…at the ARC Research Showcase

Deputy Vice-Chancellor & Vice-President, Professor Mike Brooks attended the Australian Research Council’s annual research showcase and grant announcement event at Parliament House on Monday 26 October. The Showcase display, designed by Adelaide Research & Innovation, featured agricultural research success stories, including special tasting samples of the baking benefits of FR Durum Wheat by Colin Jenner and developments in almond breeding quality and yield by Michelle Wirthensohn, all projects currently under investigation at the University’s Waite Campus. Professor Mike Brooks, together with Professor Mark Tester also had the opportunity to discuss the new Plant Accelerator development with Senator the Hon Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research.

Below is an image featuring Minister Carr and Mark Tester.

The 2010 Australian Institute of Physics Bragg Gold Medal for Excellence in Physics has been awarded to Dr Clancy James.  This Medal is awarded to a student from an Australian University creating the best PhD thesis.

Clancy’s thesis, “Ultra-High Energy Particle Detection with the Lunar Cherenkov Technique” focused on the LUNASKA project, searching for the astrophysical neutrinos produced when an ultra high energy particle interacts in the Moon’s outer layers.

Congratulations Clancy!

‘Naked Scientists’ Chris Smith recently visited the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine at the Waite campus to interview  Prof. Mark Tester about the great research going on there.

The podcast, ‘Science Down Under’  is ready for download right now.

It may have been Friday 13th and 40 degrees outside but the atmosphere in the Benham lecture theatre was one of quiet anticipation.

8 slightly nervous Honours students presented their final seminars to their peers, staff and supporters. Questions were handled with aplomb and there was mass sigh of relief once if was all over was!

Congratulations to Jess, Belinda, Corey, Chris, Adam, Liz, Sarah and Imogen!

Belinda Gordon, Chris Butcher and Liz Maciunas

Corey Barrett and Assoc. Prof Sue Carthew

The Department of Trade and Economic Development (DTED) have launched their campaign “There’s more to it“.

The campaign is designed to promote career pathways into professional, para-professional and trade roles in the defence, resources and technology industries and is targeted at year 9 & 10s state-wide.

Kate Selway is a graduate of the University of Adelaide and a winner of the 2008 Young Achiever of the Year award. She is currently working as a Research Associate in the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences.

The Ramsay Fellowship was established in 2008 with a significant bequest from the Ramsay family, founders of the Kiwi Polish Company (later Kiwi International), the famous shoe polish manufacturers.

Hamish Ramsay fulfilled his late stepmother’s wish to help advance scientific research by pledging funds for four-year Ramsay Fellowships.

Dr Kate Wegener, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford, will be the first of the Ramsay Fellows and eventually the Fellowship will support four independent research fellows.

The Faculty of Sciences welcomes Dr Wegener back to Adelaide, and wishes her every success as she undertakes her research!

For more details about Dr Wegener’s research focuses, please view her story in Lumen.

For anyone who missed last night’s terrific free public lecture, make like a gravitron escaping from a spinning black hole and get a move on to download the podcast!

Podcast: Cracking the Einstein Code: Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics

Speaker: Prof Fulvio Melia

Stay tuned for announcements of the next Keys to the Universe lecture in the series!

The University of Adelaide’s School of Chemistry & Physics presents a free Public Lecture…

”Cracking the Einstein Code – Relativity and the Birth of Black Hole Physics” presented by Fulvio Melia, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Arizona and Associate Editor of the Astrophysical Journal Letters

Thursday 17 September at 6pm Napier Lecture Theatre 102

Level 1 Napier Building (follow the signs), University of Adelaide, North Terrace

Admission: Free

Prof Fulvio Melia will present the exciting account of how Albert Einstein’s mathematical code for general relativity was cracked. Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity describes the effect of gravitation on the shape of space and the flow of time. But for more than four decades after its publication, the theory remained largely a curiosity for scientists; however accurate it seemed, Einstein’s mathematical code—represented by six interlocking equations—was one of the most difficult to crack in all of science.

That is, until a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge graduate solved the great riddle in 1963. Roy Kerr’s solution emerged coincidentally with the discovery of black holes that same year and provided fertile testing ground—at long last—for general relativity. Today, scientists routinely cite the Kerr solution, but even among specialists, few know the story of how Kerr cracked Einstein’s code.

Fulvio Melia offers an eyewitness account of the events leading up to Kerr’s great discovery. Cracking the Einstein Code vividly describes how luminaries such as Karl Schwarzschild, David Hilbert, and Emmy Noether set the stage for the Kerr solution; how Kerr came to make his breakthrough; and how scientists such as Roger Penrose, Kip Thorne, and Stephen Hawking used the accomplishment to refine and expand modern astronomy and physics. Today more than 300 million supermassive black holes are suspected of anchoring their host galaxies across the cosmos, and the Kerr solution is what astronomers and astrophysicists use to describe much of their behavior.

By unmasking the history behind the search for a real world solution to Einstein’s field equations, Melia offers a firsthand account of an important but untold story. Sometimes dramatic, often exhilarating, but always attuned to the human element, Cracking the Einstein Code is ultimately a showcase of how important science gets done.

For anyone wanting information about studying Animal Science or Veterinary Science, the Roseworthy campus is having its annual Open Day this Sunday 11am – 3pm.

There will be plenty of experts around to answer your questions about these degrees, as well as showcasing the exciting research and teaching facilities! You can take a tour and see the sights, including the construction of the School of Animal and Veterinary Sciences teaching hospital.

For more information about how to get to Roseworthy, as well as a campus map, please visit the campus page.

To commemorate the career of Professor Robert H. Symons, FAA, FRS a special seminar will be hosted by the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine.

Professor Turner B. Sutton from North Carolina State University will discuss his work relating to the importance of disease management strategies and how disease management varies among moist cool temperate, moist warm temperate, dry temperate and subtropical regions. This is of relevance as many temperate fruit crops are now grown in the warmer temperate and subtropical regions of the world. These regions are warmer, and in many cases wetter than traditional production regions. In the warmer temperate and subtropical regions, the disease complex tends to be much more diverse and many diseases are more severe than in temperate regions. Downy mildew and bitter rot of grapes and Glomerella leaf spot of apples will be used to illustrate differences in their epidemiology between regions and how it affects the management strategies used.

Speaker: Turner B. Sutton
Date/Time: Friday 25th September 2009, 10am (to be followed by Morning Tea)
Location: Plant Research Centre Auditorium, Waite Campus

For more information contact Dr Amanda Able or visit the School of Agriculture, Food & Wine website.