Workshop: Exploring the Nature of the Evolving Universe - 2nd Announcement
LOCATION: PUC - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 15th to 19th of August, 2011.
We currently have 80 registered participants for the Workshop to be held at PUC-Rio and we have started a waiting list that keeps growing. The list of registered participants is available below together with a very preliminary version of the program (dates of talks might change). We have 11 participants from the USA, 26 from Chile, 42 from Brazil and 1 from Germany.
We invite everyone to start making travel plans as soon as possible. We are still waiting to hear from the funding agencies and cannot guarantee any funding at this point. However, it is likely that we will able to give per diems to all young participants from outside Rio de Janeiro who are presenting work. Per diems can be used to pay for lodging, meals and transportation. We recommend to look for affordable options (hostels and small hotels) and try to share rooms. At this point we think the per diem will be around US$ 100 (total of US$ 500 per person). We have a Facebook group page created in order to facilitate initial contact between participants with local students. We encourage foreign students to ask them for recommendations on local housing.
The LOC-chair, Prof. Enio da Silveira, has provided us with a list of suggested hostels and hotels (see links below). We highly recommend that you try to stay in places where other participants will stay in order to share local transportation with them to the PUC campus. There are two city buses that have final stops on campus and start from metro stations in Ipanema and Botafogo.
We want to make sure American participants are aware that they need a visa to enter Brazil. The visa reciprocity fee is $160 and it might take several weeks to get the visa processed (see link below). We will be glad to provide you with a letter of acceptance in case you need that to apply for a visa or other funding sources.
We are also planning one full afternoon free of workshop activities (Wednesday) for an organized tour. We are still debating on which type of tour, currently we have three possibilities: (1) explore old Rio downtown including the observatory of Valongo located in a very special region of Rio that tourists rarely get to know, (2) explore Rio touristic points such as Sugar Loaf and Corcovado, (3) go hiking in the rainforest Tijuca and even go for a hang gliding adventure. Let me know which one you would like to take and based on how many people are interested, we will select the favorite one.
We would like to thank the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, for sponsoring our coffee breaks during the workshop. We will not charge registration fee for the workshop due to the generous support from CUA.
If you know that you are not going to be able to attend the meeting, please, cancel your registration since we have a waiting list.
Thanks and see you in Rio!
Duilia de Mello
SOC-chair
LINKS:
As of 06-22, we have made significant changes in the Program
Preliminary Program: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/23735554/program_puc_rio_preliminary.pdf
List of participants: http://evolvinguniverse-pucrio.blogspot.com/2011/04/participants.html
Facebook group page: http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_210206749004404
Visa for Americans: http://www.brasilemb.org/component/content/article/176-brazilian-consular-and-visa-services-in-the-us
PUC-Rio address: Rua Marq São Vicente, 225 - Rio de Janeiro - RJ, 22451-041, Brazil (google-map it for more information)
