FIRST ANNOUNCEMENT IN .PDF VERSION

The school is mainly designed for students of PhD program in Astronomy and Physics. It is also open to interested young researchers. The school aims at increasing the basic training in Astronomy and Astrophysics, presenting a series of lectures on two of the most forefront research topics.
Both observational and theoretical aspects will be present by highest internationally ranked researchers.
The topics covered by the school are:

THE EXOPLANET SEARCH. PRESENT STATUS AND FUTURE PROSPECTS
The search and characterization of exoplanets is one of the newest and most attractive fields in modern Astronomy.  In less than two decades, it has moved from the enthusiastic discovery of some, often totally unexpected planets orbiting nearby stars, to a mature research. More than 850 planets have been discovered so far, thanks to a huge number of groundbased and space surveys. We are now entering into the even more exiting field of exoplanets structure and atmosphere characterization, with the aim of both understanding planet formation and evolution. The possibility of finding planets in habitable zone, and of searching for signatures of life in their atmosphere is within the reach of present technology. The field is boosted by the interest both of professional astronomers and general public. New surveys, new instruments, new satellites are under development for new, exciting discoveries.
Some of the main actors of the exoplanet research will summarize most recent results, and will present to the students the most immediate research perspectives.

THE DARK SIDE OF STELLAR AND GALAXY FORMATION
Infrared astronomy has experienced an extraordinary development since the first dedicated space-born observatory in 1983, the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS), of which we celebrated this year the thirtieth anniversary.
The IRAS major discoveries, particularly the existence of extremely luminous galaxies in the infrared, as well as of luminous but opaque star-forming regions in our Galaxy, have prompted astronomical institutions around the world to dedicate a remarkable series of new facilities from both space and from ground to this new astronomy at long wavelengths. The last of these is the Atacama Large Millimetre Antenna, ALMA, a huge interferometer making the first astronomical observatory on a planetary scale, currently under construction in Chile.
This new astronomy has essentially revealed that the formation of stars can only happen inside very opaque and thick clouds of gas and dust. Equally evident has turned out that major episodes of the formation of stellar populations in high-redshift galaxies happened inside large concentrations of dusty interstellar media. The school is dedicated to investigate the two phenomena on both the stellar and galactic scales.