AENEAS H2020 project on SKA Regional Centres approved

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Last Thursday, we received good news from the European Commission that the H2020 proposal AENEAS, which ASTRON is leading, has been accepted and will now enter into grant negotiations. AENEAS is a 3M euro project intended to develop a design and operational model for a distributed, network of large-scale regional data centres for the SKA and includes partners from 13 countries and 28 institutions around the world. AENEAS stands for the ''Advanced European Network of E-infrastructures for Astronomy with the SKA'' and is designed to address the challenges the community will face in extracting science from the incredible amounts of data the SKA will produce.

The AENEAS project will seek to integrate e-infrastructures across Europe with those in other SKA member countries to provide a seamless platform for international science with the SKA and its precursors, and will explore techniques and technologies to provide data services to the astronomical community. It represents a great opportunity to continue the work begun in the DOME project, build on the unique experience we've gained with LOFAR, and kickstart our local efforts to form the nucleus of a Science Data Centre here at ASTRON. Like the Science Data Centre activities themselves, AENEAS will be an ASTRON-wide project involving staff from the AG, RO, and R&D groups.