Swiss SKA Days 2026

31 Aug 2026, 10:00 → 2 Sept 2026, 15:45 Europe/Zurich

Room 328, 3rd floor (HES-SO/HE-Arc - Neuchâtel)

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

We are pleased to invite you to participate to the 10th edition of the Swiss SKA days. During this exciting 3-day event we will discuss the ambitious SKA radio-astronomy project at the forefront of advanced technology and computing.

The program will include the following topics addressed in plenary and parallel sessions:

• Updates on the SKA Observatory and precursor facilities
• SKA Regional Centers
• Astrophysics with the SKA and precursors
• Computing, Simulations, Data Science and more...

The Square Kilometer Array Observatory (SKAO) project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope, with eventually over one square kilometer of collecting area in South Africa and Australia. The SKA Days 2026 will discuss the Swiss interest and participation in this ambitious project.

The 10th Swiss SKA meeting will take place from Monday 31 August 2026 to Wednesday 2 September 2026 in Neuchâtel on the campus of HES-SO/HE-Arc.

Monday, 31 August

10:00 → 10:30 Registration & Welcome Coffee

10:30 → 12:35 Monday morning: Opening Session - Day 1

Convener: Prof. Jean-Paul Kneib (EPFL)

10:30 Welcome

Speaker: Prof. 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

Speaker: Dr Simon Berger (CH - SERI)

11:15 SKACH Communications Update

Speaker: Tanya Petersen (EPFL)

11:30 2026 SKACH Update

Speaker: Carolyn Crichton (EPFL)

11:45 KEYNOTE: tbc

12:25 VIRUP: Project Updates + Demo

Speaker: Florian Cabot (EPFL)

12:35 → 13:35 Lunch (Group photo)

13:35 → 15:40 Monday afternoon: SKAO Regional Centers (SRCs)

13:35 Science Delivery Updates

Speaker: Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

13:50 Swiss SRC Roadmap to Science Verification

Speaker: Rohini Joshi (FHNW)

14:05 ukSRC Operations and Challenges

Speaker: Sean McConkey (University of Cambridge)

14:20 Architectural overview of the German deSRC SRCNet node

Speaker: Marc Drobek (TUD, DZA)

14:35 Stretch & Refresh

14:40 From zero to espSRC: building the Spanish SKA Regional Centre

Speakers: Manuel Parra-Royón (SPSRC, IAA-Spain), Ms Susana Sánchez-Expósito (IAA-CSIC)

14:55 Getting ready for Science Verification at sweSRC: current setup and future plans

Speaker: Dr Franz Kirsten (Chalmers University of Technology)

15:10 CHSRC infrastructure and development

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

15:25 A Hybrid Kubernetes Infrastructure for the Swiss SKA Regional Centre

Speaker: Elia Oggian (CSCS - Swiss National Supercomputing Centre)

15:40 → 16:10 Coffee Break

16:10 → 17:50 Monday afternoon: Data Science & Imaging

16:10 Data-Driven Generative Priors for Radio Interferometric Imaging

Speaker: Massimo De Santis (HES-SO)

16:25 DDRM for radio interferometry

Speaker: Emma Tolley (EPFL)

16:40 The R2D2 deep neural network series paradigm for robust ultra-fast precision imaging in radio astronomy.

Speaker: Prof. Yves Wiaux (Heriot-Watt Edinburgh)

16:55 Implicit neural representations for radio astronomy

Speaker: Janie du Preez (Rhodes University)

17:10 Stretch & Refresh

17:20 SKA-SDP-ready simulations and imaging for radio astronomy

Speaker: Massimo De Santis (HES-SO)

17:35 skasim - a researcher-oriented simulation package for SKA

Speaker: Cristobal Bordiu (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC))

17:50 → 18:10 Monday afternoon: SKAO Science book

17:50 Dark Matter with the SKAO

Speaker: Emma Tolley (EPFL)

17:55 Review of the Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II: Imaging the 21-cm Signal

Speaker: Michele Bianco (ETH Zurich)

18:00 Review of the Advancing Astrophysics with the SKA II: Inference & ML

Speaker: Michele Bianco (ETH Zurich)

18:05 Highlights from the AASKAII chapter: "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in the SKA Era"

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

18:10 → 21:10 Welcome Reception

Tuesday, 1 September

08:30 → 09:00 Arrival & Coffee

09:00 → 10:00 Tuesday morning: Opening Session - Day 2

09:00 SKAO - General Update & Membership

Speaker: Mr Thijs Geurts (SKAO)

