Engineering support services

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The University of Manchester is part of the prestigious Russell Group of universities, with outstanding facilities and the widest range of courses. We are highly respected across the globe as a centre of teaching excellence and innovative research. With 25 Nobel prize winners among our current and former staff and students, we have a history of world firsts and brilliant discoveries, from splitting the atom to giving the world graphene. We're committed to world-class research, an outstanding learning and student experience, and social responsibility in everything we do. And we're on course to achieve our goal of becoming 1 of the top 25 research universities in the world by 2020. Further details on the University can be found at: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/facts-figures/ 1. Background information on Project The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) The SKA will be the most sensitive radio telescope ever built and will play a major role in answering key questions in modern astrophysics and cosmology (see www.skatelescope.org). It will be 1 of a small number of cornerstone observatories across the electromagnetic spectrum that will transform our view of the Universe. The University of Manchester is 1 of 3 major UK university contributors to the SKA, together with Cambridge and Oxford, and its Jodrell Bank Observatory is the location of the international headquarters of the SKA Organisation, the UK-based legal entity that directs the project. The University of Manchester operates the e-MERLIN interferometer, which is an SKA Pathfinder instrument. 2. SKA Group, Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, School of Physics and Astronomy The Manchester SKA Group is headed by Professor Keith Grainge, leader of the International Signal and Data Transport (SADT) Consortium, and is composed of astronomers and engineers from the School of Physics and Astronomy (Jodrell Bank Observatory and Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics) and the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. SKA activity in Manchester encompasses the science case and a number of engineering developments including the hardware design, construction, and verification of the signal and data transport and synchronization and timing sub-systems, non-imaging processing for pulsars and transients, and aperture array receiver design. The University of Manchester has been selected to lead the international SADT Consortium on the signal and data transport and synchronization and timing. 3.The SKA SADT Consortium Information on the consortium is available from: http://www.skatelescope.org/skadesign/wp/sadt/