Canada, South Africa, Astronomy, and the SKAO: A Strategic Research Partnership

Dr. Sarah Gallagher is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy and the Director of the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration at Western University. Her astrophysics research focuses on studying growing supermassive black holes at the centres of distant galaxies and the interactions between galaxies in crowded environments. She has over 120 refereed papers that include data from 10 different space observatories, and her research has been recognized with a Canadian Association of Physicists Fellowship and an Ontario Early Career Researcher Award. From 2018-2022, she served as the first Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency. In this role, she advised the CSA Executive Committee on space science investments and capacity development and sat on the Departmental Science Advisor Network. She is active in science policy and an advocate for creating a diverse and inclusive space science community. She regularly talks to the public about astronomy and space, and is currently serving as the Past President of the Canadian Astronomical Society. 

Paul Dufour is Principal of PaulicyWorks and Senior Fellow with the Institute for Science, Society and Policy, University of Ottawa.

Mr Dufour served as Interim Executive Director of the Office of the National Science Adviser to the Government of Canada. Mr Dufour was a member of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society gold medal award-winning Canadian National Committee for the International Polar Year. 

With over four decades of experience in policy advice, he was the lead of the Research on Knowledge Systems project with the International Development Research Centre; managed the science and technology attaché network at Foreign Affairs Canada; headed the international partnerships group at Natural Resources Canada, and advisor to several of Canada’s Ministers for Science, Research and Development. He was an Investment Committee Member of Grand Challenges Canada for global health for eight years. 

Mr. Dufour was educated at McGill, the Université de Montréal and Concordia University in the history of science and science policy. 

In 2019, Mr Dufour was the first recipient of the Canadian Science Policy Centre Award for Exceptional Achievement in Science Policy. 

Dr. Lerato Baidoo is a Research Associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto and a former Postdoctoral Fellow. She is a radio astronomer specializing in radio galaxies, active galactic nuclei, cosmic magnetism, galaxy clusters, and the intergalactic medium. 

Her work sits at the intersection of astrophysics and large-scale computational pipelines for radio astronomy. She writes, debugs, and optimizes software pipelines for high-volume survey data, with an emphasis on validation, reproducibility, and science-ready public releases. Her contributions support major survey efforts such as POSSUM and VLASS, helping deliver reliable data products for research and broader community use. 

Dr. Baidoo previously worked as a Scientific Researcher at IBM and earlier developed automated processing and data reduction pipelines for radio astronomy in South Africa, including work supporting MeerKAT-era initiatives. She holds a PhD in Physics from Rhodes University and brings a Canada-South Africa perspective relevant to SKAO-era collaboration and science. 

Dr. Kristine Spekkens is a professor in the Department of Physics, Engineering Physics and Astronomy at Queen’s University, where she is a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Gas-Rich Galaxy Structure. She leads a research group that focusses on understanding the structure and evolution of nearby galaxies, and she is particularly interested in using their atomic gas reservoirs to probe the interplay between the galaxy evolution and that of the universe itself. Dr. Spekkens leads a variety of initiatives to survey atomic gas in galaxies using the biggest radio telescopes in the world, including facilities in Canada, Australia, the US and South Africa. 

In addition to her scientific research, Dr. Spekkens is deeply involved in the international partnership to build the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) telescope. Nationally, she is the Canadian SKA Science Director who coordinates between stakeholders in universities, government and industry. Internationally, she is the Chair of the SKA Observatory’s Science and Engineering Advisory Committee, which brings together experts from around the world to provide independent technical advice to the project.

Luc Simard is the Director-General of the National Research Council’s Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, which represents Canada in the governance of the SKA Observatory (SKAO) and works with domestic and international partners to deliver key observatory systems. He has held leading governance roles in that context, including the Canadian voting member on the SKAO Council. Dr. Simard also has oversight of other major Canadian STI investments in astronomy, such as the Thirty Meter Telescope and the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre. 

Dr. Simard obtained his B.Sc. from Queen’s University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from the University of Victoria in 1996. From 1996 to 2002, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California – Santa Cruz and the University of Arizona. 

Dr. Simard joined the NRC in 2002 where he was the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope archive scientist at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre from 2002 to 2005. He worked on the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) from 2005 to 2017, and was the TMT Science Instruments Group Leader from 2009 to 2017, and was appointed Director General of the Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre in November 2018. 

Dr. Simard’s research interests include galaxy formation and evolution, image processing and astronomical instrumentation.