The Many Facets of Extragalactic Radio Surveys
I’m off to beautiful & lively Bologna later today for “The Many Facets of Extragalactic Radio Surveys” conference. It’s been an eventful few months for Italian Radio-Astronomy, with their much-praised but eventually unsuccessful bid to host SKA‘s permanent headquarters, a re-organization of most radio-astronomy research & development under a new institute, and now a radio-astronomer called […]
Riunione Addetti Scientifici MAECI
In settimana ho trascorso un paio di giorni a Roma presso il Ministero degli Esteri (più precisamente il Ministero degli Affari Esteri e Cooperazione Internazionale, o MAECI) alla riunione degli addetti scientifici in qualità di rappresentante del neonato Network of Italian Researchers at the Cape (NIRC). L’addetto scientifico e’ (quasi sempre) un ricercatore impiegato presso […]
Oh My God! – It’s Full of Bytes…
I spent the week in beautiful and (in spite of forecasts) mostly sunny Dubrovnik attending the AstroInformatics 2015 conference and the BigSkyEarth collaboration meeting catching up on the latest applications of Computer Science to Astronomy, Earth Observations as well as other disciplines. While everyone is seemingly into Big Data these days, a lot of the techniques & tools have […]
That’s an IDIA
Celebrations were in order today at the South African Astronomical Observatory for the launch of the newly-established NWU/UCT/UWC Inter-University Centre for Data-Intensive Astronomy (IDIA). The Institute aims to kickstart Big Data research and teaching initiatives across (South) Africa in collaboration with academic and industrial partners as well as (South) African and International government and funding […]
Netherlands / South Africa Radio Continuum Surveys Workshop
The more observationally inclined UWC-ers will be hosted by UCT tuesday-to-thursday this Easter week to attend the Netherlands / South Africa Radio Continuum Surveys Workshop co-funded by Netherlands’s NWO and South Africa’s NRF. LOFAR surveys and science and miscellaneous radio data reduction and analysis techniques are on show, looking forward to the MeerKAT and the […]
And we are back (at the edge of the Universe)
Along with some UWC chums (i.e. Imogem, Kim & Mario) I spent a very pleasant (well, at least until I got a flu;/) week in Sintra (Portugal) attending the “Back at the edge of the Universe” conference. The meeting was devoted to discuss astronomers’ present and future studies of the high-redshift Universe, including their attempts at […]
SKA South Africa Bursary Conference
Today marked the end of SKA South Africa‘s Bursary Conference in Stellenbosch. Now in its ninth edition, the meeting brings together astronomy and engineering students and fellows from across South Africa presenting their work in front of their supervisors as well as some international guests. As it is often the case, this meeting of minds also involved a fair amount of alcohol […]
High Performance Computing in the African Bush
I’ve been spending this past week at Kruger National Park’s Skukuza Rest Camp catching up with work while attending the yearly gathering organized by South Africa’s Center for High Performance Computing. I’ve eavesdropped on most sessions to get a feeling for the kind of problems facing contemporary high performance computing but also for the numerical […]
The Digital Universe
I am spending the week at “The Universe of the Digital Sky Surveys” conference in Naples, catching up on the latest news from sky surveys from both ground and space and enjoying excellent coffee, red ginseng, mozzarella, pizza and seafood on the side. The conference is also a celebration of Massimo Capaccioli‘s 70th birthday. Massimo is between other […]
(Data) Size Matters!
These days I’m attending a conference in Frascati, on the beautiful hills surrounding Rome, about large space satellite datasets and their exploitation. Most of the sessions so far have been about new data processing infrastructures and technologies and Earth Observations, but this morning’s session (opened by the excellent keynote by Naples’ Peppe Longo of DAME fame) is about Big Data in Astronomy, […]