finnish centre for astronomy with eso - utu · rae2015 of the university of turku . peer-evaluation...

RAE2015 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKUPEER-EVALUATION REPORT

FINNISH CENTRE FOR ASTRONOMY WITH ESO Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

RAE2015 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF TURKU PEER-EVALUATION REPORT

FINNISH CENTRE FOR ASTRONOMY WITH ESO (FINCA) Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences

Panel: Anne Borg (chair), Bertil Andersson, Mats Björklund, Roger Butlin, John A. Carrol, Thomas Henning, Juraj Hromkovic, Shmuel Tomi Klein, Hemin Koyi, Ulf Landegren, Ole Mertz, Barbara Navrot, Jan-Åke Nilsson, Toribio Fernandez Otero

1. OVERALL RATING OF THE UNIT: Excellent to outstanding

2. Description of the research activity during the evaluation period 2010–2013 – Rating: Outstanding

A. Describe the panel’s view on the scientific quality and innovativeness of the research activity – Outstanding B. Indicate strengths, weaknesses and other remarks – Excellent

A. FINCA fulfils its mandate with respect to utilizing ESO for research of high scientific quality in a very good manner. The research activities are divided into two main areas, stellar astrophysics and star formation and extragalactic astrophysics. Within these areas a range of research topics are covered, including studies of stellar surface structures; studies of supernovae and their progenitor stars; studies of interacting binaries; studies of molecular clouds; structure, stellar populations and kinematics of galaxies; studies of nearly starburst galaxies and luminous infrared galaxies; studies of QSO host galaxies and nearby galaxies; and studies of blazars. Research is executed on an international competitive level, especially in the areas of star formation, transients (SN), blazars and stellar magnetic phenomena. FINCA is a consortium partner in a number of large scientific projects with PESSTO being the best example.

Overall, the panel finds the scientific quality and innovativeness of the research activity outstanding.

B. FINCA is in an excellent position with respect to infrastructure through the Finnish membership in ESO and the national responsibility FINCA has in this respect. This means that the researchers have excellent access to state-of-the-art infrastructure for their research. Through their scientific achievements they demonstrate that they are very well capable of utilizing this asset.

The centre counts about 15 researchers at different levels. In addition, there are groups at the four universities being members of FINCA. Together this is a very strong and successful research environment. The basic funding for the activities is reasonable, but the external funding consists of a limited number of grants, which in part are rather small. This situation may be challenging

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with the ambitions to develop the activities and to increase the contacts to the international research community. From the interview the panel found that measures have been taken to increase the number of foreign scientists coming to FINCA both for shorter and longer research visits.

GENERAL COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

FINCA needs to make sure that collaborative efforts with national groups outside of Turku remain strong in order to fulfil the function as a national support centre. In the future, the centre should consider its position in coordinating instrumentation efforts by Finnish astronomers, which requires that a funding line remains in the Academy of Finland for experiments in international organisations with Finnish participation.

3. Organisation and personnel during the evaluation period 2010–2013 – RATING: Good to Excellent

1. The unit’s recruiting policy of researchers at various career stages – Excellent 2. Possibilities for researchers to proceed in their career – Sufficient to good 3. Are the teachers and the researchers also actively involved in research and teaching, respectively? How do you see the balance between teaching and research? – Good 4. Gender and equality issues: pay attention e.g. i) to good gender balance as well as the proportion of foreign personnel in the personnel groups in Appendix A – Sufficient and ii) to the parental leave issues and gender balance in Appendix B – Not rated

1. The policy of FINCA is to recruit highly qualified candidates at all levels, postdocs, fixed-term personnel and permanent university researchers, through international announcements. In recruitment, synergies with respect to having a large fraction of the personnel in Turku are sought, since UTU hosts the largest astronomical research unit in Finland. For FINCA this is an appropriate scheme. However, the strengthening of the group located in Turku should not be at the expense of close interactions with the other partner universities.

2. No clear strategy is presented with respect to career development of the recruited personnel beyond performing high quality research. Career development is most important for the postdocs and fix-term personnel. The majority of the personnel will have to seek other positions outside FINCA after the end of fix-term contracts.

