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Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM

Monday, November 19, 2018 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium

photo of Jorge Ibsen

Jorge Ibsen

"The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) Radio Astronomy Observatory"

ABSTRACT -- The Atacama Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array (ALMA) is the largest radio telescope in operation. The result of an international partnership between the European Southern Observatory (ESO), National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), and National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), ALMA was inaugurated in March 2013 with the first Early Science observing cycle starting back in September 2011, while the telescope was still under construction. Moving forward in time, after six successful observing cycles and a seventh one starting in October 2018, ALMA has finally reached the plateau of operations, including processes to continuously enhance the facility with new capabilities.

This talk will give the audience an overview of ALMA, as well as present its present status along with the challenges foreseen in the years to come.

SPEAKER -- Jorge Ibsen has served as the Head of the Department of Computing for ALMA since 2010. This department presently includes information technology, software, and the archive operations groups. He also leads the Integrated Computing Team, a collaborative worldwide team that includes all of ALMA’s software engineers charged with supporting and maintaining the ALMA software infrastructure and services during operations. He joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in 1997 and spent many years working first as a software engineer and later as the Software and Communications deputy team lead at La Silla Observatory. His involvement with ALMA formally began in 2004 when he was transferred to ESO’s headquarters in Garching, Germany, to work within the European Computing Integrated Product Team, specifically in the Control and Integration and Test subsystems; however, he had been using the ALMA software infrastructure since 2002.



Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov