AITC News
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue44 1–30 September 2023
This month I would like to share some highlights of the AITC all staff and students meeting which took place on the last day of August, Thursday last week.
It was absolutely fantastic to see so many AITC and other staff and students present at the meeting, including many new faces following our recent two rounds of recruitments in 2022B (10 women-only positions) and 2023A (open to candidates of all genders). Over the past few months we have welcomed a whopping 10 new staff at the AITC (7 women* and 3 men*) and a couple of new PhD students. We are also looking to host a few new undergraduate students as part of the AITC summer student program and other AITC research activities.
The gathering of AITC staff and students at the meeting on Thursday gave us the opportunity to refresh the AITC Team photo which had been looking a bit sparse in the post-COVID months following people’s slow return to working in the office. As everyone can see, the new AITC Team picture looks happily crowded in front of the CSO Common Room. Many thanks to the professional eye of our very own photographer, Cristy Roberts, for taking this really nice picture!
I’m also pretty happy to report two important AITC milestones in this month’s Lunations. The first one is that the AITC has recently reached 50 staff including 15 academics and 35 professional staff. This is a middle-age milestone of sort and a testament to the health and strength of our research and education programs. This number includes our collaborators at ANU-E who are providing project management for AITC projects as well as other AITC contractors who are lending their technical expertise to our projects. It does not include however the RSAA administrative staff who are so important to the smooth operations of our Centre. Together, scientists, engineers, project managers and admistrative staff all contribute to ensuring that AITC remains the successful research centre that we all enjoy working for.
Another significant milestone this month is that women* now represent exactly 30% of our staff! Considering that the female representation in instrumentation research and engineering around the world is typically closer to ~15%, that is a a huge accomplishment that everyone who’s contributed to (search and hiring committees and successful candidates alike) can legitimately be extremely proud of.
In future recruitment rounds (yes, more are coming!) we will keep a close eye on these numbers to ensure that the female representation at the AITC continues to grow. We will also be mindful to increase the diversity of our staff beyond its gender aspect. To do so, we will work with the RSAA Inclusion Diversity Equity & Access (IDEA) committee to devise improved ways to attract, recruit, welcome, and retain people of varied identities, backgrounds and abilities who are keen to join the AITC and contribute to the astronomy and space research endeavours.
Celine d'Orgeville
