchers can not find jobs which lead to tenure. There are only very limited options aiming at mobility in astronomy for young staff and they are very competitive. Furthermore, mobility of experienced astronomers can spread the expertise to partner organization by organizing lecture series and colloquia. Such events can lead to establishing of new collaborations. Therefore, our project would be divided into two mobility parts. First mobility would offer longer term (6 months) fellowships to students and young staff from partner organizations to another partner organization. Czech and Slovak students/young staff would gain experience with the instrumentation and hands-on-telescope by working on scientific project at IAC and its partner observatories (GTC). Spanish students/young staff will gain in exchange the work abroad experience. The second mobility option will include senior researchers who are experts in the field of research and/or astronomy instrumentation who will be involved in lecture series at partner institutes. These lectures will be make available online and in printed version and will be an intellectual output of this project. In addition, we would like to organize also public lectures which will introduce the top level research to general audience. The project would be divided in the preparatory stage, mobility stage and multiplier events in the form of summer and winter/spring school and the final intellectual output preparatory stage and evaluation stage. The impact and results apart from the intellectual output in form of lecture series and their online and printed presentations will be the career enhancement for students/young researchers. The future generation of European astronomers participating on our mobility project will acquire career boost and advantage for their further jobs in research. In addition, we can provide our share of payback to general public by organizing public lectures for broad audience about top astronomic research presented by the senior researchers on short term mobility. Longer term benefits of our project will be strengthening the ties between partner organizations. We expect that new collaborations might start from the mobility exchanges of students/young staff and also from senior staff giving lecture series and seminars. We would be seeking longer term collaboration with the partner institutes beyond the scope of this project by e.g. making ERASMUS Key action 1 mobility for students easier among the partner institutes and other collaborative projects.
This unique project contributed to enhancement of careers of young astronomers and to education of general publics in astronomy. Astronomy requires international interaction and this is usually the first step to future career prospects of early career researchers. However, there are not many targeted schemes focusing on exchanges between observatories like IAC Roque de Los Muchachos at La Palma. With our project, we filled this gap. We enabled mobility and expertise exchange for 21 young researchers, almost twice as much than originally planned 14. Several of the young astronomers obtained consequently top jobs in astronomy such as an ESO PhD studentship or ESA postdocotoral fellowship or even a tenure track professorship position. We tried to be as transparent as possible and researchers participating in the mobility scheme were sharing their unique experiences with public via our blog page http://erasmus.asu.cas.cz/erasmus2017/blog.html . We also presented our research in the form of a book written by expert authors from partner institutes, disseminating our project work to many new readers. Furthermore, we also disseminated our ideas through two summer schools which were organized for students from outside of the project. One took place at Stara Lesna, Slovakia in 2019 and the other was fully virtual due to pandemics of COVID-19 and it was organized from Brno, Czech Republic. Our participants gave more than 32 talks and lectures and we were also able to present a cycle of lectures on "Life in the Universe" for the general public which had more than 100000 views on Youtube channel. We pursued a unique pilot project with pre-schooler kids when we worked with the local kindergarten in Ondrejov, Czech Republic on the project "Exoplanets in the Universe". Kids aged 5-6 were present for video projection of pictures of the Universe on the roof of the Perek telescope dome and then they worked with their teachers on the presentation of their understanding of exoplanets. The results were presented to teachers and parents in the community session in the Astronomical Institute in Ondrejov in the library. Kids works were also left for a small exhibition. We recognize that every young kid has a huge potential and growth later in young peoples lives comes through initial stimuli which we hoped to achieve. Even if only one kid from the present group would go to study natural sciences, our goal was achieved. Astronomical research is about collaboration on an international scene. It is about high tech instruments and it unveils the greatest mysteries of the Universe we are living in. Our project contributed to scientific unveiling of these mysteries and also helped to boost careers of the young researchers (even perhaps the potential of the smallest ones). All our results are included in the Dissemination Platform and listed in the detailed report attached.