IN ADDITION to our Main Traineeship projects below YOU CAN SEE TWO PROJECTS PROPOSED BY THE COOPERATION THROUGH EDUCATION IN SCIENCE AND ASTRONOMY RESEARCH (CESAR) TEAM 

 

To apply for the CESAR projects please fill the online application form that you can find here.

 

1. CESAR SCIENCE EDUCATION

ESAC supervisor(s): Günther Hasinger, Michel Breitfellner, Beatriz Gonzalez Garcia

The IAU has recognized the importance of astronomy education in the last few decades and in the 2019 IAU Astronomy Education Conference has stressed the aim to increase the quality, quantity, community and impact of astronomy education research and practice (https://iau-dc-c1.org/astroedu-conference/). 

In this context, the CESAR Team has a lot of value to add. CESAR, which stands by Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research, is a joint educational initiative developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and the INTA-owned company ISDEFE. Its objective is to provide students from European primary and secondary schools and universities with hands-on experience in Astronomy. 

We offer the opportunity to work on the generation of scientific activities to attract youngsters to STEM careers and/or to approach space and high-technology to their daily lifes. These activities are called "Science Cases" and can vary in duration from some hours to up to a full school term being performed either including a visit to ESAC or with on-line support in the class room.

The trainee is expected to:
- participate in the development of new science and education (sci&edu) cases in collaboration with ESA scientists and teachers of hot astronomical topics defined together with the CESAR Science Case Team;
- generate and update material for the sci&edu (teacher’s guide, students guide, booklets);
- participate in the design and implementation of "Science Cases" and the related front-ends for teachers and students as well as web-tools, IT applications and experiments (e.g. AstroPi, Arduino, ...) to make the "Science Cases" more attractive to students;
- cross-match the contents of the ¨Science Cases¨ with the scholar curricula from Spain and UK;
- work with scientific data from ESA missions and the CesaR observatories;
- participate in teacher training courses, sessions with school classes and  astronomical outreach events.

Duration: 3-6 months.

Desirable expertise or programming language:

  • Good understanding of astronomical and astrophysical concepts,
  • Good background in maths and physics, 
  • Good skills in communicating scientific concepts to students (6-18) years old, 
  • Fluent (reading and writing) in English,
  • Capable to work within an international team, 
  • Achive goals within schedules,
  • Good skills in visualizing data using astronomical data packages (ds9, salsaJ, stellarium) and programming experience (i.e, python).

2. CESAR VIRTUAL EDUCATIONAL PLATFORM

ESAC supervisor(s): Günther Hasinger, Michel Breitfellner, David Cabezas

CESAR (Cooperation through Education in Science and Astronomy Research) is a joint educational initiative developed by the European Space Agency (ESA), the Spanish National Institute for Aerospace Technology (INTA) and INTA-owned company ISDEFE. Its objective is to provide students from European secondary schools and universities with hands-on experience in Optical and Radio Astronomy. In addition, CESAR shall contribute with outreach activities to promote Space Science and to stimulate European students' interest in Science and Technology in general and Astronomy in particular. It is based at ESA’s European Space Astronomy Centre (ESAC) in Villanueva de la Cañada, Madrid, Spain.

We offer the opportunity to work on the generation of scientific activities to attract youngsters to STEM careers and/or to approach space and high-technology to their daily lifes. These activities, called "Science Cases", are exercises about Space related phenomena which should help to better understand the univerese we are living in.

The CesaR Virtual Educational Platform (CVEP) is a new interactive way to learn about the Universe, Space Expolaration and ESA by being walked through those "Science Cases" by an on-line software on the CesaR web pages.

The objective of this trainee project is to:
- adapt the existing educational material ("Science Cases") for being used with the CesaR Virtual Educational Platform;
- design and create multimedia (image and video) contents for the CVEP;
- manage and edit CesaR news/events for the web and other media;
- participate in the operations of the CesaR ESAC Observatories;
- participate in the teacher training courses, sessions with school classes and astronomical outreach events.

Project duration: 3-6 months

Desirable expertise:

  • Knowledge in physics and mathematics,
  • Interest in Astrophysics and Planetary and Space Science,
  • Interest in Science Communications,
  • Fluency in English and Spanish,
  • Some knowledge of graphic design and editing of pictures and videos,
  • Basic knowledge of HTML.