High-profile Visitors to the Heavy Ion Accelerators at the ANU

Published in the Research School of Physics Event Horizon
Vol47 Issue22 6–10 June 2022

The NCRIS program-- – part of the Federal Government’s Department of Education Skills and Employment (DESE)--) – provides funding for more than 22 large research facilities spread across Australia. Some examples within our School are the two nodes of Heavy Ion Accelerators, and the ANU node of the ANFF. NCRIS provides ~$1.8M annually to support vital operations of the HIA accelerators and associated professional staff.

Some of the recent high-level visits have included the Secretary of Defence, Head of the Nuclear Submarine Taskforce Vice Admiral Jonathan Mead, senior executives of DESE, DSTG, Defence Space Command, Melissa Price MP, Alicia Payne MP, Senator Zed Seselja, Policy teams of the Australian Academy of Science and Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), Kate Lundy (Chair of HIA board), and HIA board members Sally-Ann Williams and John O’Connor. 

Most recently, a delegation from the Australian Space Agency werewas taken on a tour of the two HIA nodes where they were keen to hear about the new beamline under construction in the linac hall of HIAF with $1.1M of funding from the Space Infrastructure Fund that will be used for radiation testing of spacecraft components as well as longer term plans for radiobiology investigations. The thought to write a story for Event Horizon was prompted by the great photo taken on this visit, showing the delegation from the Australian Space Agency, along with Prof Nanda Dasgupta, standing above the linac loop in the HIAF laboratory.