3. FINCA is a research institute and does not have any teaching obligations. The researchers are contributing to the teaching at their host universities. The amount of such teaching is on a reasonable level. The organisation of schools and practical training for ESO telescopes is on an excellent level and well aligned with the mandate of FINCA.

4. The number of female research personnel is low at the centre. The majority of employees are of Finnish origin. A somewhat larger portion of internationally recruited personnel could be beneficial.

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The numbers are too small to make a meaningful assessment or comments on parental leaves for this unit.

GENERAL COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

Measures for promoting the careers for talented female candidates should be sought. A strategy for career development of temporary employed personnel should be developed.

4. Research funding during the evaluation period 2010–2013 – RATING: Good

A. The success and strategy of the unit in the competition for funding – Sufficient B. Is the division of external funding into the different categories as shown in Appendix C appropriate? – Good

A. For FINCA the number of external grants is fairly low, also reflecting the overall size of the centre. The external funding amounts to approximately half the funding for research. The centre had one EU Marie Curie grant. The overall funding situation for the centre appears fragile and highly dependent on positive outcome for a small number of projects. If funding sources are falling out it is not clear how the centre addresses this challenge.

The policy to allocate only part of the funding to permanent positions leaves flexibility and allows to hire a healthy fraction of postdoc researchers. The panel finds this to be an appropriate strategy.

B. FINCA has relatively low national funding beyond its basic research funding, including funding from Academy of Finland, which is very important for other units. The personnel at the centre should be in a good position to compete for funding based on scientific excellence.

Internationally FINCA obtains funding from different sources, which is good. Though the funding of the single EU grant was relatively high, seeking EU funding should be of stronger interest to the centre.


FINCA is recommended to review its overall funding situation. A well defined strategy for targeting both national and international funding has to be developed to match the research activities and secure keeping them at a high level.

5. Infrastructure during the evaluation period 2010–2013 – RATING: Outstanding

A. Major strengths and weaknesses in the unit’s infrastructure – Outstanding B. Development of the infrastructure 2010–2013 in relation to research needs – Excellent C. Possible impact of the unit in developing research infrastructures – Excellent

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A. Through its mission the activities of FINCA are closely linked to ESO, with an outstanding infrastructure performing very well and continuing to be developed. This provides access to state-of-the-art ground based telescopes. In addition, the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT) serves as base instrumentation for several activities. The panel does not see any particular weaknesses in this respect.

B. ESO is kept up to date and fulfils the primary needs by FINCA for ground based astronomical observations. Some activities at FINCA require space telescopes as well as other large ground based telescopes. The groups have been successful in having proposals approved for measurement time as such facilities.

ESO made the decision to build the European extremely large telescope (E-ELT), which guarantees access for Finnish astronomers to a top astronomical facility for the next decade. FINCA astronomers played an active role in this decision process.

C. As member of ESO and NOT, the personnel at FINCA contributes to the infrastructure development program for these facilities. FINCA is thus in a very good position with respect to research infrastructure through the long-term Finnish membership in ESO and the planned development of NOT.


FINCA should develop a strategy to participate in instrumentation programs for the VLT, E-ELT, and possibly ALMA. This may require hiring of a professor in this field, an urgently needed step to increase the visibility of FINCA in the ESO instrumentation program. These instrumentation programs need additional funding, but come with the benefits of strong international networks and guaranteed access to observing time. Another area of development should be a better positioning in ALMA – the largest ground-based facility in astronomy today. The panel would strongly recommend hiring a permanent staff member who would drive this development.

6. Scientific quality of research during 2010–2013 – RATING: Outstanding

In general, the scientific achievements of the FINCA researchers are of highest international quality. They have, together with their collaborators, made significant contributions to a range of questions in contemporary astronomy. This is reflected in highly cited papers in the field of blazar, SN, and star formation research and best demonstrated by the number and quality of the papers.

