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Director's Message
Dear Colleagues,
I hope the weekend was relaxing. The first big news for the week is the announcement of the SPIE Mozi Award, which recognizes outstanding discoveries, inventions, or scientific and technical achievements in the field of optics. Our Distinguished Professor Yuri Kivshar has been honoured with the Mozi for 2020 for his huge contributions to the field.
The second big news is that we host Australia’s only two resident High Cited Researchers in Physics (https://recognition.webofsciencegroup.com/awards/highly-cited/2019/). I am delighted to say that Yuri has been awarded this honour for the third year running. It is my pleasure to congratulate Professor Nail Akhmediev (TP) who has just been awarded this honour. These accolades significantly contribute to our world ranking and I am very pleased for Nail and Yuri. The wonderful photo below shows the genesis of their careers at the ANU and was taken from a 1994 ANU Reporter article (photo credit: Peter Cotton) when they were in the Optical Sciences Centre.
Finally, the inaugural Shandong teaching team have been in China for the past week enjoying an orientation trip ahead of commencing Freestyle Physics for the first cohort in Weihai. My thanks go to Paul Francis, Habiba Hussein, Mahyar Bokaeeyan, Huma Latif, Campbell Strachan, Layla Steed, Joe Hope and Jong Chow who constitute the Physics team, who will kick of the first ANU course taught at Shandong. Representatives of the four Schools contributing to the joint college and the Dean, Professor Kiaran Kirk, will open the program with our Shandong University colleagues this weekend. The image below shows the Freestyle team visiting the Great Wall last week (photo credit: Jong Chow).
Have a great week,
Tim |
