10.000 ERC grantees -  Congratulations from the RadioNet community

The European Research Council (ERC) has just announced that it has funded its 10.000th researcher and the RadioNet community congratulates heartily the ERC and all the grantees.

The ERC grants come in different categories, e.g. for researchers starting or consolidating their careers, for collaborations, and for advanced leaders in their fields. The grants have in common that the only award criterion is scientific excellence, without considering political aspects. The rules are the same for all researchers in Europe and the evaluation panel consists of the most eminent experts in different research fields. The awards are highly oversubscribed with a success rate of less than 1 in 10. This is why the ERC Grants are considered the gold standard for scientific excellence, not only for individual researchers, but also for their host institutions.

We are proud that researchers from the RadioNet partners have been quite successful in the past in receiving ERC grants. Among them Thomas Ray with the project Ejection Accretion Structures in YSOs (EASY), Andrei Barychev with the project Study of Terahertz Focal Plain Arrays (TFPA), Jan Mathijs Van Der Hulst with the project The HI Story of Galaxy Evolution in the Nearby Universe (HISTORYNU), Michael Kramer with the projects Large European Array for Pulsars (LEAP) and BlackHoleCam (BHC), and Anton Zensus with the project Mapping Magnetic Fields with INterferometry Down to Event hoRizon Scales (M2FINDERS).

Image: © ERC

Cordis featured ORP as ‘Project of the Month’ 

The Community Research and Development Information Service (CORDIS), the European Commission's primary source of results from the projects funded by the EU's framework programmes for research and innovation (FP1 to Horizon 2020), has featured the OPTICON-RadioNet Pilot (ORP) in their section ‘Project of the Month’. Find here the full article.

SKAO appoints its Telescope Directors in Australia and South Africa

The SKA Observatory (SKAO) is pleased to announce the appointment of the new directors in Australia and South Africa. These positions are the most senior SKAO operations representatives in the telescope host countries.

Dr Sarah Pearce, currently Acting Chief Scientist of Australia’s national science agency CSIRO, will be the director of the SKAO’s low-frequency telescope in Australia.

Dr Lindsay Magnus, currently Head of Operations at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), will be the director of the SKAO’s mid-frequency telescope in South Africa. Read more here.

SKAO: New Brand for A New ERA

The newly born SKA Observatory (SKAO) has unveiled its brand following approval by the SKAO Council.

The brand launch signals a new chapter in the SKA Project’s history, after the SKAO officially came into being as an intergovernmental organisation on January 15, 2021. Full information here.

ESCAPE Summer School, June 7-18, 2021 - virtual

The ESCAPE Summer School will take place on June 7-18, 2021.

The program of the school is devoted to project development for astrophysics, astroparticle physics & particle physics. It will provide theoretical and hands-on training on Data Science and Python development (coding environment and good code practices, version control and collaborative development, Python packaging, scientific libraries for data science and analysis and machine learning). A Slack community for the school is available for communication between participants, to ask questions to tutors, amongst others. Find full information here.

Registration is open from 26 April to 31 May.

Monthly webinar series “Synergies in the Exploration of the Extreme Universe”

Beginning in April 2021, the CTAO and the CTAC launched the monthly webinar series Synergies in the Exploration of the Extreme Universe, focused on the various MWL and MM synergies of CTA science with other instruments, and aimed at researchers in astrophysics and astronomy. 

Each webinar will take place on the fourth Thursday of every month via Zoom, between 17:00 UTC and 09:00 UTC. The entire series is open and free to all researchers with a one-time registration. 

The series launched on April 29 at 17:00 UTC, with Dr. David Thompson (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center) and his talk AGN MWL Research Strategies: the Fermi Large Area Telescope Experiences.

All information and subscription form here.

EC Research & Innovation Days: Programme released

The program for the EC Research & Innovation Days,  June 23-24, has been released. Find it here.

Call for proposals to the EVN

The European VLBI Network Call for Proposals is now open. Find full information here.

Deadline: June 1, 2021, 16:00 UTC.

The Westerbork Apertif Long Term Archive (ALTA) is a brand new facility offering to the world-wide astronomical community free virtual access to data and scientific products produced from all sky surveys of the Northern sky that will be conducted with the new Apertif frontend of the Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT), as well as tools to query, further exploit and perform data mining of these products adaptable to diverse research goals.

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Call of “Telescopes for All” open

The Telescopes for All project, an IAU Global Outreach Project, distributes telescopes signed by astronauts and scientists, including Nobel Prize winners, to underserved communities around the world. The project aims to broaden the horizons of children, adults and educators while sparking an interest in science and raising awareness for equal opportunities in pursuing careers in astronomy. Proposals and recommendations must be submitted to the IAU OAO. See all information here.

Deadline: June 1, 2021