African VLBI Network Training Site

Dr Aletha de Witt (AdW):      <invited talk>

Aletha de Witt obatined her Honours and Masterss degrees in Astrophysics and Space Science from the University of Cape Town (UCT) in South Africa. She obtained her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 2012.  In 2012 she joined the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy observatory (HartRAO), first as post-doctoral research fellow and, since 2013, as operations astronomer. 

Mr André van der Merwe (AvdM):

André van der Merwe is the supervisor of the Mechanical Workshop and is employed as a Scientific Instrument Maker. He completed his apprenticeship as Instrument Maker at the CSIR in 1975. He has been manufacturing precision components for the HartRAO 26-m radio telescope since 1995, and now also for the 15-m and VGOS radio telescopes. 

Dr Fanie van den Heever (FvdH):

Fanie van den Heever obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from NWU and is currently a post-doctoral fellow at the HartRAO site of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).

Mrs Glenda Coetzer (GC):      <invited talk>

Glenda Coetzer has been the HartRAO librarian for the past 24 years. Her academic background is in Library and Information Science, specialising in data management. Her current focus is on data management and data management systems, more specifically data management systems catering for geodetic data services. She is also involved in “The History of Astronomy in Africa” project as well as with AVN training. 

Mr Heystek Grobler  (HG):

Heystek Grobler is an Electronics Engineer and Master’s student. He is affiliated with HartRAO, a facility of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO), as well as with the University of Johannesburg’s (UJ) Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering Science. He specialises in the field of Digital Signal Processing and has research interests in Spectroscopy and Radiometry.

.

Prof Justin Jonas (JJ):      <invited talk>

All of his tertiary degrees were obtained from Rhodes University, culminating in a PhD in Radio Astronomy in 1999. He has worked in the Department of Physics and Electronics at Rhodes since 1981, and was appointed as Professor of Physics and Electronics in 2001. From 2003 till 2006 he was seconded to be the Managing Director of the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory. He has been closely associated with the Square Kilometre Array project since 2001, and is currently the Chief Technologist for SARAO (South African Radio Astronomy Observatory).

Mr Japie Ludick (JaL):      <invited talk>

Japie Ludick has been with SKA since 2009. He has been involved with the qualification of the KAT-7 antenna structure, early concept developments for the MeerKAT antenna and is responsible for the antenna structure conversion of the Kuntunse Station in Ghana which commenced in 2012. He has been involved in various design reviews relating to the mechanical design of the MeerKAT antenna as well as the SKA antenna supplied by CETC54. 

Mr Keith Jones (KJ):

Dr Lindsay Magnus (LM):

Dr Lindsay Magnus is the head of operations at the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO). He brings together the Site Operations, Telescope Maintenance and Telescope Operator teams to maintain radio astronomy and space geodesy related infrastructure. 

Dr Michael Bietenholz (MB):

Michael Bietenholz obtained his BSc degree from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada in Physics, and his MSc and PhD from the University of Toronto, Canada in Astronomy. The title of his PhD thesis is "A Radio Study of the Crab Nebula". Since then Michael was first a post-doc and now a senior research associate at York University, Toronto, Canada, and, since 2007, also an astronomer at HartRAO.

Mrs Marisa Nickola (MN):

Mrs Marisa Nickola is a PhD student in Geodetic VLBI at the University of Pretoria (UP). Marisa is alo a researcher at the HartRAO facility of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) and is repsonsible for coordinating all of the Geodetic and Astrometric VLBI sessions and operators at HartRAO. 

Dr Nadeem Oozeer (NO):      <invited talk>

He began his journey of discovery in 1998 with a BSc. (Hon.) in Physics. His degree paved the way to a Master's thesis focusing on the deconvolution techniques of radio images from the Mauritius radio telescope. Tuned to the radio wavelength, he pursued a PhD looking at multi-frequency observations of extragalactic radio sources. In 2009, he was awarded an SKA-SA  fellowship to pursue a postdoc at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Observatory (HartRAO) which led to his current position as Commissioning Scientist for the SKA SA, as of March 2011.

