The week of 10 – 17 September 2018 sees the 2nd Big Data Africa school take place near Cape Town. Organised by SARAO as part of the Newton Fund‘s DARA Big Data project, the school brings 27 students from 8 African countries together with lecturers, local and international, to take part in an intense, hands-in academic …
Michelle Kuttel is an associate professor at the UCT Department of Computer Science. Her cross-disciplinary research is in the area of Computational Science; primarily in the areas of Computational Astronomy (development of research software and computational approaches to support research in Astronomy) and Computational Chemistry (specifically computational glycochemistry, with a current focus on modelling of …
Dr. Sarah Blyth is a senior lecturer at the UCT Department of Astronomy. She is Deputy Head of Department: Astronomy (undergraduate matters) and Co-director: National Astrophysics and Space Science Program (NASSP) She is one of the Principal Investigators of the LADUMA survey which studies gas in galaxies back to when the universe was one third of its …
Members of the public were welcome to an Open Night at the SAAO in Cape Town on 8 September 2018, at 20h00. Professor Russ Taylor presented a talk titled “The Square Kilometre Array: Big Telescope, Big Science, Big Data”. This was be followed by a tour of the site and star gazing. Summary of the …
The proceedings of a scientific workshop focusing on the science to be carried out with the MeerKAT telescope have been published into a book. The opus, entitled,”MeerKAT Science: On the Pathway to the SKA” is available through IDIA. In 2016, the Principal Investigators of the MeerKAT Large Survey Projects who have been awarded the lion’s …
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) last week awarded Associate Director of the Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA), Associate Professor Carolina Ödman, a special prize for her pioneering work in astronomy outreach, development and education. This award was given as part of the IAU XXX (30th) General Assembly, which took place in VIenna, Austria in …
South Africa has won the bid to host the 2024 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). It will be the first time this assembly is held on African soil in what will be the 105th year of existence of this prestigious global association of professional astronomers. The decision was announced by the newly …
On July 23 2018, we invited members of the media and of the astronomy community to an event at the Iziko Planetarium and Digital Dome to celebrate the IDIA Research Cloud. The event consisted of an introduction, a show and a panel discussion followed by refreshments. The show itself featured previously unseen and unpublished astronomical images from …
The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) invites applications from suitably qualified candidates for IDIA postdoctoral fellowships. IDIA is a partnership of three South African universities working on data intensive research associated with MeerKAT large survey projects, as well as large projects on other SKA pathfinder telescopes. We hereby seek applications for the following …
Late June 2018 in Pretoria saw the gathering of a group of thought leaders in two highly specialized and important fields in science; Astronomy and Computational Intelligence. These two seemingly separate fields cross paths frequently, as astronomers need statistical and computational expertise to maximise the knowledge they gain from their observations, and computational intelligence researchers …
IDIA is a partnership between the University of Cape Town, the University of the Western Cape and the University of Pretoria, as well as the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory.