New lead announced for SKA Dish Consortium

CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science is delighted to announce the appointment of Roger Franzen to its team developing the SKA telescope. Roger will lead the SKA Dish Consortium, a multi-national effort to design the dishes and receivers for the SKA, as part of the pre-construction phase.

Led by CASS, other key members of the SKA Dish Consortium include research bodies and industry from South Africa, Canada, China and Italy.

Roger is currently the Technical Program Manager of the ANU Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics (RSAA), Mt Stromlo Observatory. In this role, Roger has been responsible for the RSAA Instrumentation activities, the Australian Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Project Office and the operational management of Australia's 10% shareholding in the GMT. This role included a term as a one of four Australian directors on the GMT Organisation's Board of Directors.

The engineering facilities at Mt Stromlo, known as the Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre (AITC), are building one of GMT's first light instruments as well as the Laser Tomography Adaptive Optics (LTAO) subsystem. The AITC is an integrated national facility for the design, integration and test of optical instrumentation and space science systems.

Roger's background has been primarily in commercial and defence space systems and has worked in the UK and European environments as well as being familiar with relevant North America industry. Having held the position of CEO for eight years in one of Australia's premier space engineering companies, Roger is a strong proponent of structured system engineering and good engineering project and financial management.

Roger will start work with CSIRO on 7 September. He will be based at the CASS office in Marsfield, Sydney, and at CSIRO offices in Canberra.

Added by Flornes Yuen on 2015-06-24