Director's Message

Dear Colleagues,

Welcome back. I see many are coming back from holidays, I hope you all had a good break. 

In last week’s Event Horizon I congratulated the authors on their recent article in Advanced Photonics. This has been a very popular story indeed. The media impact statistics just coming back show the story reached an audience of close to 4 million people, and consequently piqued the interest of some tech companies. If you have research you’re proud of please contact Phil Dooley, our resident science communications expert.

Within the new building some of the internal glass doors and windows will sport a decal, a narrow strip of translucent film that adheres to the glass in offices to denote the presence of glass and the location of the door. The presence of the strip is a WHS requirement and we have a chance to personalise the decal. To help guide the architects I recently asked a few colleagues for their most significant scientific symbols, including universal constants, commonly used variable or function symbols. The idea is to uniquely colour code each symbol using the Quantum Random Number Generator from Professor Lam’s group and to print a dense, random, and translucent array of the symbols along the strip. The colour palette will be chosen to suit the building scheme. This week’s pic shows just a few of the significant symbols offered and I’ve included a list of those I have at present. If you would like to contribute please send me a TeX version with a short description.

For those away last week, I draw your attention to two School-wide emails send on Thursday 8th. The first was about the time capsule project (1:15pm), the second an updated change schedule (1:30pm). 

Hope the week goes well,
Tim

Call for Expressions of Interest in the New Associate Dean (Engagement) Role

The College of Science (CoS) is seeking expressions of interest from internal candidates for a new role, Associate Dean (Engagement), who will support the Dean and Research School Directors in building capability in translational research and increasing success in gaining funding from category 2 – 4 sources (see here, from the Griffith University site, for an explanation of the different research income categories).  The role will also lead the College’s activities related to the University’s goals in the ARC’s Engagement & Impact Assessment exercise.

» read more

The team from Nonlinear Physics Center with collaborators from the University of Korea realized a novel concept of merged optical bound states in the continuum (BICs) and demonstrated highly efficient, ultralow-threshold nanolaser with reduced out-of-plane losses and remarkably improved lasing characteristics (the so-called super-BIC laser). The results have been published in Nature Communications (Impact Factor=14.419).

» read more

Dr Robert Mun, Executive Director, Engineering and Information Sciences from the ARC will be discussing details of the ARC assessment process, and how it has been modified for COVID-19 restrictions, plus some detail on the medical eligibility clause.

This session will be held on Wednesday, 14 July 2021 from 12.00 – 1.30PM via Zoom.

Please RSVP to preaward.rsd@anu.edu.au by 9AM on 14 July to receive an invite.

1. SAAFE Research Internship Program – applications are open (applications close 15 September 2021)
2. AINSE 2021 Early Career Researcher Grants (ECRG) – applications are open (applications close 31 July 2021)

» read more

3MT: Three Minute Thesis (College final)

The College of Science and College of Health and Medicine are hosting a 3MT Final on Tuesday 20 July from 1pm-3pm.

The event will be held in the China in World Auditorium and will be followed by afternoon tea in the atrium.

» read more

The Westpac Research Fellowship is an exceptional opportunity for the very best early-career researchers to apply for one of Australia’s most prestigious Fellowships, valued at over $400,000 over 3 years. Applications are now open, and close Wednesday 25 August 2021.

Please contact the RM team if you intend to apply for this opportunity at your earliest convenience.

The ANU has been invited to participate in the milestone 10th anniversary edition of the prestigious Global Young Scientists Summit (GYSS) 2022 to be held online from 18 to 21 January 2022.

» read more

STAFF MOVEMENTS

Patrick Kluth will be away 12/7/21-16/7/21. Vanessa Robins will be acting Associate Director HDR during this time.

Need to Schedule a Meeting with the Director?

For ANU Outlook users
Open a new invite for Director.Physics@anu.edu.au, and use Scheduling Assistant to propose a mutually convenient time and send.  

For all others
Please send an email request to Director.Physics@anu.edu.au 

Tim will reply to any meeting requests ASAP

Building and Room Security Access

Please note that the school now has a general access restriction of 8am to 6pm, Monday to Friday.  

If you need to complete a new after-hours risk assessment, please see the new top section here: https://physics.anu.edu.au/intra/whs/

EVENTS

From Previous Weeks...

National Graduate Innovation Forum (NGIF)

Exploring Learning and Teaching (ELT)

Workshop for Physics HDR Students - “Raising Your Research Profile”