This National Science Foundation Project Grant award of $271,974 provides funding from September 15, 2022 through August 31, 2025 for collaborative research titled "SWIFT-SAT: RFI Detection Across Six Orders of Magnitude in Intensity: A Unifying Framework with Weakly Supervised Machine Learning." The award is made under the Mathematical and Physical Sciences program (CFDA 47.049), which supports progress in these fields to strengthen the nation's scientific enterprise.
Specifically, the University of Washington will develop a machine learning framework to detect and mitigate radio frequency interference across a wide range of signal strengths, from very bright to very faint transmissions. This work aims to enable detection of the cosmological 21 cm signal of neutral hydrogen across cosmic time by integrating observations over 1,000 hours. The framework will incorporate existing RFI detection techniques to create a self-consistent flagging strategy suitable for all event types. Undergraduate students will participate in all aspects of the research providing hands-on experience.
Generated 1/6/24, 11:45 AM