Director's Message

Colleagues,

In the past week you may have noticed a number of visiting student groups within the School. We have been fortunate to be able to host both the Earth Science Olympiad students again this year and also a group of 2nd year students from Peking University (PKU). These and the National Youth Summer Schools are critically important in exposing some of the very best domestic and international students to RSES and the ANU.  Special thanks to everyone who assisted with the visits, especially Kate Holland for her role in inspiring the Earth Science Olympiad students and Ian Campbell for organizing the PKU student visit. The talent of the students involved was simply remarkable

Best wishes for the week ahead 

Steve

Buckingham Palace built with mineralised microbes from the Jurassic times.

A new study led by The Australian National University (ANU) has found that the building blocks of Buckingham Palace in London and many other iconic buildings were made by microbes that lived up to 200 million years agoduring the Jurassic period.The material, known as oolitic limestone, is a popular building material around the world and is almost completely made of millimetre-sized spheres of carbonate called ooids.

Co-researcher Dr Bob Burne from ANU said the new study found that ooids were made of concentric layers of mineralised microbes, debunking the popular ‘snowball theory’ that ooids were formed by grains rolling on the seafloor and accumulating layers of sediment.“We have proposed a radically different explanation for the origin of ooids that explains their definitive features,” said Dr Burne from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences. >>>read more

Center of Excellence event:

Climate Extremes and High Impact Weather Winter School.

This is a high-level education program for honours and graduate students interested in climate science. It will be of relevance to those working in atmospheric sciences, oceanography and land processes.

The deadline for students to apply is 9 Feb 2018 and  through the following link

FameLab 2018

Applications for FameLab 2018 are now open! The British Council is looking for enthusiastic early-career STEM researchers with a passion for public engagement to present their research, live on stage, at FameLab Australia. FameLab is the world’s leading science communication competition. It aims to find and mentor young STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) researchers who want to share their stories with the world.

 The rules are simple: contestants have just three minutes to convey their scientific concept on stage in an original, entertaining way and are judged by an expert panel on the content, clarity and charisma of their presentations. The cardinal rules of FameLab are no jargon and no PowerPoint. Props and creative explanations, however, are encouraged!

 Applicants can be current MSc or PhD students, graduate students up to five years post MSc or PhD, researching in any field of science, technology, engineering or maths.

 More details can be found  >>>HERE

JOIDES Resolution, Expedition 383

Applications are invited to sail aboard the JOIDES Resolution on Expedition 383: Dynamics of Pacific Antarctic Circumpolar Current (DYNAPACC), May-July 2019.
For more information visit: >> here

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