An artist’s impression of the future SKA-Mid dishes in South Africa. Credit: SKAO


The 9th Annual BRICS Astronomy Working Group Workshop (BAWG2023)

The 9th annual BRICS Astronomy Working Group meeting will take place in Cape Town, South Africa from 16-19 October.  The meeting will be hosted by the South African Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA)  with the support of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI).  The venue will be the South African Astronomy Observatory.  

This year the science theme of the meeting will be “Survey Science and Big Data”.  The aim is to advance the data aspect of the BRICS flagship proposal “BRICS Intelligent Telescope and Data Network”.  The meeting will bring together the astronomy community including researchers, outreach, education and development practitioners, and policymakers. We invite presentations from BRICS colleagues on the following themes:

  • Data-intensive research projects and programs
  • Software and systems approaches to big data challenges in astronomy, with particular relevance to the future SKA and Rubin Observatory 
  • National strategies or plans for data-intensive astronomy
  • Time domain astronomy particularly in relevance to big data
  • Data-driven outreach, education and development

Hackathon

Following two days of the science meeting, we will hold a 1.5 day Data Science Hackathon.  Participants will work on machine learning approaches to a data-intensive challenge in multi-wavelength astronomy.  The hackathon will make use of the South African ilifu data-intensive research cloud facility. We invite students to attend the hackathon and network with peers in the BRICS data-intensive astronomy community.

Although there will be limited technical support for remote participants, we strongly encourage participants to attend in person.  Local accommodation for international participants will be covered, and both travel and accommodation for South African students and postdocs.

For more information about BRICS astronomy visit: https://www.bricsastronomy.org/.

IMPORTANT DEADLINES

  • Registration, accommodation and travel deadline: 21 August 2023
  • Feedback to applicants who submitted abstracts: 11 September 2023