SKA in Spain
VIA-SKA is the name of the project led by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía (IAA-CSIC) for studying the feasibility of the Spanish Industrial Participation in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). This project has been funded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN) and includes researchers and engineers from the Instituto Geográfico Nacional (IGN), Universidad de Granada (UGR), Universidad de Barcelona (UB), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Instituto de Física de Cantabria (IFCA-CSIC), Universidad de Cantabria (UC), Universidad de Valencia (UV), Centro de Astrobiología (CAB-INTA/CSIC) and Instituto Astrofísico de Canarias (IAC).
VIA-SKA is funded by an action of the Subprograma de Actuaciones Relativas a Infraestructuras Científicas Internacionales (Programa Nacional de Internacionalización de la I+D, Convocatoria 2011).
As part of the actions of the VIA-SKA project, a survey of Spanish industry is being performed in order to identify the actors that could have technological profiles relevant to the SKA project. The intention is to introduce the SKA project to Spanish Industry and identify companies interested in a prospective participation in SKA.
In case of interest, companies are invited to participate in VIA-SKA in the following way: companies will be requested to provide their contact details that will be included in the VIA-SKA mailing lists and the company information that shall be registered in the VIA-SKA web portal, where the company technological skills and SKA work packages best matching those skills will be identified.
The identification of Spanish Industry’s interest and capabilities is a necessary step to support the official Spanish participation in the SKA project.
The need for a quick response by Spanish industry at this point is driven by the SKA schedule. The preparation of the SKA WBS/SOW for the Pre-construction Phase Work Packages has been performed during 2012 and the preparation of Stage 1 is on-going, with the proto-consortia self-organizing in order to participate in the Request for Proposals (RFP), scheduled for early 2013.
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VIA-SKA is a Project funded by MICINN Grant AIC-A-2011-0658
