Partners

Coordinator: ASTRON, Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy

ASTRON is the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. Its mission is to make discoveries in radio astronomy happen, via the development of novel and innovative technologies, the operation of world class radio astronomy facilities, and the pursuit of fundamental astronomical research. ASTRON designed, built and now operates the International LOFAR Telescope (a recognized Pathfinder for the SKA). It also operates the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) and is a member of the European VLBI Network (EVN). As the national radio astronomy facility, ASTRON represents the Netherlands in the SKA project and is currently playing a major role in several of the consortia contributing to the current SKA Design Phase. It is leading both the Low Frequency Aperture Array (LFAA) and Mid-Frequency Aperture Array (MFAA) design efforts and contributing to the work on the Science Data Processor (SDP) component of the SKA. Through the leadership of H2020 projects like AENEAS and ASTERICS, ASTRON is playing a significant role in defining and establishing the research infrastructure the global astronomy community will require to do science with the SKA.

AARNET

Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet) provides high capacity network and collaboration services for the nation’s research and education community, including universities, health and other research organizations, schools, vocational training providers and cultural institutions. AARNet serves over one million end users who access the network for teaching, learning and research.

Chalmers Tekniska Hoegskola AB

Onsala Space Observatory (OSO) is the Swedish National Facility for Radio Astronomy. OSO is hosted by Department of Earth and Space Sciences at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg, and is operated on behalf of the Swedish Research Council (VR). VR’s present contract with OSO defines its mission as providing equipment and expertise in radio astronomy and associated geoscience to the Swedish scientific community to ensure that Swedish research in these areas is world leading. OSO operates three telescopes at Onsala, a 25 m diameter cm-wave telescope, a 20 m diameter mm-wave telescope, and a LOFAR station.

CNRS, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

The Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) is a government-funded research organization, under the administrative authority of the Ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation. As the largest fundamental research organization in Europe, CNRS carries out research in almost all fields of knowledge, through eight research institutes and two national institutes. One of them (National Institute of Earth Sciences and Astronomy INSU) is representing CNRS in AENEAS, with four Joint Research Units that are involved in the project: Laboratoire Lagrange, Observatoire Astronomique de Strasbourg, LERMA and Nancay radioastronomy Observatory.

CSIC, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas

The Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA) is part of CSIC and its activities are related to research in the field of Astrophysics and the development of instruments for telescopes and space vehicles. The IAA coordinates the participation of Spain in the SKA. The Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) is the largest public institution dedicated to research in Spain. It belongs to the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the Secretary of State for Research, Development and Innovation.

CSIR, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, is a world-class African research and development organisation established through an Act of Parliament in 1945. The CSIR undertakes directed, multidisciplinary research and technological innovation that contributes to the improved quality of life of South Africans. The organisation plays a key role in supporting government’s programmes through directed research that is aligned with the country’s priorities, the organisation’s mandate and its science, engineering and technology competences.

CSIRO, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

CSIRO is Australia's national science agency. CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science operates the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), which includes the Parkes 64m radio-telescope, the Australia Telescope Compact Array, and the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP). ASKAP is located on the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory, a designated Radio Quiet Zone in the mid-west region of Western Australia, which will be the site of SKA-Low.

EGI

EGI is a federation of almost 300 data and compute centres and 21 cloud providers united by a mission to support research activities, business and innovation with advanced computing services. EGI resources are provided by:

  • The EGI Federated data centres
  • The EGI Federated Cloud providers

The federation is coordinated by the EGI Foundation, with headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Since its establishment in 2010, the EGI e-infrastructure has been delivering unprecedented data analysis capabilities to tens of thousands of researchers from over 200 scientific disciplines.

EPFL, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the two federally-funded technical universities in Switzerland. A multi-cultural institution at the cutting edge of science and technology, EPFL fosters innovation and excellence. The Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) is the main research unit working on the AENEAS project. ESL consists of 25 members and focuses its research on power, thermal and reliability exploration frameworks and management approaches for heterogeneous many-cores and high-performance computing systems.

Netherlands Foundation of Scientific Research Institutes

On 1 January 2017, the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) became the Netherlands Foundation of Scientific Research Institutes (NWO-I). NWO-I, the Institutes Organisation of NWO, works closely with the NWO domains and encompasses the former FOM institutes AMOLF, DIFFER and Nikhef, research centre ARCNL and the over 200 university workgroups from the former FOM projects.

