Melvin Hoare
- Position
- Professor of Astrophysics
- Areas of expertise
- Radio Astronomy
- [email protected]
- Faculty
- Engineering and Physical Sciences
- School
- Physics and Astronomy
- Website
- Faculty profile
Countries
I lead the Development in Africa with Radio Astronomy (DARA) project.
This is a human capital development project that delivers training in skills related to radio astronomy.
It is a joint UK-South Africa project that operates in eight African countries that partner with South Africa to host the next generation radio telescope the Square Kilometre Array.
The team includes 8 UK universities, 7 South African institutions and 4 industrial partners from the space and AI sectors.
DARA provides a basic training in radio astronomy skills to 60 young people per year.
We are also funding postgraduate degrees in the UK and Africa as well as postdoctoral researchers in African partner institutions.
Skills in big data analytics are also delivered through a programme of hackathons and workshops.
Trainees are exposed to entrepreneurship and development training and shown how the skills associated with radio astronomy and data science can be applied to Earth Observation datasets and hence address development challenges in Africa.