Distinguished Professor Tao An, from Shanghai Astronomical Observatory, CAS, recently visited Perth, Australia, where he was granted the ACAMAR Visiting Fellowship. During his time in Perth, he had the opportunity to engage in fruitful exchanges and discussions with several partners, including UWA, CSIRO, and Curtin, establishing intentions for collaboration on various scientific projects.
UWA Collaboration: Prof. Tao An had productive discussions with Prof. Andreas Wicenec and his team at UWA regarding the technical details of SRC science use cases. They plan to jointly develop and advance key technologies related to high-speed data processing and access, data compression, interface of data archive, and integration of processing pipelines using DALiuGE. Additionally, Andreas provided constructive feedback on the procurement plan for the China SRC computing cluster.
Discussion with Director & Prof. Lister Staveley-Smith: Fruitful exchanges were had regarding the progress and plans of the China-Australia SRCs. The ACAMAR magnetic field conference and the ACAMAR personnel exchange program were also discussed.
CSIRO Collaboration: Multiple in-depth discussions were had with Prof. George Heald and his team at CSIRO regarding magnetic field surveys based on the SKA precursor telescopes. This included collaborations on poarization surveys such as ATCA QUOCKA, ASKAP RACS, ASKAP POSSUM, and MWA GLEAM-X. Additionally, the organization and preparations for the ACAMAR magnetism conference with George and Dr. Alec Thomson was discussed.
Pawsey Supercomputing Centre Visit: Prof. Tao An visited the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre to gain insights into the SETONIX system and Pawsey’s support for the SKA precursor telescopes.
Collaboration with AusSRC: Prof. Tao An had extensive discussions with the AusSRC team, where updates and plans regarding both AusSRC and CnSRC were shared. The two parties reached an agreement to facilitate the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to strengthen the partnership, with a focus on supporting the scientific operations of the SKA precursor telescopes and facilitating scientific output. The engineering teams also collaborated on planning the tasks for SRCNet Prototyping.
Collaboration with Curtin teams: Productive exchanges were had with Prof. Clancy James and the Curtin transient team regarding potential collaboration on the CRAFT project. Prof. Tao An discussed collaboration opportunities with Dr. Natasha Hurley-Walker on long-duration transient sources and the GLEAM-X survey.
Other scientific collaboration: Prof. Tao An engaged in discussions with Dr. Ivy Wong and Dr. Stefan Duchesne on image analysis for RACS, including the utilisation of artificial intelligence methods for source finding and classification, as well as scientific research on radio galaxies.
