Closing Date: 2018-12-15

The Position

We are looking for enthusiastic software developers to work with the ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) Taiwan team at ASIAA on the development of a radio astronomy data analysis software called “Common Astronomy Software Applications”(CASA) which is developed in collaboration with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory ( NRAO ) of USA.

Required Education

Applicants can be of any nationality, and must have obtained their BS, BSc or BEng or equivalent degree in Information Technology related fields.
For applicants who do not hold citizenship of the Taiwan (the Republic of China), an MS, MSc, MEng equivalent or higher academic degree is mandatory.

Requirements

Familiar with linux / Unix development environments

network socket knowledge or development experience

Object-oriented Programming (OOP) in C++

experience with leading development teams of 2~5 members (senior software engineer/team lead)

a team player with strong communication skills (senior software engineer/team lead)

For highly motivated applicants:

We will provide training materials regarding all necessary programming skills. Please don’t hesitate to apply if you are interested in the project but have unfulfilled technical skills.

Salary and Benefit

In accordance with ASIAA standards and applicants' experiences.

Application Procedure

1. Email your Applications to Chin-Fei Lee at cfleeasiaa.sinica.edu.tw Including

A cover letter enclosing applicant’s curriculum vitae,

(optional) Transcripts on highest academic degree achieved

(optional) two reference letters (free in format)

(optional) other relevant documentations

Optional items are highly recommended but not necessary for the interview stage.
They are necessary when applicants pass the interview.
2. Face to face interview OR video conference interview.

Project Background

ALMA

Since 2005 ASIAA has participated in the Atacama Large Millimeter/Submillimeter Array (ALMA) project, the largest ground based astronomical project ever carried out. The array is comprised of at least 66 antennae, and is located in the Atacama desert in northern Chile, one of the world's best sites for millimeter and submillimeter astronomy. ALMA covers the wavelength range from 0.3mm to 9mm with an angular resolution of up to 4 milli-arcsec, giving 10 times sharper images than the Hubble Space Telescope. The quality of the observing site, combined with the unprecedented combination of sensitivity, angular resolution, spectral resolution and image fidelity made possible with ALMA, will enable astronomers to carry out transformational research in a wide variety of astronomical areas. ALMA began operations in 2011, and its expected lifetime is at least 50 years.

An international partnership amongst East Asia, Europe, and North America with the Republic of Chile is building ALMA. The North American and European partners are responsible for the construction of the 12m Array (ALMA baseline project), while Japan is responsible for the construction of the Atacama Compact Array (ACA; ALMA-Japan project). In September 2005, the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan entered into an agreement with the National Institutes of Natural Sciences (NINS) in Japan to join the ALMA project through the ALMA-Japan project. In October 2008, the National Science Council (NSC) in Taiwan and the US National Science Foundation (NSF) reached an agreement for collaboration with ALMA-North America.

Amongst the 66 antennas working together to constitute ALMA, 54 of them are 12m diameter dishes, and the other 12 are 7m in diameter. Radio signals in a variety of frequencies are collected simultaneously from the sky by every receiver mounted on the dishes, and then aggregated and processed in real-time by an ultrawideband digital correlator system with super computing power. Flexible array configurations on antenna locations ensure a wide range of baseline distances is achieved, where the distance can be as short as 15m in a compact array configuration and extendable up to 16km. In comparison with all previous radio telescopes, ALMA is capable of resolving faint celestial objects that haven’t been seen before in submillimetre wavelengths, and allows for imaging of astronomical radio sources with much higher resolutions.

CASA Common Astronomy Software Applications

CASA is being developed with the primary goal of supporting the data post-processing needs of the next generation of radio astronomical telescopes such as ALMA and VLA . The package can process both interferometric and single dish data, and is developed by an international consortium of scientists based at the National Radio Astronomical Observatory (NRAO), the European Southern Observatory (ESO), the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (CSIRO/ATNF), and the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy (ASTRON) under the guidance of NRAO. Starting from Aug. 2016, ASIAA joins the international CASA development team through collaboration with NRAO.

The CASA infrastructure consists of a set of C++ tools bundled together under an iPython interface as a set of data reduction tasks. This structure provides flexibility to process the data via a task interface or as a python script. In addition to the data reduction tasks, many post-processing tools are available for even more flexibility and special purpose reduction needs.