EAST ASIAN SKA SCIENCE WORKSHOP 2021 BY DR TAKUYA AKAHORI (SCIENTIFIC ORGANISING COMMITTEE CHAIR, NAOJ/ SKAO) We are pleased to announce the next East Asian SKA Science Workshop will be hosted virtually by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and Kagoshima University on 26-28 May 2021, bringing together researchers from China, Japan, South Korea and beyond to advance SKA-related activities in the region. We encourage researchers from all over the world to join the conference, which aims to build relationships and spark future collaborations. The workshop will feature invited speakers discussing both the SKA itself and SKA precursor/pathfinder activities, scientific review talks, poster presentations and breakout discussions. The main talks will take place on Zoom, with a Slack workspace for poster presentations and discussion. Many East Asian researchers are participating in the SKA precursor/pathfinder projects, and two SKA pathfinders are located in the region: FAST in China and VERA in Japan. Over the past 10 years a number of SKA science workshops have been held, most recently the 2019 SKA engineering conference in Shanghai, China. Through the workshops, we learned about each other’s scientific interests and looked for new collaborations and synergies. Our discussions became the first step to think about the SKA Regional Centres (SRCs) in East Asia, as well as being a great opportunity for young researchers to develop their skills in a conference setting. In the last workshop, we also invited key researchers from Australia, and our intention is to gradually expand from East Asia to Asia Pacific. Registration will be open from 31 March – 12 May 2021, with a deadline of 28 April for presentation applications. Keep an eye on the conference website for further updates.
LOFAR COMMUNITY READIES FOR SIXTH DATA SCHOOL BY MARCO IACOBELLI (ASTRON) The Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) is gearing up to host the sixth LOFAR Data School as a fully virtual event on 22-26 March 2021. The aim of the School is to introduce the LOFAR system to new members of the LOFAR community, and present the analysis techniques for processing both interferometric and high time resolution beamformed LOFAR data. While registration is now closed, the slides from the lectures and tutorials will be made available on the School website a couple of weeks after the event, so watch out for them! The programme will comprise lectures and demos covering the many aspects of the LOFAR system, from the capabilities of the basic station hardware to the software pipelines and their science-ready products. These will be presented by members of the LOFAR project team and by staff from the
many institutions involved in the collaboration. Attendees will be able to do some hands-on data processing, too. Around 100 students, postdocs and staff from all over the world will be joining us for the virtual event, but with a large proportion from International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) member countries. As has become the norm for many events now, lectures and demos will take place via Zoom, and Slack will be used as a forum for interaction and networking between the participants and lecturers. The participants will also have the chance to learn about future developments of LOFAR and how the scientific capabilities of the instrument will complement those of SKA-Low in the coming decade.
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