Cosmology in the Alps 2026

16 Mar 2026, 10:30 → 20 Mar 2026, 16:00 UTC

Glacier Hotel - Les Diablerets

Anna Bonaldi (SKA organization), Ariane Capt (EPFL SB IPHYS LASTRO), Carolyn Crichton, Joanna Jermini-Howard

Overview

The Cosmology in the Alps Conference focuses on radio cosmology studying the universe on large scales. It aims to bring together experts in the field together with early career researchers to foster interactions.

Cosmology in the Alps focuses on three main goals:

●Foster developments in radio Cosmology

●Highlight young researchers in Cosmology from across the globe

●Highlight Swiss contributions to the global Cosmology landscape

 

The conference will be held at the Hotel Glacier in Les Diablerets, in the Swiss Alps from 16-20 March 2026 and will be hosted by SKACH - the Swiss Consortium to the SKAO.

 

 

ASTRONAUT CLAUDE NICOLLIER ATTENDING OUR WELCOME DINNER

 

We will also have the honor to host Astronaut Claude Nicollier who will give a welcome address during our Welcome Dinner on Monday 16th March 2026. Furthermore, Les Diablerets is very special to him as it is the home of the Nicollier family. For more information on Claude Nicollier, please click here.

 

 

ABSTRACTS AND REGISTRATION INFORMATION

 

Abstracts will be open from 10 September to 30 October 2025. For registration, please go to the "Registration Information" section on the menu window.

 

We look forward to welcoming you to Switzerland!

 

Monday, 16 March

10:30 → 12:00 Arrival and Registration

12:00 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 15:00 Monday afternoon - part 1: Radio Transient

13:30 KEYNOTE: Fast Radio Bursts and Cosmology

Speaker: Prof. Amanda Weltman (University of Cape Town)

14:20 Revisiting GW170817 at milliarcsecond scale: high-precision constraint on Hubble's constant

Speaker: Kelly Gourdji (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation)

14:40 Using advanced statistical techniques to improve the detection of medium-timescale transients in the image plane

Speaker: Sihle Gcilitshana (Rhodes University)

15:00 → 15:30 Coffee Break & Group Photo

15:30 → 17:30 Monday afternoon - part 2: Facilities & Techniques for Cosmic Hydrogen Searches

15:30 The Hydrogen Intensity and Real-time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) - Overview and Status Update

Speaker: Jennifer Studer (ETH Zurich)

15:50 Status Update on HERA and Future Prospects

Speaker: Prof. Adrian Liu (McGill University)

16:10 Introducing L-BASS: an instrument to tackle the ARCADE excess with absolutely calibrated observations at 1.4 GHz.

Speaker: Phillip Black (University of Manchester)

16:30 HIRAX Primary Beam Modeling: Chromaticity, Systematics, and Sparse Representation

Speaker: Dr Ajith Sampath (University of Geneva)

16:50 Correlation Calibration: A Hybrid Calibration Technique for Radio Interferometric Arrays

Speaker: Robert Pascua (Dunlap Institute & Perimeter Institute)

17:10 Spherical Harmonics-based Visibility Synthesis for Cosmological Intensity Mapping

Speaker: Devin Crichton (ETH Zurich)

17:30 → 19:00 Free time

19:00 → 21:30 Dinner - Fondue + Welcome address from Prof. Claude Nicollier

Tuesday, 17 March

08:30 → 09:50 Tuesday morning - part 1 b: Facilities & Techniques for Cosmic Hydrogen Searches (Continued)

08:30 Physical interpretation of the IGM parameters of the 21-cm power spectrum from cosmic reionization

Speaker: Ivelin Georgiev (Astrophysics Research Center of the Open University, MPA Garching)

08:50 Robust Extraction of Global 21 cm Spectrum from Experiments in Lunar Orbits

Speaker: Prof. Yidong Xu (National Astronomical Observatory of China)

09:10 Unveiling the Dark Ages and the Cosmic Dawn with REACH and CosmoCube

Speaker: Eloy de Lera Acedo (Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge)

09:30 Curing Cosmic Myopia: High-Resolution 10 MHz Imaging of Galactic Foregrounds from the High-Arctic with ALBATROS

Speaker: Mohan Agrawal (McGill University)

09:50 → 10:20 Coffee Break

10:20 → 12:00 Tuesday morning - part 2: WORKSHOP : Opportunities for Early Career Researchers

10:20 Communicating science in our post truth world

Speaker: Ms Tanya Petersen (EPFL)

10:50 Opportunities for Early Career Researchers

Speaker: Carolyn Crichton (EPFL)

11:20 Career planning for early career researchers

Speaker: Susanne Wampfler (Center for Space and Habitability, University of Bern)

12:00 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:50 Tuesday afternoon - part 1: New Analysis Methods and Models for EoR Science

13:30 Tracing the Cosmic Origins: Machine-Learning Reconstruction of the Primordial Density Field from EoR Line-Intensity Maps

