Canberra Science Calendar

2013

The 2013 Canberra Science Calendar celebrates the national capital’s centenary year.

May

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Experimental glasshouses

This month's image shows glasshouses under construction at Black Mountain in 1929 with Canberra City buildings in the distance.

The site had been granted to the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research which was formed in 1926 and would become the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation in 1949. Until it was developed for the Australian National University from the late 1940s, the land between Black Mountain and Civic was used for experiments by the CSIR.

The glasshouses were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the expanding CSIRO Division of Entomology. The Australian National Insect Collection building now stands in their place.

You can find out more about CSIRO's history online.

Photo credit: CSIRO

April

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A New Academy

The Australian Academy of Science was founded on 16 February 1954 by Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. Physicist Sir Mark Oliphant was founding President.

This photo of Foundation Fellows was taken at their first meeting, on 7 May 1954, at the ANU's University House which had been officially opened in February of that year.

Back row: Herbert Green, John Jaeger, Thomas Room, David Catcheside, Otto Frankel, Charles Priestley, Richard Woolley, Joseph Pawsey, Frederick Courtice, Rutherford Robertson, Edmund Cornish.

Middle row: Edwin Hills, John Anderson, Max Lemberg, Ian Mackerras, Patrick Murray, Alfred Gottschalk, Victor Trikojus, James Prescott, Sydney Sunderland, Leonard Huxley, Arthur Birch.

Front row: Noel Bayliss, John Eccles, Thomas Cherry, David Martyn, Hedley Marston, Mark Oliphant, Alexander Nicholson, Albert Rivett, Ian Clunies Ross, Leslie Martin.

Biographical information on Academy fellows is online.

Photo credit: Australian Academy of Science

March

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Getting physical

Prime Minister Ben Chifley laid the foundation stone of the ANU's Research School of Physical Sciences on October 24 1949.

The school's inaugural Director, Sir Mark Oliphant, returned from the UK to take up his new role in August 1950. When the school's laboratories were officially opened in 1952 they were the university's first permanent buildings.

Now the Research School of Physics and Engineering, it is Australia's largest university-based physics research and teaching institution.

You can learn more of the school's history online.

Photo credit: ANU Archives

February

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Starting the ANU

A Bill to establish the Australian National University in Canberra was passed by Federal Parliament in August 1946.

Mark Oliphant, Keith Hancock, Howard Florey and anthropologist Raymond Firth were appointed as an Academic Advisory Committee for the new institution. This picture was probably taken in Easter 1948 when the committee met with the ANU's Interim Council in the Institute of Anatomy Building, now the home of Screensound Australia.

Oliphant, who was knighted in 1959, would become inaugural Director of the Research School of Physical Sciences and Engineering, one of four foundation schools of the ANU Institute of Advanced Studies.

Hancock, who was knighted in 1953, served as Director of the Research School of Social Sciences from 1957 to 1961 and Professor of History from 1957 to 1965.

Florey had been knighted in 1944 and shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for Medicine or Physiology with Ernst Chain and Alexander Fleming for the discovery of penicillin. He declined the offer to become inaugural Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research but served as an advisor to the school and as a Chancellor of the ANU from 1965 to 1968.

You can find out more about the ANU's history online.

Photo credit: ANU Archives (ANUA 226.895)

January

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The Shine Dome

Designed by architect Roy Grounds and completed in 1959 at the cost of £200,000, the Academy of Science’s Shine Dome was one of the most innovative buildings of its time.

Formerly known as Becker House, and informally known as the Martian Embassy, the 710-tonne self-supporting concrete dome is sheathed in copper.

It was officially opened by the then Governor General, Sir William Slim, who said in part:

“There is no country anywhere to which science is more important than to Australia.

“No longer does the Australian march out with his axe on his shoulder to hack out a homestead from the wilderness, yet we are still a pioneering people, still marching out to wrest a better life from our land. But the time has passed for the old pioneering methods of trial and error.

“We can’t succeed unless we adopt the methods of the new pioneering, the blending of practical experience with the discoveries of science.”

You can find out more about the Shine Dome online.

Photo credit: Laurie Dell

2012

The theme for the 2012 Canberra Science Calendar is “awesome images”.

December

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Uluru

Our final awesome image for 2012 is the massive ancient pebble in the middle of the Australian continent.

Rising about 350m above ground and extending 2.5kms below, Uluru is about 3.6km long and 1.9km wide, with a circumference of 9.4km.

It is a monolith (single massive stone or rock) and an inselberg (isolated formation in a level surrounding).

The geological history goes back at least 550 million years.

It’s hard to find a comprehensive treatment of Indigenous myths about Uluru’s origins, this is the best we could find.

And in the spirit of Christmas, here’s a creationist myth in the form of a journal article.