09:20 Preparing for science with the SKA telescopes

Speaker: Sarrvesh Sridhar (Square Kilometre Array Observatory)

09:40 SDSC - Presentation (tbc)

10:00 → 10:05 Stretch & Refresh

10:05 → 10:55 Tuesday morning: Industry Session

Convener: Michel Hübner (Swiss ILO Office)

10:10 CSP.LMC: Five Years of Progress and the Challenges Ahead

Speaker: Ivana Novak (Cosylab Switzerland)

10:25 State-of-the-art time & frequency references for mid-site : overview and progress report

Speaker: Gilles CIBIEL (T4Science)

10:40 SKAO Procurement Update

Speaker: Paul Oosthuizen

10:55 → 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15 → 12:45 Tuesday morning: *SPECIAL SESSION*: Atomic Clocks Development in Switzerland

Convener: Michel Hübner (Swiss ILO Office)

11:15 Global future projects in Radio-Asronomy

Speaker: Chin-Shin Chang (University of Geneva)

11:30 Industry Companies presenting their work

12:30 Discussion + Q&A

12:45 → 13:45 Lunch

13:45 → 15:35 Tuesday afternoon: Dark & Quiet Skies

13:45 From climate obstruction to space pollution: the ideologies driving planetary collapse

Speaker: Prof. Julia Steinberger (University of Lausanne)

14:25 SKAO - Dark & Quiet Skies Update

Speaker: Isabel Broughton

14:45 Protecting the radio sky in the SKA era: an update from the IAU CPS

Speaker: Dr Chris Finlay (EPFL)

15:00 TABASCAL: Latest results on EDA2 data and initial software release

Speaker: Dr Chris Finlay (EPFL)

15:15 Forecasts on the potential impact of Radio Frequency Interference from future satellite mega constellations on the SKA Observatory

Speaker: Nicolas Cerardi (EPFL, Swizerland)

13:45 → 14:45 Tuesday afternoon: Data Science & Imaging (continued)

13:45 New Methods for Efficient Representation Learning in Radio Astronomy

Speaker: Erica Lastufka (University of Geneva)

14:00 Label-Guided Self-Supervised Representations for Scalable Radio Source Analysis

Speaker: Markus Bredberg (EPFL)

14:15 Evaluating Deep Learning Compression Methods for Radio Interferometric Visibility Data in SKAO

Speaker: Xiaoran Chen (Swiss Data Science Center)

14:30 Deep-learning in visibility space

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

14:45 → 15:45 Tuesday afternoon: Discussion for Future Plans for SRCNode Operations

Convener: Rohini Joshi (FHNW)

15:30 → 18:00 Afternoon Activity - Town Visit

Town visit with touristic little train - 2 rides taking place at 16.00 and 17.00 form downtown. More details on our website soon.

Wednesday, 2 September

08:30 → 09:00 Arrival & Coffee

09:00 → 09:05 Wednesday morning: Opening Session - Day 3

Convener: Carolyn Crichton

09:05 → 10:15 Wednesday morning: Astro Science

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

Speaker: 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)

Speaker: 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?)

Speaker: Dr Mark Sargent (EPFL LASTRO)

10:00 Empirical beam characterization of HIRAX prototype using solar transits

Speaker: Dr Ajith Sampath (University of Geneva)

10:15 → 10:45 Coffee Break

10:45 → 11:05 Wednesday morning: Theory & Simulations

10:45 Subsonic turbulence with SPH-EXA

Speaker: Ruben Cabezon (University of Basel)

10:45 → 11:45 Wednesday morning: WORKSHOP: Preparing for the first cycle of SKA-LOW Science verification

11:05 → 12:25 Wednesday morning: HPC & Eco-Computing

11:05 GPU-Accelerated Standalone Particle-to-Grid Library for Cosmological Simulations

Speaker: Dr Osman Seckin Simsek (University of Basel)

11:25 Dynamic Parallel Pipelines for Radio Astronomy: Faster DP3 Predictions for Calibration and Imaging

Speaker: Hamza Chouh (EPFL)

11:45 Radiostreams: Imaging the sky at a 1Hz frequency

Speaker: Adrien Devresse (SKACH)

12:05 Distributed Fourier Domain Dedispersion on GPUs

Speaker: Piyush Panchal (EPFL)

12:35 → 12:55 End of Sessions and Conference (no lunch provided)