Recently, we invited our Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) to visit Dwingeloo, in order to discuss some important issues that included the Science Data Centre (SDC) initiative, the APERTIF survey plan, LOFAR 2.0 and several other significant topics. The role of the SAC is to provide scientific advice to the ASTRON director but in this instance the SAC was also explicitly asked by our Board to comment on the SDC. The SAC report will be presented to the ASTRON Board at their upcoming meeting towards the end of this month. We also intend to hold a staff plenary session shortly thereafter, in order to present some of the SAC/Board's main conclusions, and how we plan to take things further forward.
The image above shows members of the SAC and senior ASTRON mgt in the Oort room (from left to right around the table): Marco de Vos, Anita Loots (SKA SA), a hidden Steven Tingay (INAF/ICRAR), Michael Wise, Ralph Wijers (API), Leon Koopmans (RuG), Huub Rottgering (Leiden), Michiel van Haarlem, Martha Haynes (Cornell), Gert Kruithof, the SAC chair - Sean Dougherty (DRAO), and Rene Vermeulen.
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