About the Symposium
The Bolton Symposium, named after the first director of Murriyang, our Parkes radio telescope, John Gatenby Bolton (1922-1993), provides a forum for early-career research (ECR) staff within the Australia Telescope National Facility to showcase their science, and to develop and strengthen collaborations within CSIRO.
We will hold a Bolton Symposium from April 28-29 2026 at the S&A Marsfield site, with a theme of “Connecting Science and Technology“. This year, the primary purpose of the symposium will be for early career staff in Science, Technology, and Space to become familiar with the work we collectively do and how we can contribute to the future of ATNF and CSIRO S&A.
The first day of the symposium will feature an open session of research/engineering talks from ECRs/junior staff*. The second part of Day 1 and the full Day 2 will consist of a closed workshop and discussion sessions, along with social team‑building activities.
Agenda
Open session: 28 April (09:30 – 14:15 AEST)
| Time (AEST) | Title | Speaker | Session chair |
| 09:30 | Marsfield morning tea | ||
| 10:00 | Welcome | Andrew Zic, Kelly Gourdji, Maral Ansari | |
| 10:05 | The self calibrating radiometer and the quest for the cosmic dawn | Luke McKay | |
| 10:15 | Planet formation, protoplanetary disks, and Regularized Maximum Likelihood Imaging | Ian Czekala | |
| 10:25 | LAMBDA: An SKA-LOW Like Station for VLBI and All-Sky Science | Jaiden Cook | |
| 10:35 | LAMBDA VLBI Science | Emmy Escott | |
| 10:45 | Imaging with the Murchison Widefield Array | Stefan Duchesne | |
| 10:55 | Solar imaging with the MWA and the technical challenges associated with it | Angie Waszewski | |
| 11:05 | Adaptive Beamforming Meets Reality: RFI Subspace Identification with PAFs | Liroy Lourenço | |
| 11:15-11:30 | Short coffee break (15 min) | ||
| 11:30 | How to (and not to) keep up-to-date with the rapidly evolving AI landscape | Samuel Lai | |
| 11:40 | Long period transients and polarisation | Josh Preston Pritchard | |
| 11:50 | Design for manufacture (DFM) of a low-cost optical spectrometer | Tim Bolton | |
| 12:00 | Time domain methods for (future) radio facilities | Andrew Zic | |
| 12:10 | Characterizing fast transients with ATNF facilities | Kelly Gourdji | |
| 12:20 | Why Low-energy Radio Astronomy Matters and How We Get There | Brian Udugama | |
| 12:30-14:15 | Lunch | ||
Closed session: 28 April (14:15-16:00 AEST)
| Time (AEST) | Title |
| 14:15-15:30 | Closed session talks + Q&A |
| 15:30- | Marsfield Receiver Lab Tour |
Closed session: 29 April (09:50-16:30 AEST)
| Time (AEST) | Title |
| 09:50 | Round table introductions |
| 10:00 | Lea Powys: Space Situational Awareness with ATNF Radio Telescopes |
| 10:10 | Discussion: LAMBDA |
| 11:10 | Discussion: Scaling up a mid-frequency aperture array |
| 12:10-13:00 | Lunch |
| 13:00 | Discussion: Enhancing the LBA |
| 13:30 | Discussion: Trash or treasure? RFI and solar mitigation |
| 14:15 | Discussion: Photonic backends |
| 14:45 | Discussion: Radio astronomy signal processing from the ground up |
| 15:15-15:30 | Wrap up, next steps and conclusion |
| 16:30 | Social team building offsite |
| 18:00 | ECR Dinner |
Venue
Venue information
The symposium open session will be held in the Marsfield Lecture Theatre. For visitor access, please sign in at Reception.
Organisers
Kelly Gourdji
Andrew Zic
Maral Ansari
Code of Conduct
By attending this event, you agree to comply with the ATNF Events Code of Conduct:
https://www.atnf.csiro.au/code-of-conduct/
Event details
April 28 @ 9:30 am – April 29 @ 4:30 pm AEST