.

Mr Nkululeko Qwabe (NQ):      <invited talk>

Nkululeko Qwabe is a Software Engineer working in the Software department of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) since 2013. He holds a BSc. degree in Computer Science and Information Technology from the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg) and a BSc. Honours Degree in Computing from the University of South Africa (UNISA). He is currently pursuing his MSc. degree in Physics at the University of Pretoria.  

Mr Philip Mey (PM): 

Philip Mey obtained his B.Eng in Computer Engineering from the University of Pretoria (UP) before completing an MSc.Eng in Satellite Systems at Stellenbosch University (SU). He has been the project manager for the VGOS radio telescope at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) since 2014. Prior to this, he was employed by the South African National Space Agency (SANSA) and worked as High Frequency Radar Engineer in Antarctica at the South African National Antarctic Expedition (SANAE IV) base. Part of his duties consisted of overseeing the geodetic equipment that HartRAO installed at the Antarctic base as well as on Marion Island.

Mr Pieter Stronkhorst (PS):

Mr Pieter Stronkhorst is Special Projects, Antenna Systems supervisor at the HartRAO site of the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO).

Mrs Pfesi van Zyl (PvZ):      

Pfesi van Zyl holds a Master’ degree in Physics from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is currently a PhD candidate, working on multi-wavelength studies
of Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN).  As part of her PhD, she is reviewing the relationship between the observed emission of AGN blazar sources at the extreme ends of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum in order to study the physical relationship between their emission processes. The study consists of data from the Fermi-LAT telescope, the HartRAO 26-m antenna as well as VLBI data from a set of southern blazar sources. Pfesi is also currently busy writing software to handle data reduction and analysis of HartRAO data.

Dr Roelf Botha (RB):      <invited talk>

Roelf Botha holds an M.Sc in Astrophysics from North-West University (NWU) and a PhD in Laser Physics from the University of Stellenbosch (US). He has been involved with the Space Geodesy Programme of the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (HartRAO) site since 2004 and is currently employed as Manager of Geodesy.

Mr Ronnie Myataza (RM):

Ronnie Myataza is an RF engineer at the Hartebeesthoek Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO/HartRAO) where he is responsible for design, development and maintenance of radio astronomy microwave equipment. Ronnie obtained a Bachelor of Technology Degree (B.Tech) in Electronic Engineering from Cape Peninsula University of Technology (CPUT). He is currently studying part-time at the University of South Africa (Unisa) towards a B.Com degree in Economics.

Mr Sayan Basu (SB):

Sayan Basu completed his B.Sc Physics (Hons) from the University of Burdwan and his M.Sc in Physics from Assam University in India. He also holds a second M.Sc degree in Applied Physics from the University of Limerick, Ireland. In 2013 he came to South Africa to start a PhD in Astrophysics at the University of South Africa Unisa). During this time, Sayan was also a VLBI operator at HartRAO. His research interest is in studying source structure in quasars through VLBI imaging. He recently submitted his PhD thesis and will continue with similar reasearch as post-doctoral fellow at HartRAO. 

Ms Sarah Buchner (SaB):      <invited talk>

Sarah Buchner completed an MSc at Rhodes University using the HartRAO 26-m radio telescope for small area mapping. She then worked at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) as a lecturer in the Augmented Science Programme and then as the Antarctic Research Officer.  In 2001, she joined HartRAO and ran the pulsar timing programme. Her research interests focused on observing glitches in the Vela pulsar. She moved to Cape Town in 2014, joining  SARAO as a commissioning scientist. At SARAO, she has worked on pulsar timing commissioning for MeerKAT.

Mrs Sharon Qwabe (SQ):      <invited talk>

Sharon Qwabe holds an Honours degree in Geology (Cum Laude) and is currently completing her MSc in Geology at the Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). She has been part of the Space Geodesy Programme at HartRAO from 2013. Her studies focus on characterising seismic stations in South Africa based on their noise level thresholds under the National Academic Co-Located Seismology Network.