by Ivy Wong

The picture above is the conference photo for the inaugural Asian Pacific SKA Science meeting held in Chiang Mai, Thailand that was kindly hosted by the National Astronomical Research Institute of Thailand (NARIT) in Feb 2026. I was the Australian representative on the Scientific Organising Committee which was chaired by Hideyuki Kobayashi. This meeting evolved from the previous East Asia SKA Science annual meeting. A few of us from CSIRO Space and Astronomy attended this meeting (Chris Phillips, Tessa Vernstrom, Nithya Thyagarajan, Minh Huynh, Jonghwan Rhee and myself) and were all very impressed by the NARIT technology workshops for developing radio astronomy technologies and the TNRT (Thai National Radio Telescope) 40-m. This is in addition to the very impressive Astro Park facilities for public education and outreach. We hope that NARIT’s success will inspire other South East Asian neighbouring countries to also invest in radio astronomy.