East Asian SKA Science Workshop 2021

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: http://ska-jp.org/EASKA2021/

By Dr Takuya Akahori (Scientific Organising Committee Chair, NAOJ/SKAO)