The Square Kilometre Array Project: Bilateral collaboration in science, technology and innovation in radio astronomy between Italy and South Africa Prof Mattia Vaccari
The bilateral scientific collaboration programme between Italy and South Africa got started in 1999 and thus recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. In its latest incarnation, known as the Italy-South Africa Joint Research Programme (ISARP), the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (MAECI) and the South African National Research Foundation (NRF) have partnered to support both large projects in a few select high-priority areas as well as smaller projects in a wider range of disciplines.
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he first ISARP call was launched in 2017 to support projects over the 2018-2020 timeframe, since extended to the end of 2021 to take into account the disruption caused by Covid-19. The call prioritised Biotechnologies, Water Management, Blue Economy and Astrophysics. UWC’s Prof Mattia Vaccari, Astroinformatics Research Professor and Director of the eResearch Office, seized the opportunity to develop a successful proposal to carry out bilateral collaboration in science, technology and innovation (STI) in the field of radio astronomy in general and to better prepare for the advent of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) in particular.
areas of collaboration as well as collaboration-wide workshops to discuss progress to date and identify new areas for collaboration.
The RADIOSKY2020 Joint Research Scheme (Paving the Way for the SKA: Furthering Cooperation in Science, Technology and Innovation between Italy and South Africa through Radio Astronomy) brings together a large team of astronomers and engineers from several institutions across Italy and South Africa working on STI activities to jointly exploit MeerKAT and prepare for the SKA. The project is co-led by Prof Vaccari and Dr Tiziana Venturi from the Institute of Radio Astronomy (IRA) of the Italian National Institute of Astrophysics (INAF) in Bologna. Collaborative activities revolve around individual research visits and topical “Busy Weeks” to support ongoing
Scientific highlights from the bilateral collaboration so far include: the exploitation of radio observations of galaxies, galaxy clusters and pulsars with MeerKAT and other radio telescopes; the spectroscopic follow-up of galaxies and strong gravitational lenses with the South African Large Telescope (SALT); the joint development of the CARACal data reduction pipeline for MeerKAT emission line observations and of the iDaVIE-v virtual reality software suite to visualize and analyse MeerKAT data cubes; the joint scientific exploitation of the (Italy-led) Fornax and (South Africa-led) MIGHTEE MeerKAT Large Survey Projects.
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A lot has happened since RADIOSKY2020 began, most noticeably the start of the full operations for MeerKAT, and more recently the world-wide health emergency caused by the spread of Covid-19, which has involved the astronomical community in both countries in the common effort to face the challenges put forth by the emergency.