Forschungszentrum Julich

Forschungszentrum Jülich is focused on use-inspired basic research. It faces up to the challenges of the present and researches for a future worth living. As a member of the Helmholtz Association, Forschungszentrum Jülich counts among the major interdisciplinary research centres in Europe. Within the Forschungszentrum Jülich, the Jülich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) is committed to enabling scientists and engineers explore some of the most complex grand challenges facing science and society. The research is performed through collaborative infrastructures exploiting extreme-scale supercomputing and federated data services.

GEANT

GÉANT is Europe's leading collaboration on network and related e-infrastructure and services for the benefit of research and education, contributing to Europe's economic growth and competitiveness. The organisation develops, delivers and promotes advanced network and associated e-infrastructure services, and supports innovation and knowledge-sharing amongst its members, partners and the wider research and education networking community.

GRNET, Ethniko Diktyo Erevnas Technologias

The Greek Research and Technology Network is a state-owned company, operating under the auspices of the Greek Ministry of Education. Its mission is to provide high-quality Infrastructure and services to the academic, research and educational community of Greece, and to disseminate ICT to the general public. GRNET is the National Research and Education Network (NREN) provider, offering to the Greek R&E community access to the pan-European GEANT network through 4x10Gbps links. GRNET also plays a key role at national level in the field of distributed and large-scale research infrastructures including Grid, Cloud and HPC.

INAF, Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica

INAF is a governmental research organization that promotes, realizes and coordinates research activities in many astronomical fields, in collaboration with Universities and with public and private, national and international agencies. INAF is a major partner of astrophysics related ESFRI projects (CTA, SKA and E-ELT), having actively participated since their initial phases. It has participations in many world class projects (e.g. ALMA, LBT, MAGIC, Planck, Gaia, Euclid,...)
INAF actively operates research infrastructures and distributed computing technologies, distributed archives of astronomical data and the Virtual Observatory.

ILT, International LOFAR Telescope

The International LOFAR Telescope (ILT) is the foundation, established under Netherlands law in November 2010 and seated in Dwingeloo, The Netherlands, in which ASTRON and national LOFAR astronomy consortia in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Poland and Ireland collaborate on the exploitation of all LOFAR facilities for astronomy in their countries. The ILT offers these facilities in a common-user environment to all interested parties. ASTRON, seated in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, is the coordinating operational entity within the ILT.

IT, Instituto de Telecomunicacoes

Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT), is a private, not-for-profit organization, of public interest, a partnership of nine institutions with research and development in the field of Telecommunications. IT FCUP, UA, UE jointly operate in ENGAGE SKA, a Portuguese National Research Infrastructure Consortium enabling the Portuguese participation in SKA roadmaps. ENGAGE SKA offers a wide variety of activities, such as advanced training in radio astronomy, development of core technologies for radioastronomy, software development and E-Science.

JIVE, Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC

JIVE, the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC, is the central organisation in the European VLBI Network (EVN). JIVE implements the core data processing and user services that turn the network into a single telescope to study the radio sky at the highest possible resolution. By becoming an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) in 2015, JIVE has become a European entity after having operated as a foundation since 1993. The Institute is located in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, and is hosted by ASTRON.

MPG, Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Forderung der Wissenschaften

The Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) is one of 83 independent research institutes of the Max Planck Society (MPG) that perform basic research in the natural sciences, life sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. The MPIfR is the leading radio astronomical institute in Germany and operates the 100-m radio telescope in Effelsberg at centimetre and millimetre wavelengths, one of the world’s most important facilities in radio astronomy. The institute is involved in a number of emerging facilities: SOFIA, ALMA, MeerKAT, SKA, optical interferometry facilities (VLTI and LBT), and mm-VLBI.

NRF, National Research Foundation

SKA South Africa (SKA SA) is a business unit of the National Research Foundation of South Africa, is funded by the Department of Science and Technology, and is the organisation responsible for leading South Africa’s (and Africa’s) SKA activities. SKA SA owns and operates the SKA site in the Karoo region in South Africa. SKA SA is also designing, building and operating the MeerKAT radio telescope array, a SKA precursor telescope to be merged into SKA Phase 1, the African VLBI Network, and runs the substantial SKA Human Capital Development programme in South Africa.

