RSAA School Director
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue57 1–30 November 2024
The major event of the past month was the external review of our School. The panel, comprising Bryan Gaensler, Tamara Davis and Jessica Dempsey held both formal and informal discussions with groups across the School’s executive, staff and students. I want to thank the School for the enthusiastic engagement with the panel.
At the conclusion of the review I joined the panel for their initial report back to the Dean, DVCRI and Provost. In addition to a strong affirmation of the quality and direction of the School, a number of headline recommendations will assist us in improving our scientific culture and impact, as well as in developing our new strategy in 2025.
The next steps see the panel provide a report of their findings. This report will be made available to the School following its endorsement. However some of the recommendations will be discussed at our final all School meeting for 2024 this week.
November saw the last of the 100 year anniversary events with Brian Schmidt taking the audience on a journey through 100 years of Mount Stromlo Observatory in conversation with ABC's Annabel Crabb. This was the 4th in a series of public lectures following Naomi McClure-Griffiths, Matthew Colless and Tamara Davis.
A major milestone last month was the successful GMT LTAO Delta-Preliminary Design Review (PDR) which took place over 4 days in November. Congratulations to Celine D'Orgeville, Tony Travouillon, Noelia Martinez-Rey, and David Chandler and team. A report on the PDR is provided further on in this newsletter.
Discovery Projects were announced last week and pleasingly we have 4 successful RSAA proposals, led by Matthew Colless, Mike Ireland, Christoph Federrath, and myself that will bring in more than 2 million dollars of new funding to RSAA. Specifically, Christoph has been funded for a project on “Radiation-Driven Turbulence and Star Formation”, Mike and colleagues on “Mid-infrared spatial filtering to enable the search for extrasolar life”, Matthew and colleagues on “Testing the cosmological principle with galaxy motions”, and Yuxiang Qin and I with colleagues were funded for the project “Understanding Reionisation with the Murchison Widefield Array”.
These Discovery Projects add to a number of successes in ARC fellowships earlier in the year. Preparation of Discovery Projects represents significant effort, and in addition to these successes I would like to acknowledge the work of our colleagues whose projects were not successful this year. Following these recent Discovery Project announcements many colleagues are at work on new proposals.
2025 promises to be another enjoyable and busy year for RSAA. A major activity in the new year will be formulation of the School strategy. This will be based on the outcomes and recommendations of the School review, together with the Self Reflection Document and associated white papers.
On a personal note, I have thoroughly enjoyed my first full year at RSAA this year. It's important to take a break over the holiday period and I have been pleased to see so many leave applications roll in during recent weeks! I will be heading to the Blue Mountains in January for some climbing and relaxation.
Have a great break and I look forward to celebrating the year with everyone at our End of Year party on December 14th!
Stuart Wyithe
Image: Brian Schmidt and Annabel Crabb discussing Mount Stromlo @100 at Llewellyn Hall.
