SKACH Winter Meeting 2026

26 Jan 2026, 09:00 → 27 Jan 2026, 18:00 Europe/Zurich

Ground Floor E4 (CSCS LCA main Building )

Carolyn Crichton, Jean-Paul Kneib (EPFL), Joanna Jermini-Howard

We are pleased to invite you to participate to the SKACH Winter Meeting hosted by our collaborators at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS). This event will focus on consortium-wide updates, and updates from the five SKACH programs: Comms & Outreach, Instrumentation, Computing Platforms & Infrastructure, Data Science & Simulations and Science (AstroSignals).

SKACH is primarily funded by the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), and is responsible for managing the Swiss contribution to the SKAO. SKACH also leverages funding from external grants such as AstroSignals SINERGIA, SNF Bilateral, PASC, InnoSuisse, and Horizon Europe.

This endeavor is lead by a strong contingent of Swiss institutions; including, Universität Basel (UniBas), Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz (FHNW), Universität Zürich (UZH), Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften (ZHAW), Université de Genève (UniGE), Haute École spécialisée de Suisse Occidentale (HES-SO) and the Centro Svizzero di Calcolo Scientifico (CSCS).

Monday, 26 January

09:30 → 10:00 Registration and Coffee

10:00 → 11:20 Monday Morning: Opening Session

10:00 Welcome to the SKACH Winter Meeting

10:20 Welcome to CSCS

10:40 SKACH 2025 in Review and 2026 Look Forward

Speaker: Carolyn Crichton (EPFL)

11:00 SKACH Communications Update

Speaker: Tanya Petersen (EPFL)

11:20 → 12:20 Monday Morning: Data Science & Imaging

Convener: Emma Tolley (EPFL)

11:20 Aligning Astrophysical Images with Complementary Data Modalities

Speaker: Erica Lastufka (University of Geneva)

11:40 Classification of diffuse radio emission from LoTSSDR2

Speaker: Markus Bredberg (EPFL)

12:00 Progress Report: TABASCAL improvements in terms of speed, accuracy and extensibility

Speaker: Dr Chris Finlay (EPFL)

12:20 → 13:20 Lunch (Group picture)

13:20 → 15:20 Monday Afternoon: Data Science & Simulations

Convener: Darren Reed (University of Zurich)

13:20 Deep Learning Approaches for Solving Chemistry in Radiative Transfer Simulations

Speaker: Dr Philipp Denzel (Centre for Artificial Intelligence, ZHAW)

13:40 ART4SKA - Accelerated Radiative Transfer Simulations for the Square Kilometre Array

Speaker: Dr Tommaso Boschi (ETH Zurich)

14:00 Solving the Cosmological Vlasov–Poisson Equations with Physics-Informed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks

Speaker: Nicolas Cerardi (EPFL, Swizerland)

14:20 Evaluating Learning-Based Compression Techniques for Radio Interferometric Visibilities Data

Speaker: Xiaoran Chen (Swiss Data Science Center)

14:40 Implicit inference of the reionization history with higher-order statistics of the 21-cm signal

Speaker: Nicolas Cerardi (EPFL, Swizerland)

15:00 PRISME-21 : Public Reference for Interferometric Simulations for Foreground Mitigation in the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) 21-cm signal

Speaker: Emmanuel de Salis (HE-Arc Ingénierie, HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland)

15:20 → 15:50 Coffee Break

15:50 → 17:30 Monday Afternoon: Data Science & Simulations (continued)

Convener: Darren Reed (University of Zurich)

15:50 Physics Informed Machine Learning for Wave Dark Matter Simulations

Speaker: Ashutosh Kumar Mishra (EPFL)

16:10 When to Rebalance? Cost–Benefit Analysis of Domain Decomposition in SPH-EXA

Speaker: Dr Osman Seckin Simsek (University of Basel)

16:30 Reconstructing the cosmological distribution of dark matter from HI

Speaker: Robert Feldmann (University of Zurich)

16:50 VIRUP updates

Speaker: Florian Cabot (EPFL)

17:05 Karabo: Overview, Access, and Transition to SDP Configuration

Speakers: Andreas Wassmer (FHNW), Massimo De Santis (HES-SO // Haute Ecole Arc Ingénierie, University of Applied Sciences & Arts Western Switzerland, Saint-Imier, Switzerland)

17:30 → 17:35 Monday Afternoon: Closing - Day 1

17:45 → 19:30 Apero

Tuesday, 27 January

08:30 → 09:50 Tuesday Morning: SKACH Science

Convener: Dr Ajith Sampath (University of Geneva)

08:50 Astrophysics of Galaxies: (My) Highlights from the New SKA Science Book

Speaker: Dr Mark Sargent (EPFL LASTRO)

09:10 MeerKAt observations of Saraswti core region

Speaker: Robert Kincaid (EPFL)

09:30 HIRAX - Overview, Current status, and Swiss involvement

Speaker: Dr Ajith Sampath (University of Geneva)

09:50 → 10:20 Coffee Break

10:20 → 11:20 Tuesday Morning: SKAO Regional Centers (SRCs)

Convener: André Csillaghy (University of Applied Sciences North Western Switzerland (FHNW))

10:20 SRCNet Development and Science Delivery Update

Speakers: Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva), Rohini Joshi (FHNW)

10:40 The SKA Science Preparation: Project Scientist Update

Speaker: Dr Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

11:00 SRCNet/CHSRC deployment and demo

Speakers: Carolina Lindqvist (EPFL), Lukas Gehrig (FHNW), Pablo Llopis Sanmillan (EPFL), Pascal Herzog

11:20 → 12:00 Tuesday Morning: HPC Science Platforms

Convener: Victor Holanda (ETHZ/CSCS)

11:20 JupyterHub with FirecRESTSpawner at CSCS

Speaker: Rafael Sarmiento (ETH Zürich / CSCS)

11:40 FirecREST, an API for HPC and AI workflows

Speaker: Mr Elia Palme (ETH Zurich/CSCS)

12:00 → 12:05 Tuesday Morning: Closing - Day 2

12:05 → 13:05 Lunch