Name: Swiss SKA Days 2026
Start: 2026-08-31T10:00:00+02:00
End: 2026-09-02T15:45:00+02:00
Location: HES-SO/HE-Arc - Neuchâtel

Swiss SKA Days 2026

from Monday, 31 August 2026 (10:00) to Wednesday, 2 September 2026 (15:45)

Monday, 31 August 2026

10:00 Registration & Welcome Coffee
Registration & Welcome Coffee
10:00 - 10:30
10:30 Opening Session - Day 1
Opening Session - Day 1
10:30 - 12:35
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

10:30 Welcome - Jean-Paul Kneib (EPFL)

10:35 Welcome from He-Arc

10:45 Welcome to Swiss SKA Days 2026

11:00 Switzerland’s perspective on the SKA project - Simon Berger (CH - SERI)

11:15 SKACH Communications Update - Tanya Petersen (EPFL)

11:30 2026 SKACH Update - Carolyn Crichton (EPFL)

11:45 KEYNOTE: tbc

12:25 VIRUP: Project Updates + Demo - Florian Cabot (EPFL)
12:35 Lunch (Group photo)
Lunch (Group photo)
12:35 - 13:35
13:35 SKAO Regional Centers (SRCs)
SKAO Regional Centers (SRCs)
13:35 - 15:40
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

13:35 Science Delivery Updates - Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

13:50 Swiss SRC Roadmap to Science Verification - Rohini Joshi (FHNW)

14:05 ukSRC Operations and Challenges - Sean McConkey (University of Cambridge)

14:20 Architectural overview of the German deSRC SRCNet node - Marc Drobek (TUD, DZA)

14:40 From zero to espSRC: building the Spanish SKA Regional Centre - Manuel Parra-Royón (SPSRC, IAA-Spain) Susana Sánchez-Expósito (IAA-CSIC)

14:55 Getting ready for Science Verification at sweSRC: current setup and future plans - Franz Kirsten (Chalmers University of Technology)

15:10 CHSRC infrastructure and development - Carolina Lindqvist (EPFL) Pablo Llopis Sanmillan (EPFL) Pascal Herzog (FHNW)

15:25 A Hybrid Kubernetes Infrastructure for the Swiss SKA Regional Centre - Elia Oggian (CSCS - Swiss National Supercomputing Centre)
15:40 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
15:40 - 16:10
16:10 Data Science & Imaging
Data Science & Imaging
16:10 - 17:50
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

16:10 Data-Driven Generative Priors for Radio Interferometric Imaging - Massimo De Santis (HES-SO)

16:25 DDRM for radio interferometry - Emma Tolley (EPFL)

16:40 The R2D2 deep neural network series paradigm for robust ultra-fast precision imaging in radio astronomy. - Yves Wiaux (Heriot-Watt Edinburgh)

16:55 Implicit neural representations for radio astronomy - Janie du Preez (Rhodes University)

17:20 SKA-SDP-ready simulations and imaging for radio astronomy - Massimo De Santis (HES-SO)

17:35 skasim - a researcher-oriented simulation package for SKA - Cristobal Bordiu (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC))
17:50 SKAO Science book
SKAO Science book
17:50 - 18:10
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

17:50 Dark Matter with the SKAO - Emma Tolley (EPFL)

17:55 Review of the Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II: Imaging the 21-cm Signal - Michele Bianco (ETH Zurich)

18:00 Review of the Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II: Inference & ML - Michele Bianco (ETH Zurich)

18:05 Highlights from the AASKAII chapter: "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the SKA Era" - Philipp Denzel (Centre for Artificial Intelligence, ZHAW)
18:10 Welcome Reception
Welcome Reception
18:10 - 21:10
Tuesday, 1 September 2026

08:30 Arrival & Coffee
Arrival & Coffee
08:30 - 09:00
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
09:00 Opening Session - Day 2
Opening Session - Day 2
09:00 - 10:00
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

09:00 SKAO - General Update & Membership - Thijs Geurts (SKAO)

09:20 Preparing for science with the SKA telescopes - Sarrvesh Sridhar (Square Kilometre Array Observatory)

09:40 SDSC - Presentation (tbc)
10:00 Stretch & Refresh
Stretch & Refresh
10:00 - 10:05
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
10:05 Industry Session
Industry Session
10:05 - 10:55
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

10:10 CSP.LMC: Five Years of Progress and the Challenges Ahead - Ivana Novak (Cosylab Switzerland)

