| Abstract : | The MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey (MALS; https://mals.iucaa.in/) is a large project to blindly search for HI 21-cm and OH 18-cm absorption lines with the primary goal to better characterize the cold atomic and molecular gas in and around galaxies at 0≤z≤1.8. The survey is well underway using the 32K channel mode of the correlator spanning both L (900-1670MHz)and UHF (580-1015MHz) bands. Due to the excellent sensitivity and the large field-of-view of the MeerKAT telescope, this ~500 pointing-survey is also delivering an extremely competitive HI 21-cm emission line (~10K galaxies) and deep radio continuum (~million sources) survey. Further, the excellent channel resolution and sensitivity across the wideband allows for fantastic modeling of in-band spectral indices and high resolution faraday synthesis but also poses unprecedented challenges related to the large data volume (1.5 PB raw visibilities). The MALS data products are being used to understand the relationship between the absorbing gas and the galaxies, and will be released to the community through several data releases (first DR scheduled for 2023 Q1). In this talk, I will elaborate on technical challenges, the data release plan, multi-wavelength synergies, and present the first results from the survey.
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