Strategic Project - UI 3 - 2013-2014

PEst-C/FIS/UI0003/2013 & FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER-037275

Principal investigator
Pedro P. Avelino

The Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade (CAUP), corresponding to FCT research unit 3, is a private scientific association of the Universidade do Porto with status of public utility. CAUP was one of the first units to be created in Portugal, it is the largest unit in space sciences and has been classified as em excellent in the last two evaluations organized by FCT. The basic operations costs of CAUP are funded by the strategic project, with the main objective of providing adequate working conditions, contacts and basic resources to the research teams. This is critical to ensure the minimum long-term stability and conditions for the teams to be able to obtain additional funds for research form the European Commission and other sources.

Overall, CAUP has 85 integrate members (including researchers, administrative and outreach staff) and 9 collaborators. The research activities are carried out by a team of 37 researchers with a PhD, of different nationalities. It is expected that the team will continue to grow in 2013-2014 due to the ongoing international projects. CAUP's policy towards recruitment has enabled the unit to grow internationally, in terms of visibility, and also to attract researchers of very high quality on a regular basis. The average impact of the scientific productivity by CAUP is well above the international mean value, with an accumulated number 30 citations per paper, in more than 700 papers.

It is considered to be of crucial importance for CAUP to participate in international collaborations as well as in exchanges of postgraduate students and training in Astronomy. CAUP aims to attract and maintain a balanced and critical mass of well trained human resources in areas of forefront research in Astronomy. Focusing on strategic scientific topics that correspond to mainstream and strategically relevant areas, enables a more sustainable and coherent growth for the research activities of CAUP. These have profited enormously from national and international key cooperation projects, in particular related to the Portuguese participation in ESA and ESO. Such international initiatives will continue, also supported on active collaborations with other national teams in Portugal.

CAUP has a pioneer role in the promotion of science, where scientific research activities are complemented by the best science outreach practices towards the general public and schools. Our aim is to further improve the level and quality of the activity in the area of outreach and promotion of science and scientific culture through Astronomy, carried out for more than two decades. As part of these activities, CAUP is responsible for the scientific management of the Planetário do Porto, since 1998. CAUP welcomes, on average, over 30 000 visitors per year (schools and public) to its many outreach activities and complementary training.

The support of an extensive training program in Astronomy at the University of Porto (BSc, MSc and PhD degrees) has been one of the key roles of CAUP. This support will continue, in particular with the integration of students of all levels in CAUP activities, with main emphasis on research. This unique contribution to the training of successive groups of professional astronomers continues to be a central objective for the future.

Funding institution
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia

Start: 1 January 2013
End: 31 December 2014