Director's Colloquium - 25 February

We’ve done it: the first direct observation of gravitational radiation - waves in spacetime - Professor David McClelland

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Miss Larissa Huston and Miss Qian Gao (PhD students) for winning the poster prizes at ICONN2016. Both received some monetary prizes and a nanotechnology book, presented by Nobel Laureates Brian Schmidt and W.E. Moerner.

Both Larissa and Qian got autographs from the Nobel Laureates - their books could be very valuable in the future........

Congratulations Mr Joshua Butson (Honours) for being awarded the John de Laeter Medal for Best 3rd year physics student at Curtin University 2014, awarded by Australian Institute of Physics (WA Branch).

Outreach

January is an exciting month on campus as we host the National Youth Science Forum and engage the students in a series of experimental activities in the various areas in the school. The activities are shared between Physics North and South and complement each other very well. The Spatial Filtering experiment is a favourite in Physics North and Felicity is shown explaining the results of the experiment she only completed in 2015! The students are selected by Rotary clubs and come from all parts of Australia and prove you can go without sleep for two weeks. Students visit the Gravitational Wave Research area and this year the rumours were rife that a major discovery was imminent. How right those rumours were! (Photo courtesy of NYSF) Andrew Papworth

Departmental seminars

Professor Kimberly Thelander - 23 February
Real-time investigation of III-V nanowire growth using in-situ TEM
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Mr Xiaoming Yuan - 23 February

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Professor Claes Thelander - 23 February
Electron and hole transport in radial GaSb-InAs nanowire junctions and quantum dots
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Professor Chaohong Lee - 26 February
Topological photonic phase transitions and Thouless pumping of light
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Professor Christoph E. Duellmann - 4 March
Along a GSI superheavy element experiment, including excursions to topics that link to ANU
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Staff movements

Electronic Materials Engineering (EME)
Professor Hoe Tan is travelling 25 February - 4 March 2016. A/Prof Lan Fu will be acting Head of Department during this period.

Can a privileged white male like me talk about equality and diversity?

From the RSPE Equity and Diversity Committee

There's been a lot of talk recently about who should get to talk about equality. In particular, the appointment of former army chief David Morrison as Australian of the Year has come in for a lot of criticism. Anointed, essentially, for going against the conventional grain of an historically conservative workplace and speaking up against violence against women in his ranks, Morrison is coming under fire on all fronts – from veterans for not mentioning them; from his former speechwriter for being credited with the words that she wrote; from conservatives for being a feminist patsy; and from feminists from being a white, middle-class male.

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