November

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Crown of thorns starfish

A cluster of Crown of Thorns Starfish feeding on the Great Barrier Reef is an awesome image for November.

This native crawler was responsible for 42% of damage to the reef over the last 27 years, second to storm damage (48%) with bleaching taking 10%. That’s the finding of a study by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the University of Wollongong published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It estimates that the reef’s coral cover would increase by 0.89% annually if the starfish disappeared.

AIMS says starfish outbreaks migrate southward on ocean currents. Coral cover returns over 10-20 years unless impeded by bleaching, cyclones or poor water quality.

You can find out more about the starfish and read the PNAS article.

October

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Mars Curiosity Rover

Our “awesome image” for October shows the underbelly of NASA’s Curiousity Rover and its six wheels on the surface of Mars.

Curiousity carries the most advanced scientific payload ever used on Mars, more than 5 times heavier than earlier Mars rovers. Its two-year assignment is to investigate whether conditions have ever been favourable for microbial life on Mars and to search for any evidence of its existence throughout the planet's history.

The Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on November 26 last year. A rocket-powered 'skycrane' delivered the rover to the floor of Gale Crater on August 6, 2012.

The image was compiled from a mosaic of smaller images by Glen Nagle, the Education and Public Outreach Manager at the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex. In the Canberra hinterland at Tidbinbilla, the centre is managed by CSIRO and is one of three tracking stations which communicate with Curiousity and other NASA and international space missions.

You can find out more about the Curiousity Mission and the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex online.

September

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Coral cleaner

The snakestar (Astrothorax waitei) is not a starfish you might find if you go snorkeling off your favourite beach. These specimens were collected at a depth of about 800 metres by a CSIRO marine exploration voyage in the vicinity of Lord Howe Island.

They are late developers, becoming fertile in their teens and living for decades – the large one in this image is probably at least 30 years old. They have spent all their lives on a black coral colony, sweeping their arms over it and feeding on the detritus that drifts down from above. Their relationship with the black coral is a mutual survival pact – by eating the oceanic rubbish the snakestar sustains itself and saves the coral polyps from being smothered. The polyps pull their heads in when the snakestar is on top of them, just in case.

You can find out more about CSIRO's marine research online.

August

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Feral camels

The Australian Feral Camel Management Project’s latest survey estimates the number of feral camels in Australia at 750,000. A few years ago their best estimate was a million.

“Since then there has been a major drought, the feral camel management program has come into effect and population survey techniques have been improved,” says Jan Ferguson, Managing Director of Ninti One, which manages the AFCMP.

The project has culled 85,000 camels since it began, but three quarters of a million camels able to walk up to 70km a day in search of feed and water are an awesome environmental problem.

“They can converge on a natural waterhole used by native animals and drink it dry within days,” Ferguson says.

“This has a devastating effect on the local flora and fauna and shows exactly why we need to control the population density.”

You can find out more about Australia’s camels online.

Photo credit: SA Department of Environment and Natural Resources, an AFCMP partner.

July

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Smarter starting

July's image breaks from the 2012 Awesome Images theme, but it is – timely.

When track athletes poise to run in the 2012 London Olympic Games their starting blocks will measure their reaction time according to the force of their back foot against the block. This replaces the traditional approach of separately monitoring forward movement.

A speaker at the back of each starting block will deliver the starter's orders and the start signal at precisely the same moment. The system is wired to eliminate potential interference from wireless systems.

Timing provider Omega has also upgraded its timing technology to a resolution of one millionth of a second, a hundred-fold improvement on previous systems.

The Parliamentary Library's 'The Olympics: background and London update' is a recommended guide to the Games.

Also in this Olympic month, Australian students will be competing in the Biology Olympiad in Singapore, the Physics Olympiad in Talin, Estonia, and the Chemistry Olympiad in Washington DC.

June

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Autonomous trucks

During a two-year trial at Rio Tinto's West Angelas mine in the Pilbara a fleet of 290-tonne autonomous trucks moved more than 42 million tonnes of material in approximately 145,000 cycles.

Rio recently ordered 150 of the vehicles which are fitted with radar, laser sensors, high-precision GPS, an obstacle detection system, and artificial intelligence which learns the geography of a mine site.

Wireless communications enable the trucks to send information to and from a supervisory computer in Perth which controls their movements. At the mine face, GPS data from the excavator guides a truck to the correct loading site. The truck requests permission to approach, the excavator operator indicates the exact loading site by raising the machine's bucket, and the truck moves to that point autonomously. The control system divides the dumping area into dumping nodes and tells the truck exactly where to dump each load.

The autonomous truck technology is part of Rio’s Mine of the Future project which will see the first driverless ore train begin operations in the Pilbara in 2014.

May

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New rice shows its colours

This image captured by the x-ray fluorescence microscopy beamline at the Australian Synchrotron shows the distribution of potassium (red), iron (green), potassium and iron (yellow) and copper (blue) in a grain of rice.

