SKACH#

SKACH's vision consists in furthering the Swiss leadership in the global radio astronomy community.

Mission#

Ensure meaningful contributions to the SKAO and SRCs through the development and delivery of cutting-edge Swiss solutions to key science goals, big data research, technology, and services.

Objectives#

Advance Switzerland’s impact in the SKAO and SRCs through:

• Creating synergies between the Swiss government, academia, and industry.
• Engaging in leading-edge scientific research.
• Providing Swiss solutions to SKAO and SRC big data and hardware challenges.
• Competing for national and international funding for the Swiss Components of the SKAO and SRCs.
• Ensuring returned value for money for the Swiss economic contributions to the SKAO and SRCs.
• Fostering connections with other precursor radio astronomy facilities.

SKACH is leading Switzerland's contributions to the SKAO on behalf of the State Secretariat of Science, Innovation, Research, and Education (SERI). SKACH is comprised of nine Swiss institutions and will deliver contributions to the SKAO in five key programs: Science, Data Science, Computing Platforms and Infrastructure, Instrumentation, and Education and Public Outreach.

About the SKAO#

Two telescopes are under construction, one in South Africa and one in Australia.

These installations will combine the signals received from thousands of small antennae spread over a distance of several thousand kilometres to simulate a single giant radio telescope capable of extremely high sensitivity and angular resolution, using a technique called aperture synthesis. Some of the sub-arrays of the SKA will also have a very large field-of-view (FOV), making it possible to survey very large areas of sky at once.

Funding#

SKACH is funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and is responsible for managing the Swiss contribution to the SKAO.

This endeavor is lead by a board consisting of a strong contingent of Swiss institutions; including, Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW), Universität Zürich (UZH), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW), Universität Basel (UniBas), Université de Genève (UniGE), Haute École spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO), Centro Svizzero di Calcolo Scientifico (CSCS). The board meets on the first Friday of every month, and there is an online consortium-wide meeting open to all members weekly on Friday afternoons.