The access to SKAO (www.skao.int) via Germany joining the SKA Organisation (Prof. Kramer represents Germany in the SKAO Board of Directors) and the new collaboration with SKA France that will be enabled by this EXC will put the Bonn-Cologne-Jülich region in a prime position to conduct legacy projects with the telescope, even before it comes fully online. Delivering a suite of MPIfR in-house built 64+2 S-Band receivers (1.7 – 3.5 GHz) for the SKAO precursor MeerKAT, a massive beamformer, and HPC clusters for online data-processing, the MPIfR has obtained dedicated observing time at MeerKAT. MPIfR also provides a proto-type antenna for SKAO.
