School Director's Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue51 1–31 May 2024
This month I had my annual town hall meetings with the RHD students and Postdoctoral Researchers. Thanks go to Neco and Aditi for leading these constructive conversations. Among topics discussed were opportunities for scientific discourse across groups. I agree that this would be valuable and have canvased ideas which include informal lunches to discuss papers published at RSAA which will be implemented in the coming weeks.
The past month has also seen significant town hall activity in preparation for the next Decadal Plan for Australian Astronomy. In addition, this week the ASA president wrote to our community to request completion of an individual survey as a contribution to this process. I encourage all in the School, including MSc/PhD students, administration and support staff, casual, fixed-term and continuing employees to take the 15 minutes required for this activity which is linked below.
Feedback is requested by 23:59 AEST (21:59 AWST) on Tuesday 21 May, and responses will be kept strictly confidential. In parallel the School executive will be working to complete the institutional survey.
Last week we also had our latest townhall in preparation for the upcoming School Review, discussing our Research Higher Degree program. Thanks to Christoph for leading an interesting and well attended discussion. The dates for the School Review are now locked in for 11-13 November this year.
A reminder to please mark the date of 18 September for the Mount Stromlo 100th Anniversary Symposium at the Shine Dome, followed by a Gala Dinner at the Hyatt Canberra which is also celebrating its 100th Anniversary. The web site and registration page are now ready and we will announce the event widely in the coming week. All Stromlites are welcome and encouraged to attend.
Speaking of anniversaries, this coming week I will away at Harvard for a conference to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Institute for Theory and Computation.
Please read on to learn about activities in what has been another busy month right across RSAA.
