Director's Message

Dear Colleagues,

First off congratulations to Yuri Kivshar, Kirill Koshelev and Dragomir Neshev who have all been recognised in the Highly Cited Researcher awards for 2025. This places our colleagues among the world's most influential researchers, identified through their publication of multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in their field. It's wonderful to see such recognition for the School's strength in research.

This week's publication comes from the team of Sophie Zhao from DQST, with "Enhanced continuous-variable quantum key distribution protocol via adaptive signal processing" recently published in Communications Physics. The work demonstrates a novel quantum key distribution protocol that achieves performance improvements through software implementations. This collaboration between the School, QuintessenceLabs, and CSIRO nicely showcases how academia and industry can work together to advance quantum technologies. The paper is available here and Phil’s great story on the work can be found here.

We have a School Executive meeting this coming Wednesday and anyone with issues or questions to raise should contact their Head of Department (or the School Manager) ahead of the meeting. We also have the Physics examiners meeting this week, which effectively marks the end of the teaching year for many of our colleagues. With the added challenge of transitioning to Canvas and changes to the admin support team I think we all deserve a big pat on the back for once again providing such an excellent educational experience for our students despite the challenges. Congratulations and thank you to everyone who has worked so hard this semester.

My neutron scattering experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory went very well last week - the pressure cells behaved beautifully and thankfully we managed not to break the two very large diamonds that were essential for this work. A big thanks to Vince Craig for doing a great job as Acting Director during my absence.

Finally, one for the diary - we'll be holding a thank you morning tea for Tim on Tuesday 9th December at 10am in the foyer of Building 160. This will be a nice opportunity to thank Tim for his hard work and leadership. And there will be sausage rolls of course!

Jodie

End Of Year Finance Cut Off Dates

• Friday 21 November - Last day to submit invoices for payment where the Supplier is new, or requires amendment, if payment is due in 2025
• Thursday 11 December - Last day to submit invoices for existing Suppliers, if the payment is due in 2025
• Thursday 11 December - Last day to submit Self Service Reimbursement requests for payment in 2025
• Monday 15 December - Last day for Financial Delegates to approve invoices and reimbursements in ES Financials for payment in 2025
• (10pm) Tuesday 30 December - Last day to approve an expense claim in Concur to ensure expenditure is recorded in 2025

Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship

The Jane Street Graduate Research Fellowship (GRF) supports exceptional doctoral students currently pursuing a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science, mathematics, physics, or statistics.

At Jane Street, we take a rigorous, quantitative approach to trading on global markets, combining techniques from machine learning, distributed systems, programmable hardware, statistics, and applied mathematics. Our culture is steeped in games, puzzles, and challenging problems. With the Graduate Research Fellowship, we’re excited to support PhD students who share our values: technical excellence, intellectual curiosity, and humility.

For any questions, please contact graduate-research-fellowship@janestreet.com

Applications are due 21 November 2025

CGA Summer Program

The ANU Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics hosts a Summer Research Program at its HQ at The Australian National University. The program runs over 9 weeks from 1st December 2025 until 30th January 2026 and best suits third-year, Honours and Masters students in Physics, Astrophysics and Engineering, currently enrolled at all universities across the country.

The students will be supervised by our world-class academics, work closely with the Gravitational Wave Laboratory – where some of the most amazing recent research breakthroughs have been initiated – and interact with our bright HDR students.

There is a generous allowance of up to $500/week on offer, in addition, students currently enrolled at interstate universities can apply for travel and accommodation assistance.

To apply

1. Fill out the registration form via this link,
   send your CV and your most recent academic transcript to cga@anu.edu.au.  
2. Applications close on 17 November at 11:55pm. Successful applicants will be informed in late November.

For further information, please contact cga@anu.edu.au.

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