Speaker: Dr Anchal Saxena (Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy)

13:50 First constraints on cosmic 21cm signal with the uGMRT - Lessons learnt from ELAIS-N1 observations

Speaker: Prof. Abhirup Datta (Department of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology-Indore)

14:10 Inferring the HII Ionization History using Simulation Based Inference from 21cm Intensity Maps

Speaker: Nadia Cooper (Imperial College London)

14:30 Forecasting SKA Constraints on the Epoch of Reionisation with the Triangle Correlation Function

Speaker: Liliane Crascall-Kennedy (Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale)

14:50 → 15:10 Coffee Break

15:10 → 15:50 Tuesday afternoon - part 2: New Analysis Methods and Models for EoR Science (Continued)

15:10 Beyond the Power Spectrum: Probing Cosmic Reionization's Non-Gaussianity with 21-cm Fourier Phases

Speaker: Sambit Giri (Stockholm University)

15:30 Constraining reionization with higher order statistics and implicit inference

Speaker: Nicolas Cerardi (EPFL)

16:00 → 16:30 Poster set-up

16:30 → 18:30 Tuesday Afternoon - Part 3: Poster Session / Apero - (Poster board dimension at venue 120cm x 120 cm)

16:30 Developments in calibration of the global 21-cm experiment REACH

Speaker: Adarsh Kumar Dash (University of Cambridge)

16:35 Effect of 1DPS emulators from multiple simulations on 21 cm inference

Speaker: Ms Carina Norregaard (Imperial College London)

16:40 Probing cosmology with large-scale radio galaxy clustering

Speaker: Vrund Patel (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg University)

16:45 Forecasting multi-tracer line-intensity mapping signals from the EoR using POLAR

Speaker: Chandra Shekhar Murmu (The Open University of Israel)

16:50 A New Data-Driven Technique To Mitigate The Foregrounds Of Line Intensity Maps

Speaker: Hannah Fronenberg (McGill University)

16:55 Characterizing galactic foregrounds with SKAMPI: New S-band observations of the Large Magellanic Cloud

Speaker: Nick Horstmann (Bielefeld University)

17:00 A Deep Learning Framework for Detection and Characterization of Radio Galaxies

Speaker: SANJAY KHATIK

17:05 The Multi-stream Cosmic Web

Speaker: bram alferink (Stellenbosch University, University of Groningen)

17:10 ALBATROS: An Arctic Window into the Ultra-Low Frequency Universe

Speaker: Dr Aman Chokshi (McGill University)

17:15 Dark Photons in the Radio Sky

Speaker: Ethan Baker (Boston University)

17:20 The Tracking Tapered Gridded Estimator for the 21-cm power spectrum from MWA drift scan observations -- III. Incoherent Addition

Speaker: Shouvik Sarkar (Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras))

17:25 An emulator-based forecasting on astrophysics and cosmology with 21 cm and density cross-correlations during the epoch of reionization

Speaker: Barun Maity (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy)

17:30 Constraining the Extragalactic Radio Background Excess with 21 cm Global Signal Observations

Speaker: Savannah Stanbury (Rhodes University)

17:35 Starobinsky in Stereo: SKA-CMB Synergy in SBI

Speaker: Benedikt Schosser (Heidelberg University)

17:40 Diffusion models to infer the density fields from SKA-Low maps

Speaker: Pietro Albanese Guidi (Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS) (CNRS))

17:45 The effect of Epoch of Reionization sources on the Lightcone 21-cm signal

Speaker: Suman Pramanick (Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, West Bengal, 721302 India)

17:50 The MERGHERS Survey

Speaker: Kenda Knowles (Rhodes University / South African Radio Astronomy Observatory)

17:55 The MeerKAT Massive Distant Clusters Survey: Diffuse Emission at z > 1

Speaker: Sinenhlanhla Precious Sikhosana (University Of Kwazulu-Natal)

18:30 → 19:00 Free time

19:00 → 20:30 Dinner

Wednesday, 18 March

08:40 → 10:00 Wednesday Morning - part 1: The Astrophysics of the EoR

08:40 Synergies between Cosmic Reionization and JWST Galaxy Surveys

Speaker: Ankita Bera (University of Maryland)

09:00 Reconstructing Reionization with 21cm Summaries and Galaxy Synergies

Speaker: Yannic Pietschke (Institute for Theoretical Physics, Heidelberg)

09:20 Linking Galaxy Evolution and the 21-cm Signal: Joint Machine Learning Constraints on the Epoch of Reionization

Speaker: Anshuman Tripathi (Department of Astronomy, Astrophysics and Space Engineering, IIT Indore, Simrol, Indore, 453552, Madhya Pradesh, India)

09:40 Narrowing the discovery space of the cosmological 21-cm signal using multi-wavelength constraints

Speaker: Jiten Dhandha (Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge)

10:00 → 10:30 Coffee Break

10:30 → 11:30 Wednesday Morning - part 2: The Astrophysics of the EoR (Continued)

