The IAU Symposia, the scientific flagship of the IAU, aim to significantly advance the field and to  explore the current key questions and/or emerging concepts through a program of invited reviews, invited papers, contributed papers and poster papers, as well as ample time for discussion. In addition, Focus Meetings address scientific themes of interest to a group of IAU members willing to promote a new scientific area or an emerging field that is not well, or not at all, represented in the existing IAU Commissions.

In 2018 there will be a General Assembly (GA) of the IAU, in Vienna, from 20–31 August . This means that 7 of the 10 IAU Symposia for 2018 will be scheduled as GA Symposia within the scientific program of the GA, along with 15 Focus Meetings. The GA will encompass two weeks of intense scientific activity, including Divisions days, Poster Sessions, invited talks and a wide diversity of other topical meetings. In 2018 only 3 IAU Symposia will take place in other locations and outside the period of the General Assembly.

The number of valid proposals received for IAU Meetings in 2018 was particularly high: 7 Non-GA Symposia, 30 GA Symposia and 34 Focus Meetings. Therefore the ad-hoc Evaluation Committee, composed of the six IAU Vice-Presidents and the nine Division Presidents, and chaired by the IAU Assistant General Secretary, was faced with the challenge of selecting and recommending 3 Non-GA Symposia, 7 GA Symposia and 15 Focus Meetings for approval by the IAU Executive Committee. Regrettably many good proposals could not be selected.

The recommended list of IAU Meetings for 2018 approved at the annual IAU Executive Committee meeting, held in Pune three weeks ago, is as follows:

Symposia outside the IAU General Assembly

• IAUS 340 Long-term datasets for the understanding of solar and stellar magnetic cycles
• IAUS 341 Challenges in Panchromatic Modelling with Next Generation Facilities
• IAUS 342 Perseus in Sicily: from black hole to cluster outskirts

Symposia during the IAU General Assembly

• IAUS 343 Why Galaxies Care About AGB Stars: A Continuing Challenge through Cosmic Time
• IAUS 344 Dwarf Galaxies: From the Deep Universe to the Present
• IAUS 345 Origins: From the Protosun to the First Steps of Life
• IAUS 346 High-mass X-ray binaries: illuminating the passage from  massive binaries to merging compact objects
• IAUS 347 EArly Science with ELTs (EASE)
• IAUS 348 21st Century Astrometry: crossing the Dark and Habitable frontiers
• IAUS 349 Under One Sky: The IAU Centenary Symposium

Focus Meetings during the IAU General Assembly

• FM1 A Century of Asteroid Families
• FM2 Warm and Hot Baryonic Matter in the Cosmos
• FM3 Radio Galaxies: Resolving the AGN phenomenon
• FM4 Magnetic fields along the star-formation sequence
• FM5 Understanding historical observations to study transient phenomena
• FM6 Galactic Angular Momentum
• FM7 Radial metallicity gradients in star forming galaxies
• FM8 New Insights in  Extragalactic Magnetic Fields
• FM9 Solar Irradiance: Physics-Based Advances
• FM10 Nano Dust in Space and Astrophysics
• FM11 JWST: Launch, Commissioning, and Cycle 1 Science
• FM12 Calibration and Standardization Issues in UV-VIS-IR Astronomy
• FM13 Global Coordination of International Astrophysics and Heliophysics Activities  from Space and Ground
• FM14 IAU’s role on global astronomy outreach, the latest challenges and bridging different communities
• FM15 Astronomy for Development

Links

• Further details of the approved meetings can be found on the Future IAU Meetings web page

Contacts

Teresa Lago
IAU Assistant General Secretary
Paris, France
Tel: +33 1 43 25 83 58
Email: mtlago@astro.up.pt

Lars Lindberg Christensen
IAU Press Officer
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 320 06 761
Cell: +49 173 38 72 621
Email: lars@eso.org