8-12 October 2012 Marbella (Málaga, Spain)

The Fall 2012 Gamma-Ray Burst Symposium entitled: “15 years of Gamma-Ray Bursts afterglows: progenitors, environments and host galaxies from the nearby to the early Universe”, will be held in Marbella (Málaga, Spain) on 8-12 Oct 2012, just prior to the  9th INTEGRAL Workshop in Paris (15-19 Oct 2012) conmemorating the 10th anniversary of the launch of INTEGRAL.  

Besides the Interplanetary Network of satellites, INTEGRAL (launched in 2002), Swift (2004) and Fermi (2008) detected altogether more than 1000 gamma-ray bursts in the last decade. Their study has produced a strong impact in many technological domains (space and robotic astronomy) and astrophysical fields (evolution of massive stars, relativistic jets, astrophysical magnetic fields, star-forming galaxies, Cosmology, etc.) from both theoretical and observational points of view. In 2012, UFFO/Lomonosov should join and increase our knowledge of the early stages of the bursts.

The main focus of the Symposim will be on the recent theoretical and observational (multiwavelength) findings on the gamma-ray burst field together with the existing and forthcoming astronomical facilities whose goal is to observe a wide variety of astrophysical targets with no (or very little) human interaction. Thus, we expect the workshop becoming an international forum for researchers to summarise the most recent developments and ideas in the field, with a special emphasis given to the technical and observational results, especially those obtained within the last five years.

The Scientific Organizing Committee will try to work on a very dynamic program, and the Symposium will be hosted in Palacio de Congresos at Marbella (Costa del Sol-Málaga), one of the most popular destination for tourists in Spain, with a special micro-climate all year around so that swimming in the Mediterranean in October is both possible and in close proximity to the conference location. Excursions to Granada or North Africa (each two hours away), will also be available to participants and their families.

This Symposium will be hosted by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) and the Department of Systems Engineering and Automatics (ISA-UMA) under the auspices of the Spanish Research Council, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, the Universidad de Málaga (Spain) and EWHA's Womans University (Korea).