Research Data Alliance Foundation

The Research Data Alliance Foundation is the legal entity supporting the Research Data Alliance (RDA). RDA is an international member organisation, supported by the European Commission and other research agencies and foundations that is working to develop and implement a global infrastructure to facilitate data sharing and re-use. Through focused Working Groups and more exploratory Interest Groups, the RDA develops and implements concrete Recommendations and Supporting Outputs that provide the social and technical connections necessary for a functional data infrastructure that bridges across countries, disciplines, scales, and technologies.

SKA Organisation

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation based at Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK is tasked with designing the world’s largest radio telescope, to be located in Australia and South Africa. The SKA is supported by 12 member countries bringing together some bringing together the world’s finest scientists, engineers and policy makers and more than 100 companies and research institutions in the design and development of the telescope. The SKA will conduct transformational science to improve our understanding of the Universe and the laws of fundamental physics, observing the sky in unprecedented detail and hundreds of times faster than any current facility.

SNIC, Uppsala Universitet

The Swedish National Infrastructure for Computing (SNIC) is a national research infrastructure that provides a balanced and cost-efficient set of resources and user support for large scale computation and data storage to meet the needs of researchers from all scientific disciplines and from all over Sweden (universities, university colleges, research institutes, etc). The resources are made available through open application procedures such that the best Swedish research is supported.

SNIC is funded in part by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet) and in part by the university partners (CTH, KTH, LiU, LU, UmU and UU).

STFC, Science and Technology Facilities Council

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is one of the UK’s seven publicly funded Research Councils responsible for supporting, co-ordinating and promoting research, innovation and skills development in the areas of particle physics and astronomy. STFC’s funded science program includes not only SKA but many other major astronomy and particle physics projects which will generate large distributed datasets in the coming decade. STFC’s Scientific Computing Department operates several high capacity HPC and HTC platforms expected to evolve to have capabilities matching the needs of SKA in the next decade.

The University of Cambridge

The Astrophysics group at the University of Cambridge has long-standing expertise in the field of radio astronomy. The group works on the SKA project through the Science Data Processor and Low Frequency Aperture Array consortia. Within the AENEAS team we have experience not only with the SKA consortia but also with distributed computing for scientific applications.

University of Cape Town

The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy, IDIA, is represented legally by its lead institution, the University of Cape Town. IDIA is engaged in research and development programs to develop solutions to enable data intensive astronomy in South Africa on the pathway to the SKA. IDIA researchers play a leading role in several MeerKAT large survey projects and major programs on other SKA pathfinders. IDIA also plays a leading role in the SKA Science Data Processor work package consortium.

Universite de Geneve

UNIGE is member of League of European Research Universities (LERU), highly ranked in various international University Rankings. The Astronomy Department of the Geneva University has a worldwide reputation in astrophysics. The Astronomy Department hosts the Data Center for Astrophysics, a well renowned center, which has been and is involved in various space mission, such as ESA’s INTEGRAL, Planck, Gaia, Euclid, and CHEOPS missions, and in future space projects such as ATHENA, SPICA, XIPE, JEM-EUSO and others. The Data Center for astrophysics is also bound to play an important role for Swiss participation in CTA and in the SKA.

The University of Manchester

The Jodrell Bank Interferometry Centre of Excellence (ICE) at the University of Manchester supports research into novel and improved techniques for extracting the maximum amount of information from radio interferometric data. This includes the fields of calibration, image formation and scientific interpretation. In addition, it incorporates user support for the ALMA and e-MERLIN radio telescopes, and runs a variety of workshops and other training courses for radio interferometry.

Victoria University of Wellington

Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) is a research-focused New Zealand university established in 1897. Radio astronomy became a research strength at VUW in 2009 and New Zealand joined the SKA project shortly thereafter. Current SKA-related research includes development of science analysis pipelines, source detection algorithms, visualization software, low frequency surveys and project management. VUW has been an institutional member of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) collaboration and the SKA Science Data Processor (SDP) consortium since 2012 and hosts one of the three MWA data processing nodes.