About SKIES

SKIES is a project of the International Astronomical Union’s European Regional Office of Astronomy for Development (IAU E-ROAD). It aspires to contribute to sustainable development and the United Nations’s Sustainable Development Goals through astronomy with a special focus on education and capacity building. The skills training of SKIES falls under the strategic goals regarding capacity building, by training a generation of astronomers that will conduct responsible and open research, and is able to employ their skills for societal and economical benefit in non-academic settings.

The Leiden-based IAU E-ROAD will develop the training modules, in cooperation with the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship, Stichting dotSPACE and five astronomy higher education institutes in Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and South Africa.

The aim is to reach 500 astronomy graduate students and young researchers.

Through the SKIES project, the consortium partners will train astronomy PhDs to be more prepared for the challenges outside academia and help to develop skills for in and outside academia.  More specifically, the course will train in open science, innovation & entrepreneurship. The course will also provide a mentorship involving local entrepreneurship experts for each student. To support the project partners and other organisations interested in running similar courses, online training will be made available in the form of a mini Online Open Course (mOOC).