CHAMELEON: New research network focusing on the key role of virtual laboratories
Virtual laboratories play a key role in simulating yet unexplored physico-chemical environments. Retrieving (from data), predicting (from detailed models) and thereby understanding the link between the chemical composition of planet-forming disks and exoplanet atmospheres is a challenging task.
The network describes virtual laboratories as the key facility for scientific, technological, and educational objectives that they aim to reach in the project:
- Scientific objective: Retrieve and predict the chemical composition of planet-forming disks and exoplanet atmospheres using Virtual Laboratories.
- Technological objective: Knowledge transfer between the planet and disk community by the exchange of state-of-the-art codes. Apply and develop models of different complexity as a link between big observational and numerical modelling data. Explore models as Virtual Laboratories for exploring parameter spaces that cannot (yet) be reached by observations nor by (laboratory) experiments.
- Educational objective: Train complex modelling and big-data interpretation. Use fascination for exoplanets and their birthplaces to promote science in society, in local and wider communities.
In this Marie Curie Innovative Training Network (MC-ITN), the focus is on the development of Virtual Laboratories which will be the crucial tool to analyse in detail current and future disk and exoplanet observations.
And the link to education? What makes CHAMELEON unique is that the project will go beyond the regular ways of communicating the project’s results: by developing STE(A)M (where the A is for Arts) lesson modules for the classroom, and through dedicated artwork triggering reflection and conversation.
Read about the network on the website.