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Director's Message
Dear Colleagues,
My congratulations to Marika Niihori (EME) on being selected for a Gates Scholarship at Cambridge. She will be among 77 from 30 countries to start their PhDs in a broad range of fields, Marika is pursuing Nanophotonics. Well done Marika, and I think we are all looking forward to congratulating you in person before you leave in September.
The response from the MakerSpace news in the Event Horizon last week was wonderful and I would like to thank all those who subsequently volunteered their time to help make face shields. Please keep an eye on the Physics Exchange, there are a range of interesting tasks requiring all sorts of skills, and not all voluntary. There is other news about our workshops technical staff supporting the COVID-19 response which I'll keep for next week.
The HDR Team has put together an important questionnaire for all HDR students. This will be sent out today and hopes to collect details of the impact the recent crises has had on your studies. Please complete thoughtfully as it will support any future requests for extension you may seek.
I would like to express my gratitude to the Heads over these past few weeks. The support of their Departments and collegiality has been truly fantastic. To help them, and our Executive, understand what we can learn from this period of remote working we have designed a very short survey. It will only take 5 minutes to fill in and will help us plan for the future. The link will appear in the next Event Horizon.
This week’s pic shows a commissioned art work from Trevor Dickinson, who you may know has popularised the iconic Canberra bus shelter. Last week he finished illustrating two Physics icons as part of a public program to help promote our School. If you are interested in Oliphant Homopolar Generator “merch” have a look at Trevor’s website and let Sue know as we will be placing orders soon. The only remains of the HPG now stand sculpturally re-interpreted as an enduring testament to our technical prowess. Built in the 1950’s it was the largest of its kind in the world and one component of a grand plan Sir Mark Oliphant had for our School. It could produce a current of 2 MA for a few seconds and if you want to know more about this and the first 50 years of our School I can highly recommend “Fire in the Belly” by Trevor Ophel and John Jenkin. I will give a hardcopy of this book to the first three people who can tell me which is the other Physics icon Trevor illustrated for us.
The second pic for the week comes from Michaela Froehlich (NP) - the decorative results of a family activity over the Easter weekend.
Have a great week,
Tim | 