ACAMAR Visiting Fellowship – Success Stories

Associate Professor Rui Luo, from Guangzhou University, visited Australia in June 2023, as part of the ACAMAR Visiting Fellowship program. During his time in Australia, he attended workshops and collaborated with Australian colleagues. A/Prof Rui Luo also expanded his networks and future collaboration possibilities through his time at CSIRO and Curtin University.

Visiting Fellowship Highlights

CSIRO Marsfield: During his visit, A/Prof Rui Luo had discussions with Prof. Ron Ekers and Dr. George Hobbs about a project involving the monitoring of all-sky fast radio bursts with ground-based phased array. He also met with Prof Dr Bruce Allen from MPI/AEI during the IPTA 2023 Student Workshop, held at CSIRO Marsfield. 

Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy: After a short visit back to Guangzhou, A/Prof Rui Luo travelled back to Australia, arriving in Perth on 15 July 2023. Hosted by Dr Clancy James, A/Prof Rui Luo attended Dr James’ group meeting every Friday and discussed new FRB results/cosmology. Prof. Ron Ekers was also visiting the Curtin Institute for Radio Astronomy (CIRA) at the same time, which allowed them to continue collaborating on their paper (all-sky FRB monitoring with phased array). A/Prof Rui Luo also had several productive discussions with Dr Marcin Sokolowski about this paper – Dr Sokolowski became a co-author. Before finishing his visit, A/Prof Rui Luo gave a colloquium at CIRA about high-time resolution radio data.

CSIRO Kensington: While in Perth, A/Prof Rui Luo visited the offices of the SKA Observatory in Perth, located in the CSIRO Kensington building. The timing coincided with the MWA 10-year Project Meeting. 

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre: A/Prof Rui Luo visited the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre during the MWA Project Meeting. He was given a tour of the supercomputing centre and attended a book launch. Written by Ron Ekers et al., the book is about Joe Pawsey and radio astronomy in Australia.

Swinburne University of Technology – Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing & OzGrav:
After his trip to Perth, A/Prof Rui Luo spent three days in Melbourne, where he met with Prof Matthew Bailes, Dr Yuanming Wang and Dr Lei Zhang at Swinburne. A/Prof Rui Luo also participated in the coffee and journal club meeting of the pulsar group at Swinburne, and chatted with Prof Bailes and Andrew Jameson about the computing resources for phased array instruments. 

Workshops and meetings: A/Prof Rui Luo attended the following workshops and meetings while in Australia:

• Exploring the Unknown with Radio Surveys (RayFest) – A/Prof Rui Luo gave a talk on simulating the unknowns in high-time resolution radio data online.
• IPTA 2023 Science Meeting – Held in Port Douglas, A/Prof Rui Luo attended in person
• MWA Project Meetings 2023: 10 years of MWA operations – included a tour to the Perth Observatory
• ACAMAR 9 workshop – A/Prof Rui Luo attended in person, presenting the latest observational results from the FRB repeater discovered by Parkes and confirmed for repetition by FAST. He then joined Prof Ryan Shannon as co-chair of the FRB breakout session.

Collaborations: 

• On the ground-based Phased Array – A/Prof Rui Luo is collaborating with Prof Ron Ekers, Alex Dunning (a key engineer for the design of the cryogenically-cooled phased array for the Parkes radio telescope), Chris Phillips (assisting with the design of the VLBI network), Adam Deller and Andrew Jameson (designers of the digital backend for the all-sky radio transient monitor). Their paper is to be submitted to Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia.
• With the FRB group at CIRA – At CIRA, A/Prof Rui Luo attended the weekly meeting of the FRB group led by Dr Clancy James. While at these meetings, A/Prof Rui Luo spoke to Clancy, Apurba, Mawson, and Bradley about recent observational results from ASKAP, CHIME and FAST.