The grain was harvested from a transgenic variety of rice developed by researchers at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics and the School of Botany at The University of Melbourne.

Greenhouse trials in Australia have shown that grains of this variety contain up to four times more iron and two times more zinc compared to ordinary rice grains. In collaboration with the International Rice Research Institute, field trials in the Philippines are being undertaken to demonstrate its performance in a field environment.

If these prove successful, the new rice variety could contribute to overcoming iron deficiency in the diets of around two billion people.

You can find out more about the Australian Synchrotron online.

April

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Magpie geese

This is one of many images taken by researchers from the Australian Wetlands & Rivers Centre at the University of NSW during a national aerial survey of more than 4,800 wetlands in late 2008.

Supported by State and Territory governments and funded by the National Water Commission, the survey tallied an estimated 4.8 million waterbirds across more than 100 species and found that just 20 wetlands supported about 40% of the population during dry seasons.

Wetlands with the biggest populations – between 30,000 and 300,000 – included the WA sites of Eighty Mile Beach and Roebuck Bay on the north-west coast, Lake Gregory south of Halls Creek, Lake Argyle near Kununurra, and Lake MacLeod on the mid-west coast, plus the Lower Lakes and the Coorong at the mouth of the Murray River, and Nanjbagu Billabong in Kakadu.

Research leader, Professor Richard Kingsford, estimates that waterbird numbers are likely to have rebounded by at least 10-20% following recent flood years.

You can find out more about the Wetlands and Rivers Centre and the Water Commission online.
http://www.wetrivers.unsw.edu.au/
http://www.nwc.gov.au/

Photo credit: Richard Kingsford

March

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Deep dating

Orange roughy and oreo dory gather in midwinter to spawn at a depth of 800m in the vicinity of St Helens seamount, off Tasmania's northeast coast, in this image taken by a camera mounted on a trawl net.

Both species reach sexual maturity after around 25 years and can live for at least a century, so these individuals are survivors.

CSIRO's Marine Acoustics group has developed a system which integrates stereo digital cameras and multi-frequency acoustics to visually verify fish detected acoustically.

This work has enabled researchers to more accurately estimate orange roughy populations from acoustic data. Commercial fishers are deploying the system to enable researchers to estimate food availability for top order predators.

You can find out more about the Centre's work online.

Photo credit: Rudy Kloser

February

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Wattle pollen

On the tip of an anther of Snowy River Wattle (Acacia boormanii), two polyads each contain 12 pollen grains.

The polyad form is common in Australian acacias. Anthers usually carry four polyads, in this case two have fallen.

Each polyad is about 45 microns (0.045mm) in diameter in this image captured by Dr Roger Heady at the ANU's Centre for Advanced Microscopy.

It was produced using cryogenic scanning electron microscopy in which the sample is chilled to -190°C and scanned in a vacuum chamber. Recorded on 70mm film, the image was scanned digitally and artificially coloured.

You can find out more about the Centre's work online. http://microscopy.anu.edu.au/

January

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Saturn

The January image was taken when the Cassini spacecraft was directly opposite the plane of Saturn's rings which appear as a horizontal black line, their shadow draping across the northern hemisphere. The moon Rhea (1,528 km diameter) hangs below the rings, the black spot on the upper left is the shadow of the moon Mimas (396 km diameter).

Red, green and blue filters combined to create this natural color image in June 2007 when Cassini was approximately 1.7 million km from Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. More information from the mission is online. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

2011

The 2011 Canberra Science Calendar features leading Canberra scientists and their protégés.

December

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Dr John Finnigan

Now the Director of CSIRO's Centre for Complex Systems Science, John Finnigan began his research career with a Bachelor of Science in aeronautical engineering from the University of Manchester. After four years working on wing design for Hawker Siddeley in the UK, he joined CSIRO's Division of Environmental Mechanics in Canberra and later gained a PhD in micrometeorology from the ANU.

While his research career has been based at CSIRO he has spent time working at the University of Colorado, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, and at the University of Edinburgh.

Nicky Grigg gained a Bachelor of Science (Mathematics) and a Bachelor of Engineering (Environmental) from the University of Western Australia. She moved to Canberra and earned a PhD at the ANU for experimental and mathematical modelling research into how burrowing animals affect sediment biogeochemistry in estuaries.

She then joined the CSIRO Complex Systems Science initiative to work on the implications of nonlinear dynamics on mathematical modelling of ecological systems and has continued to work on modelling biogeochemical and ecological responses to human impacts. Her work is becoming more interdisciplinary as she is now engaged in projects seeking integration of biophysical, social and economic factors to address questions of resilience and adaptation in the face of global change.

David Newth earned a Bachelor of Information Technology and a Bachelor of Applied Science (Class 1 Honours) from Charles Sturt University where he also gained a PhD for research into the growth and stability of complex networks such as ecosystems and neural networks.

