Conveners
Plenary: Plenary 1
- Eli Kasai (Univeristy of Namibia)
Plenary: Plenary 2
- Rhodri Evans (Botswana International University of Science and Technology)
Plenary: Plenary 3
- Sally Macfarlane (Inter-university Institute for Data Intensive Astronomy)
Plenary: Plenary 4
- Nikhita Ramkilowan (Wits Centre for Astrophysics)
Plenary: Machine Learning & Techniques: Building Trustworthy Models for Scientific Discovery
- Ginés Martínez Solaeche (Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC))
Observations of redshifted 21-cm emission from neutral hydrogen over a wide range of radio frequencies allow us to access redshifts that encompass a vast comoving volume, including the era of dark energy. In this talk, I will present the Hydrogen Intensity Mapping and Real time Analysis eXperiment (HIRAX) project, on behalf of the HIRAX collaboration, which is a proposed 21cm intensity mapping...
SALT is the largest single optical telescope in the southern hemisphere and has been in routine operations for 15 years. It is an international collaboration with eight shareholder partners based in four continents. The partnership has evolved over the years, and I will highlight current opportunities for African astronomers to become operations partners in SALT. SALT is a fully queue...
The talk will provide feedback on a mapping exercise conducted to understand the landscape of astronomy engagement and outreach across Africa. This includes identifying who the role players are, where they are located, the types of activities they conduct, the challenges they face, and the success factors or lessons learned from their experience.
This work was carried out with the aim of...
African astronomy is rising, yet its light has not reached all corners of the continent. While nations with established hubs flourish, a significant portion of the continent,nearly 80% of African countries exist on the periphery with no access to the transformative power of astronomy. This talk issues a bold call for a strategic pivot. It is time for AfAS to champion a truly pan-African vision...
Utilizing the transformative capabilities of JWST, Euclid, and other recent ground- and space-based observatories and results, I will discuss the origins of the first stars, the emergence of early black holes, and the rapid assembly of galaxies during the first few billion years of cosmic history. By integrating deep multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopy, I will present a comprehensive...
The Pan-African Citizen Science e-Laboratory (PACS e-Lab) is a nonprofit, education- and research-focused platform dedicated to advancing astronomy/Space Science, citizen science, and STEM education across Africa, with the slogan “Bringing the Stars to Your Doorsteps. We run several programs, including asteroid hunting in collaboration with the International Astronomical Search Collaboration...
Cataclysmic Variables (CVs) are great laboratories to study accretion onto compact objects and accretion-related outflows under a wide range of diverse physical conditions, such as variations in mass transfer rate from the companion star, variations in magnetic field strength of the accreting white dwarf and the presence or (partial) absence of an accretion disc. In this talk I will give an...
Over nearly five years, Elimisha Msichana Elimisha Jamii (EMEJA) has delivered measurable gains in girls’ education across rural Kenya and Uganda. Our volunteer network(~200 volunteers, ~80% female) has reached nearly 40,000 schoolgirls, their parents and teachers across 40 schools. We have paired (with life-long mentors) and tracked ~5,000 mentees since 2020 with biannual check-ins and...
Galaxy clusters are the most massive gravitationally bound structures in the Universe, sitting at the crossroads between galaxy evolution and cosmology, and providing fundamental information about the composition and evolution of the Universe. This plenary talk will summarise recent results from large multi-wavelength surveys and our current understanding of cluster abundances, galaxy...
The IAU Office for Astronomy Outreach has a mission to make astronomy accessible to everyone and it does this through coordinating public engagement and astronomy science communication worldwide. The office works by connecting people globally with the Universe through inclusive, accessible, and culturally relevant astronomy outreach and public engagement. Through its global network of National...
Star formation is a multiscale process that links the physics of interstellar turbulence, gravity, magnetic fields, and feedback across an enormous range of spatial and temporal scales. From the fragmentation of giant molecular clouds into dense cores, to the assembly of stellar clusters and the regulation of star formation across entire galaxies, understanding how these scales connect remains...
Astronomy Outreach is one of the most effective tools at raising science and technology awareness in the general public and can be one of the important catalyst towards national change. However, the challenges in establishing new outreach efforts in an emerging country with little infrastructure in outreach is daunting. This was the case for Thailand 17 years ago before the National...
Radio astronomy is reaching a point where discovery is limited less by telescope sensitivity than by the intelligence of the systems interpreting the data. As MeerKAT and the Square Kilometre Array produce data at unprecedented scale and complexity, machine learning is no longer an optional technique but a scientific instrument in its own right. This keynote argues that code and trained models...