10:30 From Galaxies to the Cosmic Web: Multi-Scale Modelling of the Epoch of Reionisation

Speaker: Michele Bianco (ETH Zurich)

10:50 Tau and Turbulence: The importance of reionization at the largest and smallest scales

Speaker: Christopher Cain (Arizona State University)

11:10 Validating the initial SKA-low AA* 21cm measurements through cross-correlation with line intensity maps during reionization

Speaker: Yilong Zhang (scuola normale superiore)

11:45 → 13:00 Lunch

13:00 → 17:30 Glacier 3000 Excursion - Snow Outing - Meet up at 13:00 in front of hotel to head to bus stop

17:30 → 19:00 Free time

19:00 → 20:30 Dinner

Thursday, 19 March

08:30 → 10:00 Thursday morning - part 1: Fundamental Physics with Radio Observatories

08:40 Generative Models and Neural Operators for Fuzzy Dark Matter Simulations

Speaker: Ashutosh Kumar Mishra (EPFL)

09:00 EHT and ngEHT – Constraining Super Massive Black Holes

Speaker: Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

09:20 Probing Beyond-LCDM cosmologies with the 21cm signal

Speaker: Maike Voelkel (Institute for Theoretical Physics (ITP), Heidelberg University)

09:40 Signatures of Cosmic Strings in High Redshift 21-cm Maps

Speaker: Robert Brandenberger (McGill University)

10:00 → 10:30 Coffee Break

10:30 → 12:00 Thursday morning - part 2: Dark & Quiet Skies

11:10 Satellite Mega-constellations: The Risks for Radio Astronomy and a Potential Solution with TABASCAL

Speaker: Dr Chris Finlay (EPFL)

11:30 Preserving the dark and quiet skies: The IAU’s mission

Speaker: Dr Willy Benz (IAU)

12:00 → 13:30 Lunch

13:30 → 14:50 Thursday afternoon - part 1: HI in the Post-EoR Universe

13:30 HI-deficiency in high-mass halos: implications for forecasting

Speaker: Catherine Cress (University of South Africa)

13:50 Advancing the Understanding of Neutral Hydrogen in the Post-Reionization Universe with the Upgraded GAEA Model

Speaker: Mohammad Kamran (INAF-Astronomical Observatory of Trieste)

14:10 Updates from the MeerKAT Large Area Synoptic Survey

Speaker: Dr Piyanat Kittiwisit (UWC, SARAO)

14:30 Systematics-aware forecasting for neutral hydrogen intensity mapping with CHORD

Speaker: Sophia Rubens (McGill University)

14:50 → 15:20 Coffee Break

15:20 → 17:00 Thursday afternoon - part 2: HI in the Post-EoR Universe (Continued)

15:20 Detection of the 21cm Auto Power Spectrum at z ~ 1 with the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment

Speaker: Simon Foreman (Arizona State University)

15:40 Framework for the physical interpretation of HI power spectrum measurement with CHIME

Speaker: Dr Albin Joseph (Arizona State University)

16:00 Towards 21-cm intensity mapping at 𝑧 = 2.28 with uGMRT using the Tapered Gridded Estimator

Speaker: Dr Samir Choudhuri (IIT Madras)

16:20 Radio Recombination Line Contamination in Post-Reionization 21 cm Intensity Mapping

Speaker: Pip Samuel Petersen (University of Washington)

16:40 Forward Modeling HIRAX Observations Using Fast Halo-Model-Based Simulations of Cosmological HI

Speaker: Pascal Hitz (ETH Zurich)

17:00 → 18:00 Free time

18:00 → 19:30 Dinner

19:30 → 21:30 Snow Shoe Under the Stars

Friday, 20 March

08:30 → 10:00 Friday morning - part 1: Radio source populations as cosmological probes & signposts of LSS

08:30 KEYNOTE: Simulating Cosmic Reionization with high-dynamic range

Speaker: Ilian Iliev (University of Sussex)

09:00 Tracing the Magnetised Cosmic Web with Radio Galaxies Across Cosmic Time.

Speaker: Dr Pratik Dabhade (Astrophysics Division, NCBJ, Warsaw, Poland)

09:20 Painting realistic radio skies: empirical recipes for the galaxy-halo connection to derive data-driven full-sky simulations for future radio surveys

Speaker: Dr Tommaso Ronconi (INAF-IRA)

09:40 Source separation for radio weak-lensing measurements using deep learning

Speaker: Priyam Tripathi (Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur)

10:00 → 10:20 Coffee Break

10:20 → 11:00 Friday morning - part 2: Radio source populations as cosmological probes & signposts of LSS (Continued)

10:20 Classification of diffuse radio emission from LoTSS

Speaker: Markus Bredberg (EPFL)

10:40 MOSS: Mid frequency catalog of Saraswati core region

Speaker: Mr Robert Kincaid (EPFL)

11:30 → 13:00 Lunch / Lunch bag

13:00 → 14:30 Departure