The University of Cape Town (UCT) has highlighted the tenth anniversary of the country’s Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA). This is a joint endeavour between UCT, the University of the Western Cape and the University of Pretoria and is hosted by UCT.
The IDIA was created to meet the problem of processing, analysing, interpreting and visualising the huge amounts of data that would be produced by the next generation of radio telescope arrays. South Africa’s own world-leading MeerKAT, which became fully operational in 2018, is the most notable of these. And now the South Africa-based mid-radio frequency array of the international Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope will soon also start operations.
“IDIA represents the kind of environment in which scientific and technological excellence reinforce one another,” pointed out UCT Vice Chancellor Professor Mosa Moshabela. “The scientific ambition of MeerKAT and the [SKA] demand new technical capability; in turn, those technical advances open new questions for science. That cycle – between advancing discovery, technology and human expertise – is where universities can make a distinctive, long-lasting contribution.”
