Projects
CPAN, which stands for Centro Nacional de Física de Partículas, Astropartículas y Nuclear, or its English translation National Center for Particle, Astroparticle and Nuclear Physics is a project within the framework of CONSOLIDER - Ingenio 2010 program. This project aims to actively promote the coordinated participation of the Spanish scientific groups in cutting edge research in particle physics, astroparticle and nuclear physics.
A Spanish Project supported by the Ministry of Science and Innovation's Consolider-Ingenio 2010 Programme. It started in December 17, 2009, and will last 5 years.
PIERRE AUGER
The Pierre Auger Observatory is a cosmic ray observatory designed to detect ultra-high-energy cosmic rays: single sub-atomic particles (protons or atomic nuclei) with energies beyond 1020 eV. It is located in western Argentina's Mendoza Province. The project was proposed by Jim Cronin and Alan Watson in 1992. Almost 500 physicists from 55 institutions around the world are currently collaborating on the project.
JEM-EUSO
JEM-EUSO is a new type of observatory that will utilize very large volumes of the earth's atmosphere as a detector of the most energetic particles in the Universe. JEM-EUSO (EUSO for "Extreme Universe Space Observatory") observes the brief flashes of light in the earth's atmosphere caused by particles arriving from deep space.
ASTROMADRID
The aim of this project is to coordinate activities in the development of astronomical instrumentation for different groups of the Community of Madrid. The proposal is the establishment of a multidisciplinary group that will benefit from the synergies generated between each group so as to optimize the development of astronomical instruments for the benefit of national and even international community.
The SpaceTec-CM program aims to support with human resources the development of projects in space astronomical instrumentation where several groups of the Comunidad de Madrid are involved. At present several research groups are involved in the design and construction of various instruments with state of the art technologies for future space missions: EUSO (Universidad de Alcalá), EUCLID (CIEMAT), the Bepi Colombo MIXS (CAB-INTA) mission Solar Orbiter (INTA, Universidad de Alcalá) and Laser Raman Spectrometer for ExoMars mission (CAB-INTA), to name most important. Parallel working on developing new technologies for future missions, such as biomarkers SOLID concept (CAB), or studies of infrared interferometry and remote metrology (CAB, INTA, UPM). Also being developed prototypes for future missions cryogenic detectors X-ray and infrared (IMM). These projects require the development of space technologies at the frontier of knowledge, and are only possible thanks to the close collaboration with aerospace companies located mainly in Madrid.
The TEC2SPACE-CM project aims to support with human resources the development of projects in space astronomical instrumentation where several groups of the Comunidad de Madrid are involved.
EUSO-Balloon is a partnership project of the international consortium JEM-EUSO and CNES that aims to fly over several campaigns starting in 2014, a prototype fluorescence telescope aboard a stratospheric balloon.
Mini-EUSO
The Mini-EUSO project is a small replica of the UV telescope JEM-EUSO inside the pressurized ISS, with an access from astronauts. It would be located next to a UV transparent window in the Zvezda Russian module in the ISS, looking at earth in nadir position.
The Mini-EUSO instrument will be equipped with one full original JEM-EUSO Photo-Detector-Module (PDM), an optical system made of two Fresnel lenses (25 cm of diameter) and a data acquisition system.The Mini-EUSO mission has at least four different objectives:
- to raise the technical readiness level of JEM-EUSO to the highest grade.
- to perform an absolute calibration of the multi-anode photomultipliers in flight (crucial for JEM-EUSO).
- to take advantage of being at ISS altitude, like JEM-EUSO. This will make possible to study in a precise way the UV background coming from earth in all the different reflective conditions (water, earth, vegetation, snow, etc.). The small size of the windows precludes the observation of showers, but the absolute background evaluation is extremely important for the JEM-EUSO shower observation because it sets the shower energy threshold.
- to study atmospheric phenomena, like lightning, and related light, as well as meteors.
Los proyectos FECyT II Maratón de Astropartículas y III Maratón de Astropartículas, cofinanciado por la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología (FECyT) para la promoción de las vocaciones científicas, aglutina a grupos españoles involucrados en investigación en Física de Astropartículas y Clima, Radiación Cósmica, Radiación Gamma, Neutrinos, Ondas Gravitacionales, Materia Oscura y Energía Oscura. Participan investigadores del Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA), Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC), Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón (ICMA), Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC, Valencia), Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Universidad de Granada, Universidad de Huelva, Universidad de León, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Universidad de Salamanca, Universidad de Valencia, Universidad de Zaragoza y la Universidad de Alcalá que coordina el proyecto.
GENERA is a Horizon 2020 project aiming at continuing, monitoring and improving the Gender Equality Plans of Research Institutions and Organisations specifically in the physics research field. These three actions will be performed by a Consortium of 13 beneficiary partner Research Performing and Research Funding Organisations and a number of associate partners and observers.
The GENERA Consortium includes a considerable representation of women physicists active in their careers at different levels and will engage with further women physicists active in various Institutions to benchmark and monitor the effectiveness of already active and previously proposed measures and the ones which will be proposed by the Consortium.
The end goal is to propose and create organisational structures allowing physics research in Europe to benefit from the greater presence of talented women at all levels, and which can open up more opportunities for women to create successful careers in physics research and in related fields. While the end goal will focus on the research world, GENERA will look into the origin of the problem by creating liaisons with schools and proposing suitable programs to foster the field from early stages and to propose measures that can be adopted by middle and high schools.
Another major goal of GENERA is to contribute to overcoming the under-representation of women in physics research which is long-standing and persistent even if the prevailing cultures adopt the assumption of being ‘gender neutral’. Still, these assumptions did not produce the desired effect of increasing female representation in the physics research field.
GENERA will focus on the implementation by European research organisation of Gender Equality Plans customised to circumstances and needs of the physics research community. The customised Gender Equality Plans involve systematic examination of all decision-making processes to identify any possible sources of gender bias in the research organisations active in physics and related fields.
The GENERA Network consortium (August 2019)