After working as a lecturer at CSU he joined CSIRO's Centre for Complex Systems Science. His current work is concerned with the stability and complexity of ecosystems and societies, the evolution of cooperation in social groups, and analysis of large social and ecological networks.

You can learn more about the CSIRO Centre for Complex Systems Science online.

Photo credit: Carl Davies

November

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Professor Ian Chubb

Professor November is Ian Chubb, Australia's Chief Scientist, pictured with ANU students at a seminar he gave on Leadership in Science as part of a Leadership and Influence course.

Ian's studies began at Monash University and then the University of Ghent in Belgium before he earned a Master of Science, Master of Arts (Status) and a PhD at Oxford University. He returned to Australia to take up a position as associate professor in the School of Medicine at Flinders University, followed by positions as deputy vice chancellor at Wollongong and Monash universities before returning to Flinders as vice chancellor. He then served as vice chancellor of the ANU where he established the Vice Chancellor's courses, including the Leadership and Influence course.

You can find out more online about the work of the Chief Scientist and the ANU Vice Chancellor's courses.

Photo credit: Stuart Hay

October

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Professor Mahananda Dasgupta

Professor October is Mahananda Dasgupta of the Heavy Ion Accelerator Facility in the Department of Nuclear Physics of the ANU, pictured with Duc H Luong and Dr Maurits Evers.

An international leader in accelerator-based nuclear fusion and fission research, Mahananda's work is focused on increasing our understanding of the quantum interactions of nuclei that will underpin opportunities with the next generation of accelerators. She obtained her PhD from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai after gaining Bachelor and Masters degrees in Science at the University of Rajasthan.

Since joining the ANU she has received many honours, including an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship in 1998, being named as the 2004 Women in Physics Lecturer by the Australian Institute of Physics, and gaining the Pawsey Medal from the Australian Academy of Science in 2006. This year she was elected as a Fellow of the Academy and received the inaugural ARC Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowship.

Dr Maurits Evers did his undergraduate studies in physics at Rheinische-Friedrichs-Wilhelms University in Bonn before spending a year at the ANU funded by the German Academic Exchange Service. After a postgraduate year at Bonn he gained a Diploma in Physics from Germany's Institute for Theoretical Nuclear Physics at Julich before returning to the ANU where last year he completed his PhD studies with a thesis titled "Systematics of near-barrier nuclear reactions using quasi-elastic scattering".

Duc H Luong gained a Bachelor of Science degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology before coming to the ANU where he gained an Honours degree in Physics and is now studying for his PhD by researching the break-up of weakly bound nuclei.

You can find out more about the research by Mahananda and her colleagues online.

Photo credit: Tim Wetherell

September

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Professor Mike Gore

Professor September is Mike Gore, the founder of Questacon. Mike taught Physics at the ANU for 25 years, but that wasn't enough to fulfill his desire to promote science education and raise scientific awareness amongst the wider population.

With the support of the ANU he established Questacon, Australia's first interactive science education centre, in a disused school building in Canberra. In the late 1980s it moved into its new home on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin, the National Science and Technology Centre, which has become a must-visit venue for school students and their parents ever since.

Mike is now an Adjunct Professor in Science Communication at the ANU's Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. Students studying for a Master of Science Communication (Outreach) degree at the centre develop their teaching and communication skills with full-on practical experience by going on the road with the Shell Questacon Science Circus.

A long standing partnership between Questacon, Shell Australia and the ANU, every year the circus visits schools and towns in regional and remote Australia to engage young Australians with science through entertaining and challenging performances, just like Mike has done ever since he started teaching science.

You can find out more online.

Photo credit: Tim Wetherell

August

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Drs Lars Petersson and Gary Overett

Dr Lars Petersson has been with National ICT Australia for eight years as project leader for NICTA's Smart Cars and AutoMap projects, developing advanced driver assistance systems and automatic map creation through video analysis. Previously a researcher at the ANU, he gained a Masters Science degree in Engineering Physics and a PhD in Computer Vision and Robotics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

Now a research engineer at NICTA, as a Year 12 student Dr Gary Overett participated in CSIRO's student research scheme at the ANU's Robotic Systems Lab. He then studied software engineering at the ANU, focusing on robotics and computer vision. After completing an Honours thesis in computer vision he took a year off to live in China before embarking on a PhD supervised by Lars. His thesis explored the application of computer vision object detection algorithms in highly time-constrained applications, research which is being applied to create maps of road signs from more than 450,000 kilometres of geo-tagged video.

You can find out more about their work online.

July

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Dr John Connor and Emily Robertson

Dr July is John Connor of the University of New South Wales at the Australian Defence Force Academy where he is supervising PhD student Emily Robertson.

