Two astronomy students from the Universidad de Chile — Andrea Silva and Cinthya Herrera — were awarded scholarships by the NRAO to attend the Eleventh Synthesis Imaging Workshop in Socorro, NM, from 10 - 17 June 2008. These students were selected by the NRAO scholarship commission: Mónica Rubio, representing the National Council of Scientific and Technological Investigation (CONICYT); Andreas Reisenegger, President of the Chilean Astronomical Society (SOCHIAS); and Eduardo Hardy, NRAO/AUI representative in Chile.
Both students have an undergraduate degree in astronomy and are presently graduate students at the Universidad de Chile. Silva has completed her studies at this institution and is finishing an MSc thesis on massive star formation related to the accretion process in dense massive galactic nuclei. Herrera is starting the first year of her graduate studies. She was an undergraduate student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile where she worked with millimeter wave data from the Large Magellanic Cloud.
Silva and Herrera are interested in advancing their studies in radio astronomy, and the Eleventh Synthesis Imaging Workshop is a unique opportunity for them to do so. Silva is interested in interferometric data reduction and observations, and is looking forward to ALMA. Herrera is interested in VLA data and, in particular, the practical tutorials that she will attend at the Synthesis Imaging Workshop.
Sergio Cabezon