From planetary sciences, earth sciences, volcanology to robotics and agriculture: Highlights from the 7th Summer School on Vulcano, Sicily, 2023

Abstract

The annual Summer School on Vulcano, Sicily will take place at the end of June 2023. This poster gives an impression and an overview of the highlights of this successful field-activity based summer school. This two-week summer school, is being held for the 7th time, and provides an important training ground for students, scientists, researchers, and technicians by exposing them to a variety of disciplines from geology, volcanology, geophysics, astrobiology, to planetary sciences. This year's additional theme is going to be robotics and agriculture - how our advances in robotics, especially from the space sciences, can aid and support agriculture and food production. In addition to lectures, a number of scientific experiments are planned on Vulcano, such as geoelectrics, astrobiology, spectroscopy, robotics, and intelligent drone-based mapping for agriculture. The summer school participants get the opportunity to work in teams on the above topics and are involved in the data acquisition, processing, visualization, and presentation. Lunchtime lectures, evening social events such as poster sessions, astronomy, and GIS classes complement the field-based activities. The interaction and collaboration between researchers is encouraged to foster inter- and transdisciplinary learning and understanding. In addition to institutional funding, the summer school would not have been possible without generous funding by the Helmholtz iFOODis project and EUROPLANET.