John gained a degree at the ANU and a Graduate Diploma in Education at the University of Canberra before lecturing in history at the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King's College London, in 2003–4. After gaining his PhD at UNSW in 2004 he was appointed Senior Historian at the Australian War Memorial and since 2007 has been a Senior Lecturer in history at UNSW@ADFA.

Emily's experience as an art curator at the Australian War Memorial, which has an extensive collection of wartime posters, drove her interest in Australian wartime propaganda. Her thesis will trace the development of government and non-government propaganda in Australia in the First World War and investigate the public response. It will build on her 2010 Masters thesis from the ANU which focused on the perversion of Darwinian notions in posters which could portray the German enemy as a sub-human 'ape'.

You can find out more about UNSW’s Graduate Research School and see a collection of WW1 posters online.

Photo credit: David Paterson

June

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Professor John Spriggs and Dr Norah Omot

Professor June is John Spriggs of the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra who supervised Dr Norah Omot's PhD studies.

Norah's thesis analysed the interplay between consumer preferences and suppler responsiveness in the sweet-potato market of the highlands of Papua New Guinea.

A program leader with Papua New Guinea's National Agricultural Research Centre, Norah's studies were sponsored by a John Allwright Fellowship from the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research.

“By identifying market orientation, Norah's thesis can assist sweet-potato smallholders with growing to demand and generating income for their families,” says Dr Caroline Lemerle, ACIAR's research program manager for agricultural systems management.

Norah has been involved in two ACIAR/NARI projects, to improve the marketing of fresh produce in the PNG highlands and to support women's participation in horticulture by developing their business skills.

Norah is now running NARI's 'Enabling environment' program to identify and overcome socio-economic barriers to sustainable agricultural development in PNG.

The John Allwright Scholarship honours the Tasmanian farmer who was president of the National Farmers Federation and a long serving ACIAR board member and adviser.

May

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Drs Robert Godfree and Dr Andrew Young, and PhD students Tara Konarzewski and Tara Hopley

Based at CSIRO's Black Mountain precinct, our Doctor Mays and their protégés are investigating the nation's biodiversity.

As a small lad from Auckland, Dr Andrew Young dreamt of becoming a world class rugby player until he discovered ecology. After completing a Bachelor and Master of Science in Botany at the University of Auckland, Andrew spent four years being bitten by chipmunks as he investigated the ecology and genetics of beech-maple woodlands for his PhD at Carleton University, Ontario.

This led to him scoring a position with CSIRO Plant Industry to research how Australia's native plant biodiversity can be conserved in farming landscapes. In addition to his ecological research Andrew supervises students from a number of Australian universities, including Tara Hopley who is in the final stages of her PhD with the Australian National University.

Tara's research involved many field trips in Victoria's high country sampling willow trees and mapping the seed dispersal within the Ovens River catchment. She did not expect the broad range of experiences and training she encountered while in the field - like a water-bombing helicopter filling up about 10m from where she was working: "A PhD not only provides great training in scientific research but training in life too".

Tara Konarzewski has also had interesting encounters while doing research in the field for her PhD into the genetic diversity of Paterson's Curse across different climates and how it may respond to changes in climate. Collecting samples along the Monaro Highway near Canberra one day, she attracted the attention of seven police cars carrying 13 Kevlar-clad police officers. "A simple misunderstanding made everyday field work feel like being in an action movie!"

Tara's PhD is co-supervised by Dr Brad Murray at the University of Technology Sydney and CSIRO supervisor Dr Bob Godfree. Bob grew up in northwest NSW on a small farm where he developed a great interest in how plant species and communities respond to extreme climatic events – especially droughts.

He gained a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in environmental science and biology at Macquarie University in Sydney before undertaking a PhD in Plant Ecology at Portland State University, Oregon, looking at the effects of topography and disease on forest dynamics.

He returned to Australia to take up a Post Doctoral Fellowship at CSIRO Plant Industry where he conducts a wide range of ecological research, including climate-plant interactions.

April

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Professor Will Stephen and Luciana Porfirio

Professor April is Will Steffen, Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute, with PhD student Luciana Porfirio.

Will gained a Bachelor of Science at the University of Missouri before moving to the University of Florida where he gained a Masters degree followed by a PhD.

From 1998 to mid-2004 he served as Executive Director of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program in Stockholm. After two years as a Visiting Fellow with the then Bureau of Rural Sciences in Canberra he joined the ANU as Director of both the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies and the Institute for Environment.

He served as the ANU’s Pro Vice-Chancellor before taking up his present position, and has since been appointed to the Government's Multi-Party Climate Change Committee and the Climate Commission.

Luciana Porfirio obtained a Licentiate in Landscape Planning and Design at the University of Buenos Aires in 2005 with a thesis characterising the landscape structure in the rural–urban gradient of Montevideo, Uruguay.

