Based on the guidelines established in a 2013 MoU between CAS and CONICYT, and more specific articles described in a 2016 Agreement between NAOC and SOCHIAS, CASSACA has decided to support up to four collaborative projects every year, each for 1-2 years duration and with a funding level of about 75,000 USD per year on average. In October 2018, a call for joint research proposal was issued and distributed to the astronomy communities of both countries. More than ten grant proposals were received by the deadline, and these have been evaluated by a panel of senior Chilean and Chinese astronomers, and reviewed by the China-Chile Joint Committee (JCCC). Among these very high quality joint research projects, four teams were selected to be supported by the Joint Fund for the current round.
They are:
- “Probing a new regime of accretion onto supermassive black holes” by Claudio Ricci from UDP and Luis Ho from KIAA/PKU
- “Detector del Amenecer Cósmico (DAC)” by Ricardo Bustos from UCSC and Pablo Garcia from CASSACA
- “What Controls Galaxy Scale Star Formation? Bursting vs. Quenching at high Redshift” by Valentino González from UChile and Xianzhong Zheng from PMO
- “UDP-KIAA Collaboration on Young Stellar Objects in nearby Molecular Clouds” by Lucas A. Cieza from UDP and Gregory Herczeg from KIAA/PKU.