7. Publications 2010–2013 – RATING: Outstanding

A. How would you evaluate the publication policy and quality based on the examples of publications in the self-evaluation report and Appendixes D and E? – Outstanding B. Estimate the overall quality of the publications that the unit estimates as its most important ones. – Outstanding

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A. Astronomy is an international science and publications in peer-reviewed international journals represent the reference level in the field. This fact is clearly reflected in the statistics on journal papers published by FINCA during the period 2010–2013. This shows that the scientific results are predominantly reported in peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings.

Noteworthy is that the vast majority of the international papers are published in journals at highest international level, as measured by the Finnish Jufo classification system for ranking of journals. This is very impressive.

Outreach activities of FINCA are coordinated with the Astronomy & Space Research Group at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of UTU. Together they are doing an outstanding job in popularising science.

B. The overall quality of the publications, estimated to be the most important ones by the centre, is outstanding. The centre has several Nature publications as well as other seminal papers during the period 2010–2013.


FINCA has a very sound policy for publication in line with the publishing traditions in astronomy. A large number of papers are published in high impact journals at the highest international level.

8. Doctoral training 2010–2013 as part of the scientific activity in the unit – RATING: Excellent

As a research centre FINCA is not awarding doctoral degrees. Still the personnel are actively contributing to supervision of PhD students. The centre utilizes its international network as well as its role as a national centre to provide courses, schools and experimental training. Extended stays abroad are encouraged e.g. through the ESO and NOT student programmes and research visits. In this respect FINCA clearly contributes to networking and internationalization as part of the doctoral training.


In the doctoral training respect FINCA fulfils its role in an excellent manner.

9. Researcher mobility – RATING: Good

A. How would you evaluate researcher mobility in the unit? – Sufficient B. Has the unit succeeded in attracting international researchers? – Good

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A. In the material received from the university, no long-term visits have been reported for FINCA, which is surprising given the broad international networks researchers at FINCA have. On the positive side, there are some, but not a large number, of short-term visits.

B. The number of incoming visits is lower than outgoing visits, except that there have been two long-term incoming visits to FINCA during 2010–2013. The success in this respect is limited.

Together with Department of Physics and Astronomy FINCA has now developed a program for long-term visitors and longer research visits abroad for their employees.


The international researcher exchange plan for 2015–2018 is an appropriate measure for increasing researcher exchange at FINCA.

10. International co-operation and partners 2010–2013 – RATING: Outstanding

A. Success and extent of international co-operation. – Outstanding B. Has international co-operation provided clear extra value for the research? – Outstanding

A. The very nature of FINCA requires strong international co-operation. All activities at the centre are internationally oriented and the researchers have strong international networks, manifested by the large number of collaborative projects listed in the self-evaluation. In this respect, FINCA is highly successful and very well fulfils the expectations for the Finnish ESO membership.

B. Without the international collaboration there would not be any FINCA. They are utilizing their position to the best for Finnish astronomy research.


FINCA has been a success story up to this point. It is important also to follow up on this success in the years to come, which needs investment in the field of instrumentation and ALMA use. FINCA should not miss the most dynamic field in modern astronomy, namely the search and characterization of extrasolar planets with strong investment by ESO. In addition, the continuation of the strong research tradition in sub-mm/radio astronomy should be a focus of the FINCA activities.

11. National co-operation partners 2010–2013 – RATING: Excellent

A. Success and extent of national co-operation. – Excellent B. Has the national co-operation provided clear extra value for the research? – Outstanding

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A. FINCA is by construction a national centre with the co-operating universities contributing to the centre. The largest part of the activities is located in Turku, but with nodes at the other universities. There is nothing in the self-evaluation indicating that this co-operation is not functioning well. A number of common projects are listed, underlining this notion. Furthermore, FINCA is in charge of the national collaboration in astronomy teaching involving all four university partners. It is important that FINCA develops an active strategy for the interaction with universities outside of Turku.

B. The establishment of FINCA has been a measure to provide access to state-of-the-art facilities for the Finnish astronomy research community. The strong scientific position of this community would not have been possible without this centre.


