Director's Message

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue23 1–31 December 2021

This is the final edition of Lunations for 2021, a year that has again stress-tested individuals, groups, and institutions with challenges both long-term and highly variable. I hope that each of you, individually, are managing to deal with these challenges and that you have found RSAA and ANU supportive (at least within the bounds of the challenges that the School and University are also having to deal with).

On the whole, I believe RSAA has come through 2021 reasonably well and is positioned to get back to full speed in 2022. We have invested significantly in the future during 2021 by (amongst other things) starting the process of recruiting two new faculty, renewing the AAT Agreement for another 3 years, supporting GMTIFS with additional funds, progressing our culture action plan, and starting the development of a new strategic plan for the School. We have also seen great achievements by RSAA staff and students, most recently in the award of the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research to the entire AITC team and the Fulbright Scholarship awarded to James Beattie.

In 2022 we look forward to resuming face-to-face teaching and overseas travel, and to bringing to Canberra our graduate students and postdocs who have been stuck overseas for the last year or more. For many of us in ASTRO 3D, next week offers the exciting prospect of travelling to a science meeting again (this will be my first such meeting since March 2020, the longest drought of my career!). While the Blue Mountains may not be the most exotic location, meeting people from other institutions in person will certainly have novelty value. Hopefully this is just a taste of greater things to come in 2022!

Equally importantly, I hope that in the coming year we will be able to resume more of the social activities that help to bind the School together and make us colleagues, not just people who work at the same place. In that respect, it was lovely last week to hold our first Friday BBQ in longer than I care to recall. The next BBQ will be this coming Friday, 10 December, and I encourage you to come and re-connect. To finish the year, we are also planning (Omicron permitting) to hold an RSAA Christmas party; details to follow.

Congratulations on making it through 2021, and may 2022 be kinder in every way!

Matthew Colless