Professor Tanya Monro

University of Adelaide

New optical glasses and optical fibre structures are opening up the potential for a broad range of new devices. Recent examples from IPAS at The University of Adelaide include the development of glasses capable of transmitting mid-infrared light, hybrid glasses containing nanoparticles or glasses capable of enhanced luminscence. Progress on these novel glasses, and on approaches to transforming them into microstructured and nanostructured optical fibres will be described. The capacity to structure optical fibres on the scale of the wavelength of light opens up new opportunities for getting the light “out” of the glass and making it available to interact with materials. This has enabled the creation of new types of sensing devices capable of measuring specific chemicals or biomolecules of interest, and a range of novel sensing architectures will be described in addition to progress in advancing new nonlinear regimes and effects and new classes of lasers.

Tanya Monro is an ARC Federation Fellow and Director of the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS) at the University of Adelaide. The vision of IPAS is to pursue a transdisciplinary research agenda, bringing together physics, chemistry and biology to create knowledge and disruptive new technologies, and solve problems for health, defence, the environment, food and wine. She is also the Director of the Centre of Expertise in Photonics (CoEP).

Tanya is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), a member of the Future Manufacturing Industry Innovation Council (FMIIC), a member of the National Committee for Physics, a member of the SA Premier’s Science & Research Council and an inaugural Bragg Fellow of the Royal Institution of Australia. Tanya is South Australia’s “Australian of the Year” for 2011 and has won awards including Scopus Young Researcher of the Year for Physical Science (2011), South Australian Scientist of the Year (2010); Emerging Leader in the Science category in The Weekend Australian’s Emerging Leader awards (2009) and the Prime Minister’s Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year (2008).

Tanya obtained her PhD in physics in 1998 from The University of Sydney, for which she was awarded the Bragg Gold Medal. She moved to the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton (UK) in 1998 and in 2000 received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. She has published over 400 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and has raised >$70M for research.