Discovery in Astronomy and Space Physics enabled by large-scale Digital Research Infrastructures (ASTROCOMP)

Topic: Computing

Session Title: Discovery in Astronomy and Space Physics enabled by large-scale Digital Research Infrastructures (ASTROCOMP)

Description:

Computing and specialist technical skills underpin scientific exploitation across the Astronomy, UKSP and MIST community domains. In the UK, the STFC supports a range of infrastructures to enable both High Throughput Computing (HTC, e.g. GridPP) and High Performance Computing (e.g. DiRAC). The STFC IRIS (https://www.iris.ac.uk) digital research infrastructure (DRI) provides seamless access to these and other (e.g. The Hartree Centre, The Ada Lovelace Centre, AIRR) resources.
This session will update the community on developments in IRIS and its partner infrastructure providers (e.g. DiRAC), highlighting the emerging scientific exploitation and data science opportunities opened up by access to massive scale computational and AI resources. This includes reference to latest development roadmaps for DRIs from the UKRI and Astronet. Presentations will include examples of IRIS supporting gravitational wave analysis, large radio surveys (e.g. SKA), large scale theoretical computational modelling, large optical imaging (e.g. Vera Rubin Observatory) and spectroscopic surveys (e.g. 4MOST).
The session will discuss the importance of enhancing research software engineer career paths and diversity in keeping the UK at the forefront of data exploitation. Early stage researchers will be encouraged to present their results from IRIS facilities. The session will act as a ‘on-ramp’ for the community in accessing IRIS resources and thus enhance their science results. The session will also give the opportunity to discuss initiatives aimed at reducing the carbon impact of DRIs.
The session is organised by representatives of major projects involved in the IRIS initiative (https://www.iris.ac.uk/about-iris/partners/), and follows our successful AstroComp sessions that we have organised at the NAM2022 and NAM2023 meetings.

Organiser(s): Nicholas Walton (IoA, Cambridge), George Beckett (Edinburgh), Louise Chisholm (University College London), Jon Hays (Queen Mary London), Anna Scaife (Manchester), John Veitch (Glasgow), Mark Wilkinson (Leicester)

Schedule:

Venue: WILB-LT31

Session 1: Thursday 18^th July, 09:00 – 11:00