This far, FINCA has been a huge success. It is important to maintain and develop the good national co-operation also in the future. Common activities, like the astronomy teaching program and joint research projects, are imperative to succeed. Instrumentation has to be added which requires the necessary infrastructure and personnel, including engineers.

12. Wide-range impact of research during 2010–2013 – RATING: Excellent

Astronomy is a field providing the basis for our understanding of the Universe. In this context, the researchers at FINCA and the collaborators have made significant contributions to our current picture. This is particularly true for a better understanding of high-energy processes in the universe, magnetic processes, and star formation in various environments.

Also, the outreach activities in collaboration with the Astronomy & Space Research Group at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of UTU, is contributing to the public awareness of these scientific results.

GENERAL COMMENTS AND RECOMMENDATION:

FINCA needs to develop a strategy for the participation in VLT and E-ELT instrumentation programs. These instruments are expected to open completely new avenues for astronomy research and our understanding of the Universe.

13. Innovations – RATING: Good

Up till now the role of FINCA has been to provide information about opportunities for Finnish companies in relation to ESO instrumentation development. As the personnel at FINCA so far has not been involved in instrument development, innovations by the FINCA researchers themselves are not to be expected.

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FINCA should consider if innovation is to be expected on the basis of the research activities carried out in the centre through participation in instrumentation projects.

14. Special impact on the national and international scientific community 2010–2013 – RATING: Excellent

The researchers at FINCA have been appointed to different positions of trust in ESO bodies and other international bodies in the field of astronomy. They have served as members on telescope time allocation committees and as examiners on doctoral dissertations. They have also organized conferences. Furthermore, they actively participate in national learned societies.


Overall the centre in these respects fulfils the expectations. An asset is the participation in organizations like IAU.

15. Research activity plan 2015–2018 – RATING: Excellent

A. Is the research activity plan feasible? How do you see the ratio of the planned investments and the aimed outcomes and impacts? Does the unit describe potential weaknesses that may affect reaching these aims? How are alternative approaches being considered? – Excellent B. Estimate the potential of this research activity plan for significant new outcomes, scientific breakthroughs, scientific progress in this field, as well as its potential outcomes and impacts. – Outstanding C. Can the panel foresee any potential scientific breakthroughs not considered by the unit itself? – Not rated D. Estimate the planned national and international co-operation and networks in light of the aimed outcomes and impacts. – Excellent E. Estimate the potential of the described strategy for success in competition for funding. – Sufficient

A. FINCA has clear scientific goals for the coming 10-year period, where the primary task is to prepare for the opening of the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT), which is expected to represent the starting point of a new era in astronomy. As part of this preparation the research program will be reviewed and main research areas identified. Also the groups are planned strengthened to keep competitiveness. The centre does not foresee any weaknesses that might affect this plan. Funding for both investments and operation is in principle secured in this time frame. A question is if the plans could have been more ambitious in terms of externally funded activities, which could further strengthen the activities of the centre. Instrumentation, ALMA participation, and exoplanet research needs to be strengthened, which

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requires additional investments and new positions. Turku University should be prepared to make FINCA even stronger than it is today.

B. With the ESO development plan in place, the prospects for ground breaking new discoveries are in reach. The centre has excellent possibilities to prepare for the E-ELT future through on-going research activities and plans for the near future.

C. Exoplanets have been mentioned as an important field, but a strategy how to become a player in this field has not been developed.

D. The international collaboration related to ESO as well as the national FINCA partnership are highly suited for reaching the future goals of FINCA.

E. The plans for success in competition for funding are not very specific on ambitions with respect to attracting funding beyond current sources. This is a weak point of the current research activity plan.


In general, the overall scientific ambitions for FINCA are excellent. The goals are clearly set. Also the new activities towards instrument projects may prove valuable to the development of the centre.

FINCA is recommended to review its funding situation with respect to new opportunities both for strengthening the international collaboration and exchange as well as for increasing the overall very successful research in the centre.

finnish centre for astronomy with eso - utu · rae2015 of the university of turku . peer-evaluation...

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