New joint chair in Computational Astronomy launched

A long-standing partnership between Stellenbosch University (SU) and the University of Groningen (UG) in the Netherlands has been further strengthened with the launch of a joint Research Chair in Computational Astronomy.

The chair will be co-led by Prof. Yin-Zhe Ma, an astrophysicist in SU’s Department of Physics, and Prof. Léon Koopmans, scientific director of the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute at UG. A unique feature of this partnership is the offering of a joint PhD degree in Astrophysics, with already eight fully funded PhD students on board. This means the students will be co-supervised by scientists from both institutions, with access to facilities and data and spending time at each. Students will have to meet the requirements of both institutions to earn their degree.

Prof. Deresh Ramjugernath, Rector and Vice-Chancellor of SU, said in his opening remarks at the launch on 20 February 2025 that the joint chair promises enormous potential for both institutions in terms of advancing the frontiers of science and spearheading research in the field of computational astronomy.

“Both institutions also have the same commitment to have an impact on society through the advancement of science and technology. This chair will play a pivotal role in that regard,” he added.

Prof. Sibusiso Moyo, Vice-Rector: Research, Innovation and Postgraduate Studies, said this will be the 53rd research chair at SU: “Computational science is one of the strong sciences, and we believe the programme will have substantial impact and relevance going forward.”

Another unique feature of the chair is that it is also exploring partnerships with industry, with joint research projects and grant applications in the pipeline, she added.

According to Prof. Koopmans astronomy is an important driver in science, which necessitates strategic partnerships and global collaboration. The Kapteyn Astronomical Institute is, for example, part of the Netherlands School for Astronomy (NOVA), regarded as one of the top five most important institutions in the world for astronomy today. NOVA is an alliance of the astronomical institutes of the universities of Amsterdam, Groningen, Leiden, and Nijmegen.

Through the joint chair, UG scientists and students will be able to access South African facilities such as HERA (Hydrogen Epoch of Reionisation Array radio telescope) and the South African MeerKAT radio telescope. On their part, SU scientists and students will have access to a range of instruments and the institutes own high performance computing centre.

“One of our focal points are to build up collaborations. This includes some of the major astronomical institutions around the world, such as the European Space Agency, the European Organisation for Astronomical Research in the Southern Hemisphere, the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy, JIVE (the Joint Institute for VLBI ERIC), and SRON (the Netherlands Institue for Space Research).

On his part, Prof. Ma explained that the chair at SU is uniquely positioned to combine radio, optical, and big data for computational astronomy: “We focus on connecting fundamental physics with astronomical observations to understand the fundamental laws of the Universe, and to unravel the nature of dark matter and dark energy. We work across disciplines and institutions to bring together expertise in engineering, theoretical physics and the computational sciences to understand the universe at a deeper level.”

The group is also involved with major astronomical initiatives in South Africa, such as MeerKAT, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), HERA, LSST (Vera C. Rubin Observatory), the FAST telescope and CMB Stage-4, and use data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the South Pole Telescope, ESO’s Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS), and the Dark Energy Survey Instrument (DESI).

Prof. Burtram Fielding, Dean of the Faculty of Science at SU, said in his closing remarks that it took a remarkable amount of energy to have the chair established in such a short period. Since 2023, the field of astrophysics at SU has grown from one lecturer and an MSc student to three lecturers, two MSc students, 11 PhD students and four postdoctoral fellows, with 24 papers published in peer-reviewed publications.

The joint PhD degree in Astrophysics will also further strengthen the Faculty of Science’s impressive track record in active collaborations leading to joint PhD degrees.

Text is written by Outreach Officer Wiida Fourie-Basson from Stellenbosch University.