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DrAndrew Williams

Instrument Engineer, M&C

Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA)

Orcid identifier0000-0001-9080-0105
  • Instrument Engineer, M&C
    Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA)

BIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH IMPACT

Andrew is part of the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) operations team, operating and maintaining a low frequency (80-300 MHz) radio telescope 800 km North-East of Perth. His work involves scheduling observations on the telescope and working on the 'Monitor and Control' software which includes the user interface (web pages, scripts), schedule database, communication with the hardware and software that makes up the telescope and the data analysis pipeline, and monitoring the health and performance of the telescope. His work has also included writing software to control other instruments, including Square Kilometre Array prototypes and other research projects, either as stand-alone instruments or integrated with the MWA. Almost all of the software he works on is written in Python.

ACADEMIC POSITIONS

  • Astronomer
    Perth Observatory, Perth, Australia1 Jan 1995 - 1 Jul 2012

DEGREES

  • Bachelor of Science (honours)
    The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia1 Jan 1986 - 31 Dec 1989
  • PhD Physics
    The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia1 Jan 1990 - 31 Dec 1997

ROLE

  • Staff

FIELDS OF RESEARCH

  • 3706 - Geophysics
  • 4009 - Electronics, sensors and digital hardware
  • 4902 - Mathematical physics
  • 5101 - Astronomical sciences
  • 5102 - Atomic, molecular and optical physics
  • 5107 - Particle and high energy physics
  • 5109 - Space sciences

DEPARTMENT

  • Curtin Institute of Radio Astronomy (CIRA)