FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT --- AUGUST 2008
Location and Date:
The 1st CPS International School of Planetary Sciences will be held in 5-9 January, 2009 at Seapal Suma, a casual seaside resort located west to the central part of Kobe, Japan. The school is organized by Center for Planetary Science (CPS) under the Global Center of Excellence (GCOE) Program: "Foundation of International Center for Planetary Science", a joint project between Kobe University and Hokkaido University.
Purpose and Scope:
The CPS International School of Planetary Science aims at promoting education and research in planetary science for highly motivated graduate students and young researchers worldwide. It will offer them an opportunity to interact with leading scientists in a specific field of the year. The present school is the heritage of the Kobe International Planetary School held under the Kobe University 21 Century COE program.
This year's topic of the school will be "Dust in Space", reflecting the coming retirement of Prof. Tadashi Mukai, who was the leader of the 21th COE program "Origin and Evolution of Planetary Systems" and is the most well-known Japanese scientist in cosmic dust research. Internationally well-established experts in dust science will review recent progress in our understandings of interstellar dust, interplanetary dust, cometary dust, and dust in protoplanetary disks and debris disks. The lecturers and their topics are listed below. The Organizing Committee of the school will select 60 participants in total on the basis of their applications.
Lectures:
| Lecturer | Topic |
| Jürgen Blum | "How large can dust aggregates really grow by collisions in protoplanetary disks?" |
| Bruce T. Draine | "Modeling of interstellar dust" |
| Seung Soo Hong | "A three-dimensional model of the interplanetary dust cloud" |
| Wing-Huen Ip | "Dust-plasma interactions" |
| Elmar K. Jessberger | "Some stories told from cometary dust and IDP compositions" |
| Alexander V. Krivov | "Debris disks: Seeing dust, thinking of planetesimals and planets" |
| Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd | "Optical properties of dust particles in the solar system, with emphasis on cometary dust" |
| Takashi Onaka | "Observations of dust in space from space" |
Schedule:
The school will start at 15:00 on January 5th by check-ins of all the participants and an opening reception, followed by a dinner (17:30-19:00) and a poster presentation by the participants (19:00-21:00). The school will be closed at 12:00 on January 9th, followed by a lunch at the venue. Detailed schedule will be available in the next announcement.
Target Participants and Selection:
The course is targeted mainly to doctoral students and postdocs. The school is international in scope and we welcome applicants from any country.
We will select 60 participants based on
(1) the level and suitability of your qualifications (neither too high nor too low) and
(2) the relevance of your works and interests to planetary science (we attach importance to the way you describe them)
Applications should be made by filling out the Application Form, and sending it by e-mail to
pschool-info@cps-jp.org. The deadline for application is September 22, 2008. Selection will be made by the Organizing Committee and the decision will be sent to the applicants by September 30, 2008.
Financial Support:
A limited amount of funds is available for approximately 30 successful participants, and the amount of money paid to individual awardees will be decided by the Organizing Committee. Please indicate your intension and estimate of your transportation expenses on the application form if you would like to request financial support. Note that January 5th is probably still in the New Year's celebrations in Japan, therefore, your flight ticket might cost more than the standard rate. The amount of financial support made available to the recipients will be informed by September 30, 2008.
Expected Attendance Costs:
Resistration Fee - Registration fee is 10,000 JPY. This includes: the reception, coffee breaks, beverage at the poster session, and an extra cost for the banquet scheduled on the dinner time on January 8th.
Accommodation - All participants are expected to stay in Seapal Suma by sharing a room with 3 other participants (4 in 1). The room is a Japanese style, namely, a large room floored with tatami mats and equipped with a toilet. There is no tub/shower in the room, but the hotel has an ocean-view public bath for each gender equipped with a huge tub at the top floor. We expect that the room will cost approximately 36,000 JPY per person to share the room for four nights. If you do not like to share the room, you may occupy the room alone by paying approximately 48,000 JPY for four nights. Alternatively, Japanese-style rooms with both toilet and tub/shower are available with approximately 38,000-50,000 JPY per person for four nights, depending on the number of people to share the room. We will allocate rooms to participants according to the requests from the participants, but, may not always fulfill their preferences, because only a limited number of rooms, in particular the rooms with a shower/tub are available.
Seapal Suma |
Meals - The above-mentioned cost for the accommodation includes all the meals during the school (from the dinner on January 5th to the lunch on January 9th), EXCEPT for the dinner on January 7th, when an excursion or free time is tentatively planned in the afternoon.
Domestic Transportation - The venue is located about 100 min. from Kansai International Airport (KIX) (65 min. by shuttle bus to Kobe Sannomiya, 5 min. walk from the bus stop to JR Sannomiya railway station, 12-15 min. by train to JR Suma railway station, plus 12 min. walk from the station). The bus fare from the airport is 1,800 JPY and the train ticket costs 170 JPY. The nearest airport to the venue is Kobe Airport (UKB), from which Port Liner, an urban fully automated guideway transit (AGT) system, will take you to JR Sannomiya railway station in 16-18 min. (320 JPY). Osaka International Airport, another name, Itami Airport (ITM), is also convenient to JR Sannomiya station. It takes approximately 40 min. by bus and costs 1,020 JPY.
Important Dates:
| 22 September 2008 | Deadline for application |
| 30 September 2008 | Notification of our decision to the applications including the financial support |
| 30 November 2008 | Abstract deadline for poster presentation |
| 5-9 January 2009 | The 1st CPS International Planetary School |
Organizing Committee:
| Tetsuo Yamamoto | Hokkaido University |
| Akiko M. Nakamura | Kobe University |
| Kohei Kitazato | Kobe University |
| Hidekazu Tanaka | Hokkaido University |
| Hiroshi Kimura | Hokkaido University |
Contact Information:
E-mail: pschool-info@cps-jp.org
Post-mail:
Akiko M. Nakamura
Center for Planetary Science
Graduate School of Science, Kobe University
1-1 Rokkodai, Nada, Kobe 657-8501, Japan
Fax: +81-(0)78-803-5791