Two engineers of Ventspils International Radio Astronomy Centre (VIRAC) of Ventspils University of Applied Sciences (VUAS) – Arturs Orbidans and Karlis Luksis – participated in staff exchange training at partner institution of the project, Netherlands institute for Radio Astronomy ASTRON within the project BALTICS (“Building on Advanced Lofar Technology for Innovation, Collaboration and Sustainability”, project No. 692257 – BALTICS). It was the second trip to ASTRON, the first one took place on June this year.

During the training engineers of VIRAC carried on learning of UniBoard I programming which was started during the previous staff exchange. UniBoard I is a high performance data processing board used in radio astronomy. With the guidance of ASTRON staff guests from Latvia developed design which provided high speed optical data link between signal processing nodes of UniBoard I.

The experience gained at ASTRON was a great addition to previously received knowledge during the 1st staff exchange. These skills will be useful in applying UniBoard I for signal processing purposes at VIRAC.