She then joined Professor Brendan Mackey as a research assistant at the ANU’s Wild Country Research and Policy Hub before starting a PhD on the study of ecosystem services in the ACT region under Will’s supervision. She is applying remote-sensing based methodology to estimate the impact of human developments on ecosystems and characterize the services the region’s ecosystems provide to humans.

March

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Doctor Jane Sexton and Doctor Adele Bear-Crozier

Our featured scientist for March is Dr Jane Sexton, Leader of Geoscience Australia’s Natural Hazard Impacts Project, with colleague Dr Adele Bear-Crozier.

At the University of Queensland Jane gained an Honours Degree Bachelor of Science in 1993 and a PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1998. After undertaking postdoctoral research at the University of Sydney she worked for the Defence Science Technology Organisation before joining Geoscience Australia in 2005.

Jane’s work is currently focused on modelling the tsunami risk facing selected Australian communities and communicating the outputs to emergency managers and the public.

Adele gained an Honours Degree Bachelor of Science from Monash University in 2004. She then undertook a PhD in physical volcanology jointly between Monash and Universita di Roma Tre in Italy where her research focused on explosive volcanoes.

She joined Geoscience Australia as part of the Graduate Program in 2009 and is now involved in computational modelling of volcanic hazards in Indonesia, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea to provide assessments of the potential impact volcanoes have on regional communities living at risk.

Geoscience Australia’s Natural Hazard Impacts Project is looking at a range of natural hazards – such as earthquake, flood, landslide, volcano and tsunami – and how they may impact the Australian community.

You can find out more about the Natural Hazard Impacts Project online.

February

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Assistant Professor Dennis McNevin and PhD student Sam Venables

Scientist of the Month for February is Assistant Professor Dennis McNevin of the University of Canberra's Faculty of Applied Science, with PhD candidate Samantha Venables.

Dennis gained a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering at the University of NSW before becoming a science teacher and studying a Diploma of Education at the University of Western Sydney. He missed the lab and returned to the University of Sydney to do a PhD.

After undertaking postdoctoral research at UC and the ANU he took up his current position where he is responsible for UC’s Forensic Studies teaching and research programs. A member of the Steering Committee for the National Centre for Forensic Studies, he has developed and delivered forensic biology training courses for Indonesian, Thai and Iraqi forensic scientists.

Sam moved to Canberra from rural NSW in 2005 to pursue a career in forensic science. After completing the Bachelor of Forensic Studies at the UC she completed an honours project under Dennis's supervision in 2008. She is now almost halfway through her PhD project which is focused on improving the application of known human genetic markers in the populations of Indonesia and the Pacific Islands.

Find out more about Forensic Studies at UC online.

January

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Professor Andrew Blakers, Soe Zin, and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Marta Vivar

Professor January is Andrew Blakers (right), with PhD candidate Soe Zin and Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Marta Vivar.

Andrew gained his PhD at the University of NSW and spent two years at the Max Planck Institute in Germany before joining the ANU where he is Director of the Centre Sustainable Energy Systems and the ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems. One of Australia's leading renewable energy researchers, Andrew led the development of sliver photovoltaic cells to reduce the volume of silicon required to generate electricity from the sun’s energy.

Soe gained a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Portsmouth in the UK and a Masters at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, before joining Andrew’s team in 2007 as a PhD student. His career goal is to pioneer new technologies and process innovations so that solar electricity is cheaper than electricity generated by coal-fired systems.

At Madrid’s Universidad Politécnica, Marta gained a degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a Diploma of Education before completing a PhD in which she researched methods to optimize the performance of photovoltaic concentrators. As a postdoc fellow in Andrew's team since 2009 she is developing new systems and concepts for concentration technologies.

You can find out more about the ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems and the ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems online.

2010

The 2010 Canberra Science Calendar featured scientists with the living things they work with.

December

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Doctor Judy West

Doctor December is Judy West, Executive Director of the Australian National Botanic Gardens.

Judy has pioneered the application of information technologies to showcase biological collections and provide the results of taxonomic research to the general public. She believes showcasing taxonomic and conservation research and highlighting the diversity and adaptability of Australian flora are important roles for the Australian National Botanic Gardens, where about 30% of Australia's known plant species grow. Over 400,000 visitors and hundreds of school groups visit the Gardens annually.

You can find out more about the Australian National Botanic Gardens online.

November

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Chris Adriaansen

As Director of the Australian Plague Locust Commission, Chris Adriaansen's work focuses on three native Australian insects - the Australian plague locust, the spur-throated locust, and the migratory locust. Funded by the Australian, New South Wales, Victorian, South Australian and Queensland governments, the APLC monitors locust populations year-round and coordinates control measures to manage outbreaks that can cause significant damage to crops and pastures in spring, summer and early autumn.

You can find out more about the APLC (and locusts) online.

