SKACH - The SKA Switzerland Consortium

Countries around the world have come together to study fundamental scientific mysteries in very diverse topics, such as the exact nature of relativity, the birth and evolution of galaxies, the origin of life, and solar activity. To do this, the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) is building a giant radio telescope at two sites in South Africa and Australia. Thousands of antennas combine signals to form the largest astronomical observatory ever built. 

Switzerland is one of currently ten member countries of the SKAO. The SKACH-team consists of several universities and research centres from all over Switzerland. Our institute is mainly a data science partner: we help develop software solutions for handling the massive amounts of data produced by the telescope. Our main contributions revolve around the Karabo Pipeline, the Science Data Processing, and the SKA Regional Centre Network (SRCNet). Furthermore, we apply artificial intelligence (AI) methods to optimise the scientific output of the telescope.

The Karabo Pipeline is a digital twin of the data pipeline that will eventually deliver information, collected by the telescope in the middle of the desert, all the way to the researchers’ desktops, located all over the world. Karabo generates synthetic data sets to simulate the flow of real, astronomical data. It helps us develop ways to work with the actual observations once the system is fully operational, scheduled for the end of the 2020s.

The Science Data Processor consists of supercomputers placed at the two telescope locations, and we get to use our high-performance computing expertise creating algorithms, integrating pipelines, and optimising performance.

SRCNet is a distributed network for storing, manipulating and visualising data from the telescope, designed to deliver data to the scientists. Our key activity is to establish a Swiss node to this network,  including data transfer and storage services, as well as integrating and deploying a data science platform to analyse and visualise the observations.

The telescope data is ideal for developing and testing new AI methods. Our AI experts study how to accelerate the data analysis and deepen our understanding of the data. They do this by combining the observational data with AI-generated data that models the physical processes, particularly in the context of solar observations. This lets us compare the outcomes with the results from our STIX telescope.

The head of our institute, André Csillaghy, is a member of the SKAO Science and Engineering Advisory Committee SEAC. The SEAC advises the Director-General and the Board of the SKA Organisation on scientific and technical matters related to the construction of the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.

This project is a good example of how our institute supports scientific research in astroinformatics and heliophysics. SKACH is also a wonderful opportunity for our students to be part of a massive, international team and to use technologies they won’t see in a typical work environment. After all, the role of an applied university is to transfer knowledge and technologies from academia to industry. Participating in such groundbreaking research programs lets us develop and work with entirely new technologies, which we can later apply to commercial ventures with industry partners.