34th Annual Report (2021-22)

80 SCIENTIFIC MEETINGS AND OTHER EVENTS Report on BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG) meeting hosted online at IUCAA during May 19-20, 2021 The BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG) provides a platform for BRICS member countries to collaborate in the field of astronomy. This year India has assumed the Presidency of BRICS Meetings and on this occasion, IUCAA and DST, New Delhi, jointly hosted an on line meeting of the 7th BRICS Astronomy Working Group (BAWG) during May 19-20, 2021 at IUCAA. Participants from all five countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) participated in this meeting with more than 50 participants consisting astronomers and government officials from these countries. The key scientific institutions that participated from the BRICS countries include the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bengaluru, National Center for Radio Astrophysics, Pune, University of Delhi from India; National Laboratory on Astrophysics; Brazilian Center for Research in Physics, National Institute for Space Research from Brazil; Institute of Astronomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences from Russia; National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences fromChina; The South African Astronomical Society, DST South Africa, National Research Foundation, from South Africa. The first day of the meeting was on the presentations made by each of these The Introductory Summer School on Astronomy and Astrophysics (ISSAA 2021) for college and university students, which was held concurrently with the Refresher Course on Astronomy and Astrophysics (RCAA 2021) for college and university teachers, was conducted by IUCAA during May 10 – June 11, 2021. The events were conducted virtually through the Zoom video conferencing platform, and also simultaneously live streamed on YouTube. This year we had received a very enthusiastic interest for the Summer School, with more than about 1,300 applications. About 750 students, pursuing Bachelor's andMaster's degrees in different Introductory Summer School on Astronomy and Astrophysics scientific and technical disciplines from different Indian colleges and universities, were invited to attend the lectures. The intensive lecture series consisted of 30 different topics, ranging from the basic pedagogical lectures on introductory astronomy to more advanced talks on cutting edge research. The broad range of lectures were meant to introduce the fundamentals of astronomy and astrophysics, as well as give them a flavour of the current developments in the frontier research topics and techniques. The lectures were delivered by faculty, postdocs, and PhD students from IUCAA, along with a two-part guest lectures on Astrophysical Turbulence by Dhrubaditya Mitra (NORDITA, Sweden). This year, we also had live demonstrations of several astronomy related experiments to encourage the participants to gain more hands-on experience on astronomy, and the topics included experiments on radio astronomy, demonstration of building a small telescope and its usage, and a tutorial on an open source planetarium software Stellarium. The live demonstrations were organised jointly by members of the IUCAA Teaching and Learning Centre (TLC) and the IUCAA astronomy outreach team. Recordings of most of the lectures and demonstrations have countries on the progress of BRICS Flagship Project on "BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network (BITDN)" followed by a discussion on the proposed formation "BRICS Astronomy Association". The second was primarily on the presentation of concluding remarks from the officials of the five respective countries followed by the preparation of the "Resolutions of the 7th Meeting of the BRICS Astronomy Working Group" by the BRICS Secretariat based at South Africa. The BAWG noted the importance of enhancing collaboration among astronomers from the BRICS countries. The respective Focal Points in each country will organize a discussion on the creation of BRICS Astronomy Association and report to the Secretariat for further actions. The BAWG thanked India for successfully hosting the 2021 meeting and China has offered to host the next BAWG meeting in 2022. The BAWG was organized by Ranjan Gupta who is the current Chairman of the India BAWG.