*Sunday May 20 @ 16.00 *
NCSA building, Board room, Urbana, USA
During the course of the past year the VAO has completed essentially all of its planned activities, bringing a number of new research tools and capabilities to the community and establishing a rigorous operational environment. The new re-search tools have been introduced to the community via presentations and exhibits at AAS meetings, international conferences, and through an ongoing series of VO Community Days. Use of VAO tools and services, initially somewhat stagnant owing to a two-year funding hiatus for the US VO program, is now accelerating. Indeed, much of the data being used in the astronomy community is being accessed through VO standard services, even though astronomers are generally unaware that this is the case.
A program of science collaborations with the research community has led to new science products and greater availability of astronomical data to the community at large. Proposals from the community for additional collaborations were solicited in an open call in January 2012, and we expect to start several new collaborations later this spring.
During the fall of 2011 and spring of 2012 the VAO project, in response to redirection from NSF and NASA, downsized and reorganized. Seven original work areas were reduced to four and resources were reapportioned in accord with agency guidance to focus on infrastructure. These four work areas are Operations, User Support, Science Applications, and Standards and Infrastructure. Efforts in the areas of technology evaluation and data curation and preservation have been integrated into Standards and Infrastructure. The VAO’s education and public outreach program has been terminated, in accord with agency direction, with only close-out work proceeding to assure that prior efforts can be resumed should resources be found to continue this program.
More details are available at http://www.usvao.org/documents/Reports/Annual/VAO-AR-April2012.pdf.
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