Appointment strengthens NZ involvement in $3 billion science project

Zealand’s profile as a potential co-host of the $3 billion Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope has been boosted with the appointment of a leading Victoria University scientist to the SKA Board.

The SKA, a new generation radio telescope 50 times more powerful than current instruments, will be built in the Southern Hemisphere which has the best view of the Galaxy and the least radio interference. New Zealand and Australia are jointly competing with South Africa to be selected as the host.

Victoria University radio astronomer Dr Melanie Johnston-Hollitt has been appointed New Zealand’s science representative on the founding SKA board. Jonathon Kings from the Ministry of Economic Development has also joined the Board. Dr Johnston-Hollitt chairs the New Zealand SKA Research & Development Consortium and Mr Kings is New Zealand’s SKA director.

Representation at Board level results from New Zealand’s commitment to the SKA project which, says Dr Johnston-Hollitt, is stronger than that made by a number of other, bigger countries.

"New Zealand is really stepping up to the plate. Board membership has increased our visibility enormously and made us a serious player in a mega science project.

"It also strengthens our bid to host the SKA telescope as it demonstrates the Government’s commitment to the project and puts us at the table with the world’s leading radio astronomy nations."

A decision on where the SKA telescope will be located is expected early next year.

While Dr Johnston-Hollitt is upbeat about the Australasian bid, she says New Zealand will enjoy significant benefits from the project regardless of where the new telescope is built.

That’s because of New Zealand’s involvement in the $40 million Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope in Western Australia, one of three ‘precursor’ SKA instruments. The telescope is designed to probe the low frequency end of the radio spectrum

Dr Johnston-Hollitt has secured funding from both Victoria University and the Ministry of Economic Development for New Zealand to officially join the MWA project alongside organisations such as Harvard, MIT, the Raman Research Institute in Bangalore and Curtin University of Technology in Australia. Dr Johnston-Hollitt also becomes a member of the MWA Board.

Earlier this year, researchers from Victoria University and Curtain University of Technology involved in the joint New Zealand/Australia bid were donated a high performance computing facility by IBM—which acts as the brain of the telescope—to help get the most out of the MWA project.

MWA involvement is leading to new opportunities at Victoria says Dr Johnston-Hollitt.

From 2012, a post-doctoral fellowship is being created, and a range of PhD projects offered, for research made possible by access to the MWA telescope.

One focus, says Dr Johnston-Hollitt, will be looking for diffuse radio emissions—"faint, large patches of universe wreckage from cosmic collisions"—which are usually very difficult to detect.

Another will be developing new algorithms, in conjunction with Victoria’s School of Engineering and Computer Science, to interpret data from the MWA telescope.

Dr Johnston-Hollitt says the algorithms could ultimately be used for advances in other areas such as medical imaging.

"If we can find ways to detect these faint blobs in the universe we may be able to apply the technology to other things such as better detection of tumours in ultrasound imaging.