October

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Doctor Jim Prescott

Doctor October is Jim Prescott, of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, who manages the MOU Box, an area off Western Australia's Kimberley coast shared by Australia and Indonesia. Jim works with Indonesian scientists and traditional canoe fisherman to assess stocks and harvest rates of trepang – sea cucumbers – and other target species so that the fishery is sustainable.

You can find out more about AFMA’s work online.

September

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Professor Richard Norris

Professor September is Richard Norris, Director of the Institute for Applied Ecology and leader of the eWater Education and Training Program at the University of Canberra.

For more than 30 years Richard's research has focused on invertebrate animals which spend all or part of their lives in freshwater. Their abundance and biodiversity are primary measures of the ecological health of rivers and wetlands, enabling Richard and his colleagues to assess the health of freshwater environments and provide evidence-based strategies to improve their management.

You can find out more about the Institute for Applied Ecology online.

August

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Professor Graham Durant

Professor August is Graham Durant, Director of Questacon, Australia's National Science & Technology Centre.

Graham believes that inspiration is too important to leave to chance. In 2009-10 more than 446,000 people enjoyed Questacon in Canberra while more than 180,000 attended science education events hosted across Australia by the Shell Questacon Science Circus, Questacon Smart Moves, Tenix Questacon Maths Squad and other outreach initiatives. More than 564,000 people also visited Questacon exhibitions in capital cities and regional centres around the country and more than 133,000 people attended a Questacon exhibition in Indonesia.

You can find out more about Questacon online.

July

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Professor Arno Müllbacher

Professor July is Arno Müllbacher who leads the Viral Immunology Group at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the ANU.

Arno has been working with the influenza virus for a long time. More than 25 years ago his research showed that exposing the virus to gamma radiation destroys its genetic material but leaves all viral structures and internal proteins intact. He hypothesized that this could provide the basis of a flu vaccine which would be effective against any strain of the virus. He is now a director of Gamma Vaccines, a start-up company which is developing the technology.

You can find out more about Gamma Vaccines online.

June

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Doctor Jean Finnegan

Doctor June is Jean Finnegan who leads a group at CSIRO Plant Industry who are researching the process of flowering in plants.

The current focus of her work is the genetic mechanism which regulates flowering in response to low temperatures. Plants that evolved in regions where the winters are severe respond to the prolonged cold of winter by flowering soon after the weather gets warmer. In plants like canola, some varieties carry a gene called FLC which is turned off by the cold so that flowering is delayed until spring when conditions are favourable for seed development. Other varieties of canola do not have a functional FLC gene so do not need to experience a winter before they flower.

You can learn more about Jean’s work online.

May

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Professor Arthur Georges and Carla Eisemberg

Professor May is Arthur Georges, Professor of Applied Ecology and Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science at the University of Canberra, joined by PhD student Carla Eisemberg and a Murray River Turtle. Arthur’s research is focused on the conservation biology of native Australasian species, sex determination in dragons, and the ecology of Australian reptiles and amphibians. Carla is researching the ecology of the Pig-nosed Turtle of the Kikori River in southern Papua New Guinea where she is working with local people to develop conservation strategies for the turtle and its habitat.

You can learn more about their work online and use the Turtlebase tool which provides information on the distribution of Australasian freshwater turtles.

April

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Professor David Lindenmayer

Professor April is David Lindenmayer, one of Australia's leading researchers in wildlife management and nature conservation. Based at the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the ANU, his work focuses on the myriad of living things in native forests and other Australian ecosystems. He runs several large-scale, long-term monitoring programs in forests, woodlands, plantations and agricultural areas of southeast Australia.

You can find out more about David’s work and the Fenner School online.

March

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Professor Iain Gordon

Professor March is Iain Gordon, leader of CSIRO’s new Biodiversity Theme: Building Resilient Australian Biodiversity Assets.

Coordinating research across several CSIRO Divisions, this project is deepening our understanding of how species like the Goliath Stick Insect (Eurycnema goliath) interact with others to maintain healthy ecosystems. It is also working to support biodiversity through fostering and maintaining a balance between human development and conservation.

You can learn more about the CSIRO’s Biodiversity Theme online.

February

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Professor Tony Peacock

Professor February is Tony Peacock, Chief Executive Officer of the Invasive Animals Cooperative Research Centre.

Headquartered at the University of Canberra, with research teams in several research institutions around the country, Tony and his team are creating technologies and strategies to reduce the impact of feral animals like foxes, fish, rabbits, pigs, and dogs on Australia’s economy, environment, and people.

You can learn more about the Invasive Animals CRC online.

January

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Professor Jenny Graves

Professor January is Jenny Graves, leader of the Comparative Genomics group at the ANU’s Research School of Biological Sciences and deputy director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics.

