Biggest ever SKA science meeting held

BY DR JEFF WAGG (SKAO)

From 15-19 March 2021, over 950 scientists representing 36 countries attended our first fully virtual SKA science conference.

While we had originally planned to hold the conference last year, in-person in Cape Town, we were forced to change plans once the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic became evident. This follows our series of in-person meetings in 2014 (Sicily, Italy), 2016 (Goa, India), and 2019 (Alderley Park, UK). Typically we would expect around 300+ attendees, so one clear virtue of the virtual conference was the possibility for many more scientists to participate.

Running a fully virtual conference is new to us, but the event team, led by Dr Anna Bonaldi of the SKAO Science team and Sarah Lamb of the SKAO Communications team, pulled it off as smoothly as could be expected. During the week over 270 talks were presented in science-themed sessions and focused splinter sessions run by our Science Working Groups. The conference highlighted the amazing science emerging from the SKA precursor and pathfinder telescopes, and that much of this science is being driven by the younger generation of post-docs and students, who before we know it will be using SKA to make major scientific breakthroughs.

The feedback from a former board member is a fair summary of the overall feedback we have received: “Of all the virtual conferences I’ve gone to in the last year, this one was by far the most functional and informative, and the one that was closest in spirit and function to a face-to-face meeting. Thank you!”