In their search for distant galaxies, rapidly rotating neutron stars, and black holes, radio astronomers are collecting an ever increasing amount of data. Data will be generated from the next generation of radio telescopes at rates comparable to the entirety of today's Internet traffic. Scientists are therefore looking for entirely new ways to cope with this flood of data. In future, machine learning and artificial intelligence will help researchers to filter out the exciting signals of the universe from the enormous volume of data.

To this end, eight institutions in North Rhine-Westphalia have joined forces under the leadership of the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy (MPIfR) to form the “NRW Cluster for Data-Intensive Radio Astronomy: Big Bang to Big Data” (B3D). JSC's Simulation and Data Laboratory Astrophysics and Astronomy led by Prof. Dr. Susanne Pfalzner is part of this consortium. The main purpose of the alliance is to share knowledge as part of a network and to coordinate the activities of radio astronomers, data scientists, and industry partners. The JSC team will mainly focus on bridging the gap between simulations and observational data, preparing algorithms, and developing hardware concepts for the expected flood of data.