On April 4, an ALMA Town Meeting was held at the NAOJ Mitaka Campus. ALMA invited calls for proposals for Cycle 4, which will start from October this year. The purpose of the town meetings is to provide support for researchers of Japan and other East Asian regions for making proposals to ALMA. The town meetings this time were held in four locations: Ehime University, Kagoshima University, Kyoto University, and NAOJ in Mitaka.

At the town meetings, participants got information on the specifications of the observations which will be available in Cycle 4, as well as instructions for the dedicated software to submit proposals and perform data analysis on ALMA and individual consultations. Even after the town meetings, the researchers of East Asia can receive support individually from the EA ALMA Regional Center. ALMA aims to achieve the maximum scientific results by facilitating the use of ALMA not only by astronomers but also by wide-ranging researchers while providing strong support for them.

In Cycle 4, ALMA will bring further strengthened capabilities such as 53 antennas (highest number ever) operational, solar observations, and VLBI observations in collaboration with other telescopes enabling global-scale observation, all of which will make a wider field of research possible with ALMA. Since many proposals were expected to be submitted from all over the world, the EA ALMA Regional Center provided support East Asian researchers to make successful proposals entitled to ALMA observations.