School Director's Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue60 1–31 March 2025

Last month we had the announcement that after 7 years Chris Lidman will step down from his position as SSO Director mid-year.  Chris joined the ANU in 2018 and as SSO director Chris has led the Observatory towards a sustainable and diversified future and been the driving force behind funding for the SSO transient factory and 2.3m automation. He has also led the AAT during a period where it has remained consistently ranked in the top 10 most scientifically productive astronomical facilities in the world. I have valued Chris’ leadership, collegiality and knowledge enormously, and pleasingly he will remain active within the School leading the SNe cosmology research program. From mid-year I am delighted to report that Christian Wolf and Chris Onken have agreed to take the roles of SSO Director and SSO Deputy Director respectively.  

During March we developed draft responses to the RSAA School Review panel report. This has been circulated to the School for feedback and discussion. I encourage everyone to have a read of these suggested actions and provide input either via email to Cate, or at the town hall on 4 April.

In the past month I enjoyed discussions during the annual town hall discussions with our HDR students and E/MCRs, which raise important topics on how we can improve our School and feed into our response to the School Review. We also held our first All-School Meeting. Among the topics discussed was the Dean's presentation regarding 2025 budget for the College of Science and Medicine. This is particularly important in a challenging financial time for the University, and I thank the School for constructively engaging in this session. [You can access copies of the meeting's presentations on the intranet here. Ed]
  
At the All-School meeting we also had a discussion led by Naomi McClure-Griffiths regarding the discussion paper on a New Plan for ARC-Funded Research.  This is a significant departure from the current system, and anyone considering ARC funding for grants or Fellowships in the future is encouraged to provide input to a School submission or to consider submitting as an individual.

Finally, congratulations this month to Takafumi Tsukui who is leaving us this week to become a Kavli-IPMU Fellow! If you know of other good news please pass along so that we can share.

Stuart Wyithe