The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope SA is offering scholarships for students wishing to study in the fields of engineering and science.
The scholarships, to be taken up annually by undergraduate and postgraduate students in SA, are aimed at capacity building in these fields.
Kim de Boer, manager of human capital development at SKA SA, says there is a great need to up the skills level in science and engineering, so SA has the capacity to operate and maintain it.
“The scholarships are being offered because we are trying to get more young people interested, especially in radio astronomy, science and electronic engineering,” she says.
“We need people specialising in different capacities, such as the construction, which is engineering; the research, which is science; and the maintenance and upgrades of the machinery, which is technical.”
De Boer says there is a need for a broad range of skills, and that is why funding to all levels - undergraduate, honours, masters and PhD - is being offered.
There is also a need for data storage and transportation, she says. “A huge part of the SKA and even the MeerKAT is data - we require software that can analyse data at high speeds.”
Willem Esterhuyse, manager of the MeerKAT project, says there is also a need for high performance computing to be developed. “That is where the IT sector comes in.”
Data demands
Esterhuyse says there are high data volumes coming in from the satellites and this data needs to be stored and analysed.
“Traditional computing does not have the capacity to deal with such high data rates,” he says.
“Both the MeerKAT and the SKA are processing a lot of data and the speed at which the data needs to be stored is serious.”
The problem, he says, is that the satellites are running 24/7 and the analysts are not likely to get to it unless there is some form of real-time processing.
This is the capacity it needs to build, he adds. De Boer says the capacity generation offered by the scholarships will hopefully fuel this so the country has the computer systems and software to handle the data.
On offer
The scholarships are aimed at all South Africans, she says, “but emphasis is being placed on women and black students, especially at postgraduate level”.
De Boer explains that research shows it is very difficult to find black and female students in postgraduate studies, and there are very few mentors for women.
The rest of the scholarships, she says, are to show undergraduates that there is a future in these fields, and radio astronomy in particular.
The scholarships need not be paid back, De Boer says, but the students have to pay back if they fail. “The recipients are not tied to SKA at all,” she says, but maintains that preference for jobs is given to the postgraduate students who have received funding.
“We also hope to expand to the rest of Africa,” says De Boer.
There is also an internship programme on offer. “This is a space where more qualified people are called to gain experience in the working environment,” she explains.
The funding will come from the Department of Science and Technology, and the National Research Foundation will handle the administrative side of processing the scholarships.
Postgraduate applications are now closed but undergraduate applications are still open for the next month. Scholarships will have to be taken up in the next academic year.
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