Blog Layout

LOFAR ERIC: Distributed Research Infrastructure for European Astronomical Research Launched

January 25, 2024

LOFAR ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) has been officially launched at its first Council meeting ON 22 January 2024. The world-leading LOFAR (LOw Frequency ARray) Distributed Research Infrastructure has already revolutionized low-frequency radio astronomy research, resulting in an avalanche of scientific publications in the past decade. LOFAR ERIC is now a single legal entity across the European Union. 

 

LOFAR ERIC will implement a substantial upgrade across the distributed infrastructure, and serve the astronomy community with a cutting-edge suite of observing and data processing capabilities, rooted in its vast field of view on sky, unprecedented sensitivity and image resolution, and novel capabilities to observe in multiple directions all at once. Further development paths for the longer term are under study.

 

LOFAR ERIC, set up with a long-term perspective, will provide transparent access to a wide range of science research services for the European and global community, fostering collaborations, and empowering researchers to pursue large-scale innovative projects across scientific domains, including the properties of the distant young universe, the formation and evolution of galaxies, the physics of pulsars and transient radio phenomena, the nature of ultra-high energy cosmic particles, the conditions in the interstellar medium, and the structure of cosmic magnetic fields. Furthermore, LOFAR ERIC contributes unique scientific insights into diverse topics with societal relevance, such as lightning, ionospheric disturbances, and Space Weather. LOFAR ERIC will facilitate access through its user-friendly publicly open archive for multiple use of its extensive science data products. 

 

LOFAR ERIC's Founding Members are Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. Collaborations with institutes in France, Latvia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom secure further participation in the LOFAR distributed infrastructure and research programme. The LOFAR ERIC statutory seat is in Dwingeloo, the Netherlands, hosted by NWO-I/ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy; the original designer of LOFAR).

 

Researcher from VUAS ERI VIRAC Vladislavs Bezrukovs participated in this meeting and was the Council representative of our institute. VIRAC is a science education centre specializing in a large variety of research fields such as astronomy and astrophysics, high performance computing, satellite engineering, and antenna development. The mission of VIRAC is to become a leading scientific research infrastructure and a global provider of research services in astronomy and space technology by building a competitive team of researchers. Researchers from Latvia are frequent users of the full LOFAR infrastructure. VIRAC is the coordinating organization for the Latvian LOFAR Consortium, LOFAR-Latvia, and has been a member of the Stichting ILT since 2019. VIRAC owns and operates the LOFAR station LV614, located in Irbene, with a data connection to the LOFAR central domain.

 

"The establishment of LOFAR ERIC consolidates world-leading excellence for Europe in an important research field," said Dr. René Vermeulen, founding director of LOFAR ERIC. "With its unrivalled distributed research infrastructure and its robust pan-European partnership, LOFAR ERIC enters the European Research Area as a powerhouse at the cutting edge of astronomy science and technology, with the potential to contribute to broader complex challenges."


For more information about LOFAR ERIC and its initiatives, please visit the LOFAR ERIC website

 

About LOFAR ERIC:

LOFAR ERIC (LOw-Frequency ARray European Research Infrastructure Consortium) is securing the future of low-frequency radio astronomy by exploiting the LOFAR Distributed Research Infrastructure as a world-leading observatory for large-scale astronomical research. LOFAR ERIC consolidates Europe's global leadership in the field. It was set up by the European Commission on 20 December 2023. LOFAR ERIC's founding members are Bulgaria, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland. Institutes in France, Latvia, Sweden, and the United Kingdom also collaborate in LOFAR ERIC.

 

About LOFAR:

LOFAR is the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope operating at low radio frequencies, between 10 and 240 MHz. It is a distributed research infrastructure that consists of multiple antenna stations, geographically distributed across Europe, all driven in software and with powerful computing and massive data storage at several distributed data centres. Jointly operated, this forms a unified, highly agile and capable observing and data processing system. With a sensitivity more than a hundred times better than any previous telescope at these frequencies, unparalleled image resolution across a large field of view, and capabilities to observe simultaneously in multiple directions, LOFAR is by far the most powerful low frequency telescope on the planet, and is revolutionising our view of the low-frequency radio universe. LOFAR was originally developed by NWO-I/ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, which now hosts LOFAR ERIC and furnishes most of the LOFAR ERIC operational services. LOFAR ERIC is jointly funded by its members and partners, that are collectively implementing a major upgrade (LOFAR2.0) for substantially improved and extended scientific research capabilities. 

