School Director's Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue63 1–30 June 2025
Congratulations this month to Erin Holdorf on the award of the Amelia Earhart Fellowship! This $10 000 USD Amelia Earhart fellowship is awarded to up to 30 women worldwide annually who are pursuing a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering and space sciences. Erin was awarded this fellowship in 2025 for her PhD work in laser guide star adaptive optics. More info here.
This month marks the completion of Chris Lidman's 7 year term 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. In his role as SSO Director, Chris has also led the AAT as its Director since the telescope’s operations were transferred to the University in 2018. I have valued Chris’ leadership, collegiality and knowledge enormously, and pleasingly he will remain active within the School leading the SNe cosmology research program.
In publication news, Anna Moore recently accepted an editorial board position on the RAS Techniques and Instruments journal. RAS Techniques and Instruments (RASTI) is a peer-reviewed scientific journal which provides an international forum for high-quality papers covering data science, software, and instrumentation, in astrophysics and geophysics. RASTI is included in the same RAP agreement as MNRAS, so that RSAA members can publish there for free as per MNRAS.
Finally, it is a great pleasure to share the news that RSAA has received a Gold Pleiades Award in 2025. This is the first time the School has received the Gold award, which recognises a truly outstanding sustained commitment to best practice in relation to the aims of the IDEA Chapter. The 2025 awards will be announced at the Annual Society Meeting next month. You can read more about this in the IDEA report below, but I would like to highlight the leadership and years of work of RSAA Associate Director (IDEA), Luca Casagrande, and the IDEA committee which has made this recognition possible.
Stuart Wyithe
Image: Erin Holdorf in the optics lab.