Jenny’s work focuses on mapping the genomes of Australian marsupials and comparing them with genomes of humans and other animals to track the processes of evolution which shaped the species which now populate our world. By the end of the year, the red-necked wallaby joey she met at Canberra’s RSPCA will be hopping around the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve.

You can learn more about Jenny and her work online.

2009

The 2009 Canberra Science Calendar was hosted by Professor Ted Collie, Director of the ANU Institute for Canine Ingratiation and Lassitude, who was joined by eminent Australian scientists to celebrate 2009.

December

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Professor Penny D Sackett

Professor December is Penny D Sackett, Chief Scientist for Australia, who met Ted at the Ministerial Entrance to Parliament House where she will lead this month’s meeting of the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council.

You can learn more about Professor Sackett and her role online.

November

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The 2009 winners of the PM’s Prizes for Science

Ted hosted a seminar at one of his favourite Canberra watering holes with the winners of the 2009 PM’s Prizes for Science – John O’Sullivan, Amanda Barnard, Len Altman, Allan Whittome, and Michael Cowley.

You can learn more about the PM’s Prizes for Science online.

October

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Professor Warwick Anderson

Professor October is Warwick Anderson, Chief Executive Officer of the National Health and Medical Research Council. When Ted met Warwick he took the opportunity to demonstrate the positive health outcomes that could be gained if humans were encouraged to have a daily walk and chase sticks.

You can learn more about the NHMRC online.

September

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Professor Ian Frazer

Professor September is Ian Frazer, co-inventor of a vaccine against strains of the Human Papillomavirus responsible for cervical cancer and Director of the Diamantina Institute at the University of Queensland.

Ted and Ian met at the Therapeutic Goods Administration which was responsible for approving the vaccine for release in Australia.

You can learn more about Ian and the Diamantina Institute online.

August

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Professor Marcela Bilek

Professor August is Marcela Bilek, a Federation Fellow who is Professor of Applied Physics at Sydney University.

Ted joined Marcela at the Heliac prototype fusion reactor, the centrepiece of the National Plasma Fusion Research Facility at the ANU's Research School of Physics and Engineering and the only device in the southern hemisphere exploring ways to produce clean energy through nuclear fusion.

You can learn more about Marcela and her work online.

July

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Professor Robin Batterham and Dr Margaret Hartley

Professor July is Robin Batterham, President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and Doctor July is Margaret Hartley, the Academy’s Chief Executive.

They met Ted at the Einstein sculpture outside Questacon, one of Ted’s favourite Canberra science venues.

You can learn more about the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering online.

June

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Professor Brian Schmidt

Professor June is Brian Schmidt who met Ted at the Mt Stromlo Observatory which is still recovering after being devastated by bushfire in 2003.

Ted was glad he had four feet firmly on the ground after Brian explained his discovery that the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

You can learn more about Brian and the universe online.

May

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Professor Kurt Lambeck and Dr Sue Meek

Professor May is Kurt Lambeck, President of the Australian Academy of Science, and Dr May is Sue Meek, Chief Executive of the Academy. They met Ted at the Academy’s headquarters where the annual Science at the Shine Dome event is held in the first week of May.

Learn more about Science at the Shine Dome online.

April

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Professor Judith Whitworth

Professor April is Judith Whitworth, a former Director of the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the ANU and Commonwealth Chief Medical Officer who chairs WHO's Global Advisory Committee on Health Research.

Judith and Ted met at ‘The John’ where Judith is now Howard Florey Professor of Medical Research.

You can learn more about the John Curtin School online.

March

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Sir Gustav Nossal

Professor March is Sir Gustav Nossal whose outstanding career as a researcher, administrator and advocate for science has earned him many awards and the respect of his colleagues and the Australian public.

Gus and Ted met at the National Press Club for the launch of a report by the Australian Society for Medical Research which detailed the exceptional gains in life expectancy and wellbeing delivered by Australian health research.

One of Gus’s recent projects is the Nossal Institute for Global Health at the University of Melbourne. http://www.ni.unimelb.edu.au/

February

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Professor Margaret Sheil

Professor February is Margaret Sheil, CEO of the Australian Research Council. In 2007-08 the ARC provided more than $500 million to Australian researchers under the National Competitive Grants Program.

Margaret and Ted met for coffee at the ARC’s offices in Brindabella Park, the office precinct at Canberra Airport noted for its energy-efficient buildings.

You can learn more about the ARC online: www.arc.gov.au.

Disclaimer: Professor Sheil’s involvement in the 2009 Canberra Science Calendar does not imply any endorsement of Science Media or its service.

January

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Professor Frank Fenner

Professor January is Frank Fenner, Australia’s most respected and decorated scientist. Frank and Ted occasionally lunch at the Lookout Café on Red Hill where January’s picture was taken.

Learn more about Professor Fenner’s achievements and contribution to Australian science.

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