ILIFU

CALLING ALL ilifu USERS! ilifu Astronomy User Survey 2024

We are pleased to invite you to complete our ilifu Astronomy User Survey 2024! We strive to provide the best service to our users, especially in light of the many amazing MeerKAT science projects that have a home at IDIA. It is crucial that we have feedback from our user community, and this survey will help us to ensure that … Read More

New MeerKAT radio image reveals complex heart of the Milky Way

The South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) has released today a new MeerKAT telescope image of the centre of our Galaxy, showing radio emission from the region with unprecedented clarity and depth. The international team behind the work is publishing the initial science highlights from this image in The Astrophysical Journal. The article is accompanied by a public release of the data to … Read More

New paper on machine learning to characterise radio galaxies

Classification of radio galaxies is looking at their shape, their morphology. Studying the shapes of galaxies in one thing we use to learn more about the formation and evolution of those great megacities of hundreds of billions stars, black holes and other cosmic beasts. Radio galaxies are galaxies that have very interesting features that are visible in radio wavelengths. Those … Read More

IDIA supports remote Big Data Hackathon

A hackathon is a fun, fast-paced, strenuous, yet highly rewarding event where developers/coders, designers, strategists, and enthusiasts come together to work on project ideas and build solutions. Hackathons are known for late-night coding in groups, with shared pizzas and screens – but not in these times of pandemic. This time, we do it remotely. This hackathon is co-hosted by the University … Read More

Bioinformatics workshop hosted on ilifu

An initiative by Dr. Ryan Daniels at the Forensic DNA laboratory in the Department of Biotechnology at the University of the Western Cape, this month-long workshop takes the participants from the basics of using Unix, the most common computer platform for science, to characterising ancestry with DNA data using cloud computing platforms and software containerisation. The diversity of topics of … Read More

IDIA “processMeerKAT” Pipelines v.1.1 release

The IDIA Pipelines team is pleased to announce V1.1 of the IDIA Pipeline. The package uses CASA/MPICASA to do the initial cross-calibration (1GC, a’priori) of MeerKAT data on the ilifu SLURM Cluster. This release implements the concurrent cross-calibration of spectral windows on the ilifu cluster and includes several tweaks to improve performance and stability. This release brings several scientific improvements … Read More

Data Ecosystems and Gateways to Foster Research Community Networks Across Africa

This is the name of a panel discussion organised by the U.S. National Institutes of Health as part of a funding opportunity for open data science platforms. Prof. Russ Taylor, director of IDIA, as well as Prof. Nicky Mulder, head of the computational biology group at UCT and ilifu partner both contributed presentations describing the research cloud infrastructure we have … Read More

IDIA/ilifu MeerKAT Open Time Projects 2020

The Inter-University Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy (IDIA) invites proposals from researchers at IDIA partner institutions and other South African institutions to conduct MeerKAT Open Time Project research using the Ilifu Cloud Computing Research Facility. Expressions of interest will be reviewed, and successful applicants will be provided a letter of support, which can be included in the associated MeerKAT observing … Read More

SPU hosts Ilifu Big Data Hackathon 2020

Sol Plaatje University hosted the Ilifu Big Data Hackathon from 12 – 13 March 2020. The Ilifu Human Capital Development and Outreach Committee in partnership with SPU’s School of Natural and Applied Sciences aims to promote active usage of ilifu (a big data infrastructure for data-intensive research) through hands-on activities, training and skills development.  The aim of the Hackathon is … Read More