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Director's Message
Dear Colleagues,
Founder's Day 2025 brought together the School community for a lovely celebration, with the Interim Vice-Chancellor joining us for the first hour. She was particularly impressed by the strong sense of community at the event, noting how we celebrate excellence not just within Physics but across the wider University. I was very proud to showcase the achievements of our Research School, a good news story that practically tells itself given our collective successes. My sincere thanks to everyone who ensured the day ran seamlessly: Nikki for having everything and everyone organised two days in advance, Petra for her smooth coordination on the day, Luda for managing the awards, Kriszti for the beautiful art display and her assistance across multiple areas, Chris for arriving early to prepare the courtyard and coordinating the table arrangements and marquees, to Joshua Machacek for doing the beer-club, to the IT team for ensuring the very smooth flow of presentations, to Martin for taking the photos, to EME for providing volunteer helpers, and James for collating and assisting with the awards and as always just making sure things worked. I'm also grateful to the members of the awards committees and so many other helpful people who I cannot mention individually. A big thank you to our speakers who made their research accessible to the whole audience, and to those who contributed to the memes, art, and technical display. A list of the award winners announced on Friday and some photos of the day can be found below.
This week we highlight Tongmiao Fan's Director's Award-winning PhD publication. The work, published in Nano Letters in July, demonstrates that a nanostructured metasurface made from atomically thin materials can significantly enhance the generation of photon pairs. The increased photon rate opens new opportunities for applications of such compact and scalable sources in quantum technologies.
Tuesday marks the official launch of the ARC Training Centre for Radiation Innovation (RadInnovate). Good luck - I am sure it will go smoothly and great to see that the IVC is attending the launch.
I am travelling to Oak Ridge National Lab on Friday for a neutron scattering experiment. Thank you to Vince Craig who has agreed to be acting Director in my absence. I am back 11th November.
Awards 2025 List:
The John Carver Seminar Series Awards (For excellence in student presentation)
The Director's Award
· Aritra Das (QST)
The People's Choice Award
· Xiaoying Huang (EME)
The Dean's Award
· Namisha Chabbra (CGA)
The John Carver Award
· Aswathi Pampurayath Subhash (CGA)
The John Carver Physics Prize (For highest achieving Physics Honours students, class of 2024)
· Patrick Gleeson
· Phoebe Grosser
· Annalise Lennon
· Isabelle Savill-Brown
The Dunbar Honours Scholarship 2025
· James Monro
· Max Fleming
· Matthew McInerney
· Michael Pellegrino
· Vaishnavi Muddam
· Harry Meinecke
· Michael Eksteen
The Robert and Helen Crompton Award
· Laura Valencia Molina (EME)
· Taleb Alwadi (MP)
The Boswell Technologies HDR Award for Space Exploration, Moon and Mars
· Saki Komachi (Research School of Engineering)
· Thimthana Lee (NPAA)
Jagadishwar Mahanty Prize (Most outstanding PhD thesis)
· Dr Shiyu Wei (EME) - for thesis "Indium Phosphide Nanowire Arrays for Gas Sensing Applications"
Andrew Papworth Memorial Poster Prize (Best poster for second year Physics Laboratory)
· Semester 1, 2025: Shaun Bryder
· Semester 1, 2024: Caity Dwyer
· Semester 2, 2024: Elijah Cantwell
Tom Rhymes Technical Development Award
· Physics Mechanical Workshop Team (for MasterCAM 5axis specialist programming)
Materials Physics – Stjepan Marcelja Visiting Fellowship
· Dr Jeremy Shaw (University of Western Australia)
· Prof Alexander Savin (Russian Academy of Sciences)
Trevor Ophel Innovation Award
· Misty Lakelin (NPAA, Heavy Ion Accelerators)
· Tom Ratcliff (EME, Ion Implantation Laboratory)
David Weisser Accelerator Staff Development Award
· Tom Kitchen
John and Silva Newton Award
· Aditya Babu
Director's Award - Individual
· Dr Rick Walsh (WHS)
Director's Award - RSPhys Service Team
· Joint Physics Workshops Team: Steve Marshall, Matthew Holding, Graham Rhall, Richard Kolterman, Adam Zupanic, Lachlan Gair, Neil Devlin, Tom Cave, Brooke Roy, and Michael Blacksell
Director's Award - RSPhys Research Teams
· HIAF Radiation Protection System Team: Dr Christian Notthoff, A/Prof Steve Tims, Dr Peter Linardakis, and Neha Kodwani
· Smartlight Team: Dr Logan Davis, Dr Olaf Delgado-Friedrichs, Dr Anne Haggren, Dr Keshu Huang, Dr Shane Latham, Dr Brendan McCormack, Mr Robert Middleton, Dr Glenn Myers, and Prof Adrian Sheppard
Director's Award - PhD Student Publication Award 2025
· Tongmiao Fan - for "Enhanced Photon-Pair Generation from a van der Waals Metasurface" (Nano Letters 2025)
Director's Award - EMCR Publication Award 2025
· Wei Wen Wong - for "Near-unity spontaneous emission factor InP surface-emitting lasers based on quasi-bound states in the continuum" (Science Advances 2025)
Director's Award - External Team
· The International Relations & Partnerships team-STEMM: Arthur Xu, Leo Alfonzo, Sarah Yue, and Jay Poria
Jodie |
