Switzerland currently has an observer position in the SKA project and is considering participation as a full member from 2021 onwards. As an initial step, EPFL was granted special member status of the SKA Organisation (SKAO) in April 2020 and will be the lead institution coordinating the contributions to the SKA on behalf of the Swiss academic community.
White paper: Swiss Interests and Contribution in SKA
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As a leading nation in education and research, and with a history of close cooperation with international partners, Switzerland has a strategic interest in contributing to the SKA project. It has been identified as one of the potential large scale infrastructure projects under the 2019 Swiss research infrastructure roadmap. Click here to check out the new research organisations identified by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI)
During its operation, the SKA will collect unprecedented amounts of data, requiring the world’s fastest supercomputers to process this data in near real time, before turning these into science projects for distribution around the world through a network of SKA regional centres located in partner countries.
Swiss SKA activities are led by a consortium in which more than 50 scientists and are participating from different research institutes throughout Switzerland.
Swiss membership is expected to be mutually beneficial for the SKA organisation, as it recognises the niche technological expertise of the alpine country’s academic institutions and network of industry players. Swiss academic institutions are expected to contribute through research and development in the field of distributed high performance computing (HPC), machine learning and artificial intelligence which can be applied to the vast amounts of data that will be generated by SKA.
