Dear Colleagues,

Hope you had a relaxing, if hot, weekend.

It’s a huge pleasure to congratulate Professor David McClelland on winning this year’s Australia Institute of Physics Walter Boas Medal.  He joins a very distinguished list of Australian Physicists, including ANU’s Professor Jim Williams (1993), Professor Hans Bachor (2000), Professor George Dracoulis (2004), Professor Yuri Kivshar (2005) and Professor Chennupati Jagadish (2013).  We will have a School morning tea to celebrate David’s award in February.

In the spirit of cross-School collaboration the Directors of RSAA, RSES, RSC and RSPE are providing opportunity to have all Discovery Projects read by colleagues not in your field. Volunteers will read only the first 2 pages for about half a dozen applications across RSES, RSC and RSAA to help make suggestions on readability.  It’s a great chance to meet some of our ANU colleagues in other Schools and I encourage early- and mid-career researchers to join me.  It’ll be fun. If you’re interested please contact our Deputy Director of Research, Professor Ken Baldwin, this week.

The pic this week shows the delight of one of physics undergraduates (Katrina Taloni from Aubergine's) meeting Professors Duncan Haldane and Brian Schmidt after Duncan’s public lecture on Topological Matter last week.  Congratulations to organisers of this year’s Canberra International Physics Summer School. With 90 students attending it was one of our most popular.

Have a great week,

Tim