 



Press Contacts:

 

René Vermeulen

Founding Director, LOFAR ERIC

director@lofar.eu

rvermeulen@astron.nl

 

Frank Nuijens

Head of Communications, ASTRON

nuijens@astron.nl

 

Vladislavs Bezrukovs

LOFAR ERIC Council representative, VIRAC

vladislavsb@venta.lv


Share on other platforms

Other news

By Rota Rulle December 12, 2024
On 10 December, the VUAS Library invited students to a meeting with Rafael Martín Calvo, Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Translation Studies. He talked about how a writer's work is presented to publishers in another country before it is translated, what to do when only a few Latvians know a certain Latvian word, how many hours it takes to translate a novel and when is the best time to learn a foreign language. He also talked about participation in publishers' events, book fairs and book presentations in different countries. The students also had the opportunity to see translations of Nora Ikstena, Albert Bell, Guntis Berelis and other writers already published and to learn more about each of them. R. Martin Calvo also talked about his dream projects and revealed some of the works he is currently involved in. Thank you to the VUAS Library for hosting the event!
By Rota Rulle December 6, 2024
On 3 and 4 of December, the European Parliament's service hosted the third edition of the Citizens' Language Days, a two-day event dedicated to exploring the power of clear language in fostering transparency and democratic participation. The event, organised in Luxembourg, was also attended by students from the translation programmes of the universities included in the EMT (European Master in Translation) network. One student represented each EU language. Latvia and the Latvian language were represented by Adrija Enrika Ēdele, a student of the Master's programme in Translation at VUAS. The students were invited to the European Parliament (EP) in Luxembourg, where most of the staff of the EP Directorate-General for Translation work. In addition to workshops and conferences, the students had the opportunity to get to know the quarter where the European Parliament is located and the work of DG Translation. "During the event, we were able to listen to conferences, workshops and speeches in different EU languages. It was particularly important that we were present at the presentation of the Citizens' Language Guidelines, which are an important tool for language professionals, translators and others interested in the production and adaptation of texts into plain language," says Adrija. It should be noted that the guidelines are derived from the ISO standard on plain language. The guidelines are available in all 24 EU languages and include not only text, but also video and audio material.
By Rota Rulle November 28, 2024
On 22 November, the European Commission organised a virtual visit to the Directorate-General for Translation, which was also attended by MA students of the Faculty of Translation Studies of the VUAS. The event was well attended (around 800 participants) and gave our translation students the opportunity to learn all about the work of translators and interpreters in DG Translation and other EU institutions. The event organisers gave an overview of the volume of documents translated in the EU institutions and explained the computer-aided, machine translation and artificial intelligence tools used by translators in the EU institutions. Our students had a one-to-one meeting with translators from the Latvian Translation Unit, where they could get answers to all their questions about eligibility requirements, application prerequisites and how to apply for a traineeship or a job in the EU institution.
By Rota Rulle November 26, 2024
On 21 and 22 November, Assistant Professor Rafael Martin Calvo, Associate Professor and Senior Researcher Jānis Veckrācis and Lecturer, PhD candidate Aiga Badere participated in the international conference "Intermediality in Communication" organised by Kaunas University of Technology. The event attracted a large audience of researchers and practitioners from Italy, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Finland, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Latvia and other countries. The conference started with a hackathon on innovative teaching methods, followed by two days of plenary and paper sessions. Martin Kalvo presented his research "The Orthographic Transcription to Latvian of Foreign Proper Names: a Practice Called into Question", Aiga Badere presented her research "Human Translation and Machine Translation: Where to Draw the Line in Post-Editing", and Jānis Veckrācis presented his research "Features of Specialized Legal Lexis in Latvian Translations of Legal Texts from the Early Nineteenth Century".
By Rota Rulle November 20, 2024
In anticipation of the lighting of the Christmas tree, Ventspils has implemented an idea that combines technology and Christmas traditions. An online project has been created - the website "Lantern Fever", where everyone can take part in decorating the Christmas tree using game elements. The project is a collaboration between the Faculty of Information Technologies of VUAS and the Ventspils Culture Centre. The game will be available for a week and will end on 30 November, when the lighting of the Main Christmas Tree will take place in Ventspils' Grand Place. The culminating event will light up the game, the city's Christmas decorations and the Christmas tree. "This game is a prototype and my first full project, which I developed from A to Z," says the game's developer, Aleksis Grečuhins, a student at the Faculty of Information Technologies at VUAS. "It was an intense and challenging work, which helped me to develop my programming skills and to understand how to cooperate with a client and how to adapt to their vision." The project also serves as a study - an attempt to find out if it is possible to create a Christmas mood through a game. Aleksis is especially grateful to Karina Skirmante, lecturer at the Faculty of Information Technology, for her professional support and the sprint reporting system, which helped to move the work forward efficiently.
By Rota Rulle November 18, 2024
On Friday, 8 November, the 30th anniversary of the Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Centre was celebrated! During the first half of the day, the VUAS hosted a scientific seminar, but the celebrations continued in Irbene with greetings, speeches and antenna demonstrations!
Other news
Share by: