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Director's Message
Dear Colleagues,
I hope you had an enjoyable weekend and had a chance to celebrate International Day of Light on Saturday. To help commemorate this event, the American Chemical Society Photonics Journal selected 24 of the most significant contributions to the area of photonics over the past year, and two of these are from Physics @ ANU. Congratulations to Tobias Vogl, Ruvi Lecamwasam, Ben Buchler, Yuerui Lu, and Ping Koy Lam fpr their work on “Compact Cavity-Enhanced Single-Photon Generation with Hexagonal Boron Nitride” (DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00314 ) and to Kirill Koshelev, Yutao Tang, Kingfai Li, Duk-Yong Choi, Guixin Li, and Yuri Kivshar for “Nonlinear Metasurfaces Governed by Bound States in the Continuum” (DOI: 10.1021/acsphotonics.9b00700) on being selected from a very large international field.
My congratulations to Mr Kirill Koshelev and Mr. Khosro Zangeneh (NLPC) on winning a prestigious Optics and Photonics Education Scholarship. This international scholarship provides top students with significant cash support to further their educational experience.
It is my pleasure to announce that A/Prof Patrick Kluth will be our next Associate Director (HDR). Prof Lan Fu will continue in her role for a short period to assist Patrick in hand-over. I cannot thank Lan enough for her amazing contribution to the role and I think we all look forward to thanking her in person at a special School morning tea in the near future. Lan has also been a valued part of the School Executive and will continue to lead the HDR Working Party. In joining the School Executive, Patrick will be standing down as Head of Electronic Materials Engineering. Accordingly, I will call for Expressions of Interest in the EME headship by School-wide email within the next week. I would like to thank Professor Elena Ostrovskaya, AD(R) and A/Prof Anna Cowan, Deputy Dean (Education), College of Science for joining me on the selection panel.
I would like to express my sincere thanks to D/Prof Jagadish who was the Founding Director for the ANU node of the Australian National-Fabrication Facility (ANFF), representing the ANU in this capacity for over 13 years. This is one of the major National facilities hosted by Physics and has gone from strength to strength under Jagadish’s leadership. Indeed, to a large extent it has been the success of this facility that helped us secure funds for the new building. Prof Hoe Tan who has been his Deputy Director, frequently acting for Jagadish, will now step into the ANFF-ANU Node Directorship. I congratulate Hoe in this new but familiar role. With the recent announcement of Dr Fouad Karouta’s retirement, Dr Kaushal Vora will be acting Facility Manager.
The MakerSpace is still happy to see more volunteers to make Face Shields (up to 6000 now). Please contact makerspace@anu.edu.au if would like to donate a little time for the great cause. You'll see some familiar faces below.
With regards to re-entry on campus, please refer to my email from last Friday and the Dean’s email on Tuesday. Your Heads and managers are your first points of contact if you have questions. The infographic below was taken from the VC’s blog and highlights the key stages in re-occupying ANU over the next few months. For those who will re-enter this week, please strictly observe the social distancing and hygiene protocols. We all play an important role in keeping COVID-19 at bay.
This week’s pic shows the third last concrete pour at the new building site. Last Tuesday, the building site saw 80 cement trucks deliver over 800 m3 of concrete. With two concrete pumps running continuously from near the Stores and off Parkes Way it was a very busy day. As large as this sounds, it is still less than 10% of the total cement poured within the finished building. Good thing we have such great solar access on our 800 sqm roof! Most of the concrete will be finished this month with the steel, roofing and façade streaking ahead. It is very busy with most days seeing around 150 workers on site. Hindmarsh has as active COVID Action Plan and have employed a social distance warden to help those on-site observe an extra level of safety. It is worth a trip down Parkes Way to have a look. When we are all back on deck I will arrange some site visits.
Have a pleasant week,
Tim |
