Director's Message

Dear Colleagues,

Last week saw another great week for engagement. Above we hosted a combined College of Science Future Research Talent and Chennupati and Vidya Jagadish Scholar event. Distinguished Professor Jagadish (EME) presented reflections on his career journey to almost a 100 scholars from India and Indonesia, the largest group yet sponsored at the ANU. It was fabulous to see so many and my thanks to all the groups hosting these talented students over the next few months. (photo credit: Nic Vevers/ANU). My thanks as always to Jay Poria and his team from the CoS for coordinating this fabulous program.

Also above, the teams in the Kinetic finals, together with Dr David Court and Abi Tabone from the Compton School, Rachael Hanrick and Jordon Haddrick from the MakerSpace, the panel judges Richard Cawsey (CMBE), Irene Zhen (CBRIN) and Dr Victor Pantano (MP). Of the 26 teams, 8 made it through to the final pitches after two rounds of crowd voting in which 2223 people contributed. As the inaugural ANU ideas incubator I couldn’t have been more pleased with the spectrum of ideas, from public art, inspired co-design tools, social enterprise and technologies spanning health to space. The teams represented four Colleges, alumni, students and staff. My sincere thanks to the panel, Compton School and MakerSpace for making this happen (photo credit: Jordan Haddrick/MakerSpace). I’ve included some other snaps from Friday evening below. The four winning teams; Grover - A reactionary, autonomous, geoglyphic drawing machine; CoffeeKii - Making Plastics Green From the Grounds Up! ULTRA-PERCEPTION – Science Goes POP! A research-based pop-up book series with an augmented reality app that will excite our imagination about science; and Sckin1 – a novel artificial skin concept for burns victims.

Finally, I had the honour of being part of the Physics Team with School Executive colleagues, Profs Jodie Bradby, Patrick Kluth, John Close, Lan Fu and Hoe Tan for the Vinnies Sleep-Out on Thursday night. The event saw teams sleep rough with only three sheets of cardboard covering us from a wet and windy night at the National Museum of Australia, or at home under similar conditions. Some of the images from the night are below. It was a tiny glimpse of the hardship faced by many people each night, and a poignant statistic is that an estimated 400 ACT youth face this reality right now. What gives me great heart is the generosity of those contributing to this worthwhile program, on behalf of the ANU Physics Team thank you all so much. Our little team had almost 160 supporters in total donating $18,254. A truly amazing gift to some of our city’s most disadvantaged. Overall, our donations placed us 12th in ACT, and the ACT region raised over 10% of the national pool of donations ($8.3M). 

And on that brilliant note, have a great week.

Tim

PS. The Oliphant tea room saw a constellation of some familiar stars last week. Wonderful to see such lovely colleagues together again. (A Freddo Frog to the first person who can identify Nikki Azzopardi in this picture.)

CoS & CHM 3MT Final - June 27

The College of Science and College of Health and Medicine are hosting a College 3MT Final on Tuesday 27 June @ 10.30am – also in the Physics Auditorium.

Any eligible RSPhys student is welcome to participate in the College 3MT Final, regardless of participation in the School 3MT.

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ARC Industry Fellowships Information Session

The College Research Office will be providing an overview on ARC Industry Fellowships at the next online ANU Industry Engagement for Researchers Community of Practice on Monday, 26 June, 1.30pm - 2.30pm.

Colleagues from ANU Enterprise will also present at this meeting. To join the Community of Practice Teams Chanel, and access the meeting information, please see here.

Once you have been accepted into the Teams Channel, click the ‘Meetings and link’ page to add the meeting series to your calendar.

If you have any queries, please contact Kylie Barnes or the College Research Office 

As a young girl in Bangladesh, Victoria Uttaree Bashu was obsessed with Einstein.

Like her inspiration, she is already pushing back the frontiers of physics, three months into her PhD in the Nuclear Physics and Accelerator Applications Department.

Very tiny things are exactly what Ms Bashu is looking for. She’s part of the global team building the CYGNUS (CosmoloGY with NUclear recoilS) detectors, which will search for dark matter – thought to be very small particles surrounding us, that interact with normal matter on only the rarest occasion.

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Major Review - 2023 Monash Centre For Electron Microscopy (MCEM)

The University will be conducting a review of the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) Platform to ensure the future strategic direction, operational and governance profiles are optimised and aligned with the University's strategic direction IMPACT 2030.

Your input in this review will be treated with utmost confidentiality, ensuring anonymity, and documented by the Major Review Committee. Submit your written submission. Please provide your submissions by COB 30th June 2023.

These submissions will be provided to the review committee chaired by Professor William Charman and the review will be conducted on 18th & 19th July 2023.

The team from Nonlinear Physics Center (Department of Fundamental and Theoretical Physics), with collaborators from Russia,  introduced the concept of nonlinear torque for the angular momentum transfer to non-absorbing particles via nonlinear light scattering due to the excitation of resonant states at the harmonic frequency. The project is being driven by a PhD student Mr. Ivan Toftul, and the paper has been published in Physical Review Letters.

With School holidays upon us, you may have extra reasons to use the Physics Parent room – Room C4.36 in the Cockroft building. It is a pleasant space with 3 separate and private breastfeeding partitioned areas as well as a play space for toddlers and young children, and a kitchenette. For access you can obtain a key from the Oliphant reception.

Paid Internship Opportunity For Domestic HDR Candidates

Are you interested in helping Australians to skill for the jobs of today, tomorrow and beyond?

The Skills and Training Group (STG) within the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) is looking for Canberra-based university students to join their paid Internship Program. Applications can be submitted now until 11:30pm, Wednesday 28 June 2023.

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Westpac Research Fellowship 2024 - Calling For EOIs

The Westpac Scholars Trust is partnering with Australia’s leading research universities to offer up to two Westpac Research Fellowships. These Fellowships offer early career researchers a unique opportunity to support their ground-breaking research, provide access to networks, open career pathways and provide global experiences. 

Please notify College Research Office by Wednesday 12 July, with written confirmation of support of your School Director, if you wish to apply for this funding opportunity.

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DIN Roadshow - ACT Region Showcase

The roadshow brings together Defence relevant industries, government, and education, to engage around upcoming opportunities for collaboration in the Region and beyond.

Date: Monday, 17 July 2023 
Time: 9.30-15.00
Location: Physics Auditorium, 160 Mills Road

In-person event, please register here (registration closes 10 July 2023)

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College Hot Desking In Physics

HR Team
Mondays & Tuesdays
^{Office 4.31 (Link bldg)}

Finance & RM Teams
Thursday Mornings
^{Bldg 160}

2023 Wall Planners

EVENTS

Departmental seminars

Dr Maryna Bilokur - 28 June
My scientific journey. From a small city in Ukraine to an academic setting in the US, Germany and Australia
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Mr Wein Lau - 4 July
Modelling of nuclear fission with an exact time-dependent generator coordinate method
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Dr Paul Fraser - 18 July
Predicting stellar nuclear reaction rates with a multi-channel scattering formalism
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W*iPAE Morning Tea - 26 June

'All You Ever Wanted To Know About Job Applications'

Please register here

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CoS Staff Forum - 4 July

This Forum is being hosted by the Dean to provide an update on the College of Science priorities and plans for the coming year.

» read more