Astronomy and Space Science have been gaining prominence worldwide as humanity continues to explore the cosmos and unlock its mysteries. In the past two decades scientists in Sri Lanka have been involved in capacity building particularly in the field of astronomy and astrophysics, and established a substantial workforce in observational astronomy. This workshop intends to build on that momentum to fill the gap of current theoretical astronomical knowledge and bridge the observations for better understanding.

Stellar evolution is the one of the most important aspect of astrophysical processes ranging from protostar to white dwarf/Neutron Star/Black Hole. Experiments in Stellar Astrophysics (MESA) is a state-of-art stellar evaluation code which can be used to model the stellar interior and evolution with a wide range of parameters to simulate a large number of astrophysical scenarios. 

Students at this workshop will learn the the theoretical aspects of pulsating stars and furthermore will get the opportunity to use MESA for the applications of pulsating stars through hands-on training sessions. The computational analysis will work the sequences during the night and on the next session the results will be analysed. 

A career and opportunities session will be included to showcase opportunities both nationally and internationally, as well as at ICTP, and interested students will be mentored onto further study.


Project coordinator: Prof. KPSC Jayaratne, Department of Physics, University of Colombo,
Professor in Physics. (Junior Associate of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP),
Trieste, Italy, 1989 - 1992).
Local coordinator: Dr. Janaka Adassuriya, Department of Physics, University of Colombo,
Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Speaker: Dr. Jordi L. Gutierrez Cabello, Department of Physics, Universitat Politècnica de
Catalunya, Stellar Evolution.