10:25 State-of-the-art time & frequency references for mid-site : overview and progress report - Gilles CIBIEL (T4Science)

10:40 SKAO Procurement Update - Paul Oosthuizen
10:55 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
10:55 - 11:15
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
11:15 *SPECIAL SESSION*: Atomic Clocks Development in Switzerland
*SPECIAL SESSION*: Atomic Clocks Development in Switzerland
11:15 - 12:45
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

11:15 Global future projects in Radio-Asronomy - Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

11:30 Industry Companies presenting their work

12:30 Discussion + Q&A
12:45 Lunch
Lunch
12:45 - 13:45
13:45 Dark & Quiet Skies
Dark & Quiet Skies
13:45 - 15:35
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

13:45 From climate obstruction to space pollution: the ideologies driving planetary collapse - Julia Steinberger (University of Lausanne)

14:25 SKAO - Dark & Quiet Skies Update - Isabel Broughton

14:45 Protecting the radio sky in the SKA era: an update from the IAU CPS - Chris Finlay (EPFL)

15:00 TABASCAL: Latest results on EDA2 data and initial software release - Chris Finlay (EPFL)

15:15 Forecasts on the potential impact of Radio Frequency Interference from future satellite mega constellations on the SKA Observatory - Nicolas Cerardi (EPFL, Swizerland)
Data Science & Imaging (continued)
Data Science & Imaging (continued)
13:45 - 14:45
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

13:45 New Methods for Efficient Representation Learning in Radio Astronomy - Erica Lastufka (University of Geneva)

14:00 Label-Guided Self-Supervised Representations for Scalable Radio Source Analysis - Markus Bredberg (EPFL)

14:15 Evaluating Deep Learning Compression Methods for Radio Interferometric Visibility Data in SKAO - Xiaoran Chen (Swiss Data Science Center)

14:30 Deep-learning in visibility space - Philipp Denzel (Centre for Artificial Intelligence, ZHAW)
14:45 Discussion for Future Plans for SRCNode Operations
Discussion for Future Plans for SRCNode Operations
14:45 - 15:45
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor

15:30 Afternoon Activity - Town Visit
Afternoon Activity - Town Visit
15:30 - 18:00
Wednesday, 2 September 2026

08:30 Arrival & Coffee
Arrival & Coffee
08:30 - 09:00

09:00 Opening Session - Day 3
Opening Session - Day 3
09:00 - 09:05
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
09:05 Astro Science
Astro Science
09:05 - 10:15
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

09:05 MeerKAT Observations of the Saraswati Supercluster 3 (MOSS 3) - A look into the radio galaxy populations around two dynamically different core clusters. - Robert Kincaid (EPFL)

09:20 A Preview of the SKA Era: Mapping the Diffuse Universe with MeerKAT and the power of 3GC (Third-Generation Calibration) - Konstantinos Kolokythas (Rhodes University / South African Radio Astronomy Observatory)

09:40 "Super spirals" at cosmic noon - Where are they headed? (And: what have they been up to?) - Mark Sargent (EPFL LASTRO)

10:00 Empirical beam characterization of HIRAX prototype using solar transits - Ajith Sampath (University of Geneva)
10:15 Coffee Break
Coffee Break
10:15 - 10:45
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
10:45 Theory & Simulations
Theory & Simulations
10:45 - 11:05
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

10:45 Subsonic turbulence with SPH-EXA - Ruben Cabezon (University of Basel)
WORKSHOP: Preparing for the first cycle of SKA-LOW Science verification
WORKSHOP: Preparing for the first cycle of SKA-LOW Science verification
10:45 - 11:45
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
11:05 HPC & Eco-Computing
HPC & Eco-Computing
11:05 - 12:25
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor
Contributions

11:05 GPU-Accelerated Standalone Particle-to-Grid Library for Cosmological Simulations - Osman Seckin Simsek (University of Basel)

11:25 Dynamic Parallel Pipelines for Radio Astronomy: Faster DP3 Predictions for Calibration and Imaging - Hamza Chouh (EPFL)

11:45 Radiostreams: Imaging the sky at a 1Hz frequency - Adrien Devresse (SKACH)

12:05 Distributed Fourier Domain Dedispersion on GPUs - Piyush Panchal (EPFL)
12:35 End of Sessions and Conference (no lunch provided)
End of Sessions and Conference (no lunch provided)
12:35 - 12:55
Room: Room 328, 3rd floor