The Committee on Radio Astronomy Frequencies (CRAF) is an Expert Committee of the European Science Foundation (ESF). The ESF has several expert committees and every few years, a review of each of them is performed to keep track of the progress, but also provide valuable feedback to the committees from renowned external reviewers related to the field.
The latest CRAF review was done in 2022. The ESF set up a review panel of four leading experts:
- Dr. Pierre Cox (Review Panel Chair),
Former Director of IRAM & ALMA,
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, CNRS, France, - Markus Dreis,
ITU-R WP 7C Chair,
EUMETSAT, Germany, - Prof. Hermann Opgenoorth,
COSPAR Vice-Chair Panel on Space Weather,
Umea University, Sweden, - Prof. Liese van Zee,
Former Chair of Committee on Radio Frequencies, US National Academies,
Indiana University Bloomington, USA,
with the mandate of reviewing the activities of CRAF over the period 2011-2021. The panel was specifically asked to comment on the activities and achievements of CRAF and to provide recommendations for the next period, taking into account the CRAF mandate as well as the European and global research landscape.
This self-evaluation report was provided to the review panel members in March 2022, and the panel members also participated in a CRAF plenary meeting in May 2022. In addition, interviews with several CRAF representatives were conducted. The review panel presented their findings in a report to the Committee in August 2022.
CRAF and its Stakeholders Forum would like to sincerely thank the Review Panel for their excellent work, and the detailed and constructive feedback, which required a large amount of time and effort. CRAF also wish to thank the European Science Foundation (in particular Nicolas Walter and Eliana Legoux) for the most professional management and organisation of the whole process and for creating an inspiring and conducive atmosphere.
One of the recommendations of the Reviewers was to produce a public version of the self-evaluation report, as it was thought to provide valuable information to the radio-astronomical community. Thus, we have prepared a slightly modified version (without budget/personnel sections) and are happy to share this with you:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.13407