The Observatory's research assistant (or demonstrator) program was launched in spring 2017 and has proved to be a great success. Over the past seven years, we provided funded research opportunities in observational data processing, numerical and engineering topics for 46 students. In addition, the program led to a number of new observers and service astronomers at Piszkéstető, in line with its original objectives.
After summarizing the lessons learned so far, we have concluded that there are some points where the program should be changed to make it more effective and to balance the students' workload with their university's obligations. These changes are summarized below.
A modified application cycle
The most important change is that instead of the current cycle strictly following the academic year, the start of the demonstrator applications will be delayed by a few months, as follows:
- Call for applications: November-December (expected)
- Application deadline: mid-December
- Interviews and contracts: January
- Demonstrator cycles: February to June (5 months) or February to December (11 months)
- Midterm progress report presentations: September
Under the new scheme, the mid-term report is due at the beginning of the fall semester and the Astronomy TDK comes at the end of the demonstrator year. This gives an early opportunity to practice giving a talk before the TDK during the reports, while the TDK will allow the presentation of the complete work done during the demonstrator period. In addition, by the time of application in this scheme, fresh BSc or MSc students will be better able to assess how they can fit research and/or observational tasks into their academic requirements. We will contract first-time applicants and graduating BSc/MSc students for five months, which can be extended to the full 11 months or until the start of doctoral studies.
Konkoly research assistants and students
The program is funded both from the Observatory's budget and from grants in parallel. To make this process more transparent, we are making the following changes:
- Two types of positions are will be open for applications. One is the Konkoly research assistant/demonstrator position, directly funded from the Observatory's budget. For these, you can choose any of the topics advertised.
- The other option is to apply for dedicated topics submitted by research grant leaders, if a PI prefers to find a candicate through the program and their grant has the means to fund a new demonstrator position.
- We also give students (and supervisors) the opportunity to indicate which topic(s) they would work on even without funding, if they are not selected for a paid position. In this case, if the topic remains available, the admissions committee may propose the names of interested students to the supervisors.
As the number of available demonstrator positions is determined by the funding that's available, we want to avoid creating an artificial dividing line between students based on their selection into the program. Therefore, in addition to the demonstators, we also introduce the term Konkoly students.
This includes all Bachelor's or Master's students who are actively engaged in research under the supervision of a Konkoly researcher and who have a research contract with the Observatory. This may mean an assignment contract in the case of a funded position, or a voluntary research contract in other cases.
Mentoring
We plan to place more emphasis than ever on mentoring and, at the same time, monitoring the work and progress of students. We will continue to offer educational and mentoring programs such as the annual Kickoff Workshop, educational sessions on publications and conference presentations, training for the usage of the telescopes at Piszkéstető as well as observing and data processing techniques, and further on-demand mentoring opportunities. Beyond these, we will also provide opportunities for students to give feedback on their progress and on the program to us.
Previous materials and recordings of the midterm progress reports are available here.
