The UK SKA Regional Centre Forum was the UK body that engaged with the SRC Network’s preparatory activities to define and create a long-term operational partnership between the SKA Observatory and an ensemble of independently-resourced SKA Regional Centres. The UK has been a member of the SKA Regional Centre Steering Committee (SRCSC) since it was created in 2018. Forum members have contributed to international working groups (WG) focused on:

  • WG0: SRC Network Architecture
  • WG1: Data Logistics Working Group
  • WG2: Operations Working Group
  • WG3: SW Federated Computing and Data Software Services
  • WG4: SW, Science Archive-VO-FAIR
  • WG5: Compute Working Group
  • WG6: Science User Engagement

Between November 2021 - July 2022 the UKSRC Forum engaged with >150 UK-based academics, researchers, industry leaders and outreach professionals through 4 town halls (organised with the UK SKA Science Committee), 2 workshops, and 3 focus groups. The discussions influenced our consortium membership, the UK astronomy science demonstrator cases, and design of the community engagement, outreach and knowledge exchange activities. We would like to thank everyone who contributed their valuable time and insights to co-create the UKSRC project.

Funding

UKSRC acknowledges the funding support for the UK SRC Bridging Phase (Mar 22 - Dec 2022) was supported by grants ST/X000524/1 (University of Manchester), ST/X000486/1 (UCL), ST/X000478/1 (University of Hertfordshire), ST/X00046X/1 (University of Cambridge).