The Wits Centre for Astrophysic hosted a welcoming event for Visiting Distinguished Professor Athol Kemball on Thursday 23 November. Prof Kemball is a South African-born professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and holds a Wits Carnegie Africa Diaspora Distinguished Professorship.
This event is provided an informal setting for the astronomy community in the greater Gauteng area to meet Prof Kemball, particularly as we build up critical mass in radio astronomy and very long baseline interferometry in the region. He is a world expert in these areas, as well as strong gravitational lensing, radio spectro-polarimetry, astrophysical masers, and high-performance computing. In addition, he has significant experience in large-scale astronomical infrastructure projects. He delivered a stimulating lecture on several research projects that where enabled by his Blue Waters Professorship and the resultant access to the enormous compute power provided by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois.
