SAASST Radio Astronomy Program
The Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology has an active radio astronomy program. With its “Sharjah Decametric Radio Telescope (SDRT)” that operates at 20.1 MHz and the “40-m Sharjah Radio Interferometer (SRIT)” that operates at 1.4 GHz, the radio researchers can observe the whole universe around the clock. The SDRT observes solar radio bursts and the Jupiter-Io short and long radio bursts. With the SRIT, we were able to observe the Sun and several radio galaxies. These observations all fall within the scope of understanding the radio universe. These two telescopes are unique in the MENA region.
Speaker Biography:
Prof. Ilias Fernini received a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Sciences and Technology, Houari Boumediene, in Algiers, Algeria, in 1982. He got his M.Sc. in Astrophysics from Iowa State University (USA) in 1986 and his Ph.D. from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (USA) in 1991. He has about 40 years of research and academic experience in Algeria, the USA, and the UAE. He worked as an assistant professor at the University of Blida (Algeria) from 1992 to 1994, a research scientist from 1994 to 1997 at New Mexico State University (USA). From 1997 to 2015, he joined the United Arab Emirates University. He joined the Department of Applied Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sharjah in January 2016 as a faculty member and as the Deputy General Director for Research Laboratories at the Sharjah Academy for Astronomy, Space Sciences, and Technology.
His research interests include Extragalactic Radio Sources, Mars Atmospheric Modeling, Mars Terraforming, Satellites Technologies, Space Weather, Meteors Observations, History of Islamic Sciences, and Lunar Crescent Visibility.
