Chinese students to study radio astronomy in WA

The University of Western Australia (UWA) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC) that will see up to 50 Chinese PhD students visit Western Australia. The MoU was signed by UWA Pro Vice-Chancellor (International) Iain Watt and NAOC Director Professor Jun Yan at NAOC headquarters in Beijing.

Up to 10 Chinese PhD students will come to UWA each year for the next five years to learn and perform research in areas such as galaxy evolution, star formation, dark matter and mapping the large-scale structure of the universe. The students will work alongside astrophysicists at the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR).

At the end of their study, the students will graduate and join the ranks of scientists and engineers around the world, working on big projects like the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) - planned to be the biggest radio telescope ever built - or the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) - a 500 m single-dish radio telescope currently being built in southwest China.

“As a Perth-based educational institution, we have close ties to our colleagues across the Asia-Pacific region,” said UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson. “This is a tremendous investment by China and UWA that will undoubtedly be of significant benefit to the SKA project and other projects in the future.”