Speaker
Description
Guatemala is a small country located in Central America, which has a great legacy of one of the biggest cultures of the American Continent, the Mayas, a civilization with a great scientific legacy and that developed a great understanding of astronomy. They measured the time based on astronomical events predicting solar eclipses and their calendar is one of the most precise ever developed. In the present the numbers in scientific resources are not so encouraging, having one of the lowest budgets in scientific and technological activities as well as a low number of full time researchers when compared to other countries of the continent (14 million of habitants). Efforts are being made from several institutions and this is expected to be reflected in the upcoming years. In recent years Guatemala has held conferences like SILAFAE 2016 and three editions of the Guatemalan School of Astrophysics (GUASA 2013, 2015, 2017). These scientific meetings detonated scientific collaborations as well as encouraged students to pursue major degrees in Astrophysics. In this talk I present Guatemala as a proposal to receive IWARA in the 2023's edition, intended to be held at Antigua Guatemala, UNESCO world heritage site, a perfect place to hold meetings. We expect that IWARA could become an important activity in order to grow the local scientific community which in time could become the critical mass to trigger strong research groups.
