Central American-Caribbean Bridge in Astrophysics

The Central American-Caribbean Bridge in Astrophysics (Cenca Bridge), an award-winning international nonprofit organization, provides opportunities to students from Central America and the Caribbean, where scientific research is inaccessible or completely absent. Cenca Bridge builds capacity in astronomy in the region and raises awareness among local government funding agencies about the importance of supporting astronomy research. The director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), Anthony Beasley, represents NRAO’s role in this partnership.

Cenca Bridge has brought together 100 undergraduate and early graduate students from Central America and the Caribbean with a common goal: to contribute to the scientific community and improve access to astronomy education. Cenca Bridge’s current primary focus is the 3-month-long remote internship program, in which students are paired with research advisors from across the globe and mentors from the student’s country. Additionally, programming and professional development workshops are presented, as well as a webinar series in which invited speakers give presentations about their research and academic journey.

In June 2024, the Cenca Bridge team was awarded the 2024 IAU Development Prize, for development of astronomy research opportunities in Central America and the Caribbean. In August 2024, the team traveled to the IAU General Assembly in Cape Town, South Africa to give a prize talk.

Cenca Bridge is led by three co-directors. Gloria Fonseca Alvarez is a Nicaraguan astronomer currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at NSF NOIRLab. Yahira Mendoza Moncada is a Honduran physicist and a graduate student in astronomy at the Observatório do Valongo at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (OV-UFRJ). Antonio J. Porras-Valverde is a Costa Rican astronomer currently working as a Heising-Simons Foundation postdoctoral fellow at Yale University.

Anthony J. Beasley is the director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). After receiving his doctorate in astrophysics from the University of Sydney, Beasley joined NRAO as a postdoctoral fellow in 1991. He was appointed deputy assistant director in 1997 and then assistant director from 1998 to 2000. He left NRAO to become project manager for the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA). In 2004, he returned to NRAO as an assistant director, this time as project manager for the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. In 2008, Beasley became the chief operating officer and project manager of the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON). He was appointed NRAO Director in February 2012.