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Filtering by Category: Academic
Another amazing electronics paper from my PhD student Shanti Krishnan accepted for publication in the Journal of Instrumentation, focussed on a novel (and very cheap!) way to improve SiPM sensors.
Read MoreOver a decade ago I first came to Australia (Perth to be specific!) to work on the incredible CSIRO constructed Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope, and in particular the WALLABY / DINGO survey, that would scan the sky in radio and advance our knowledge in so many areas - how many? Well this exhaustive review article just accepted in ApSS can tell you!
Read MoreA big moment for the global project on cosmic ray detection - CREDO - which is attempting to find super-cosmic ray shows that scatter high energy particles across continent scales. Our first published paper, now accepted in Astroparticle Physics, focusses on the detection of such events by next-generation Gamma-ray detectors like the Cherenkov Telescope Array. Huge congrats to Dariusz and Kévin who led this work. Can’t wait for the next batch of pre-print papers to be accepted too..!
Read MoreTogether with principal supervisor Prof Geoff Brooks, I co-supervise a fantastic PhD student Matt Shaw on techniques to mine the moon (or rather how to process the regolith you mine!) He gave a fantastic talk on the Moon as part of the wonderful What If? series of lectures organised by the City of Boroondara where Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus is based. Great work Matt!
Read MoreA mammoth undertaking with my colleague Dr Francis Froborg to write a review on dark matter detection methods covering 230 other articles, focussed on the annual modulation as the Earth goes around the Sun and apparent strength of the dark matter headwind changes over the seasons. Accepted in the Journal of Physics G: Nuclear and Particle Physics and available to all on arXiv. Also my thanks to the incredible James Josephides of Swinburne Astronomy Productions for his beautiful and informative infographic!
Read MoreI was amazed to find myself nominated as Academic of the Year in the inaugural Space Connect Australian Space Awards but to find myself now a finalist is beyond ridiculous..! Thankfully the Honour of being alongside such incredible finalists is all I need, as there's no way I'm winning against such legends.
Read MoreJust received news from the Swinburne University of Technology promotions panel - I am now a full PROFESSOR!
Particularly pleasing in this (and the reason I want to ask your indulgence in this scandalous self-promotion) is that the promotion committee considered the entire range of my research, teaching and engagement. Swinburne truly is a place that has supported my full range of activities and values the research papers I write just as much as the science discoveries I explain to the community.
Read MoreI don’t want this to sound like an Oscar acceptance speech but this is truly an incredible (and humbling!) honour to serve on the Australian Space Agency’s inaugural Space Industry Leader’s Forum. It’s even more humbling when you see my fellow exceptionally experienced and talented colleagues on this Forum…!
Read MoreIt was a career highlight for me to be the MC for the Nation’s most prestigious awards, the Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science, and that it was the 20th anniversary just made it all the more amazing to be a part of, for me. The end result that a majority of awards went to women (for the first time!) made that experience even more wonderful.
Read MoreI am thrilled (and also a little intimidated!) to join the Questacon Advisory Council and help, in whatever small way I can!, Australia’s leading science communication and engagement centre. Each year, Questacon welcomes over 500,000 visitors to the two facilities in Canberra while more than 660 000 see their exhibitions in other museums and centres around Australia and overseas. Outreach programmes take to the roads each year, visiting an additional 110 000 in towns and communities across the country.
Read MoreThe first paper by PhD student Shanti Krishnan who I co-supervise with Prof Geoff Brooks, and it’s fair to say that she has blown us all away with the level of work (and quite frankly technical brilliance) in this paper in the Journal of Instrumentation.
Shanti has designed a novel solution to detecting muons with a low-cost silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) that offers a robust, miniaturized, and cost-effective, cosmic ray detector. Pretty amazing first publication!
Read MoreVictoria's state government will contribute $5 million to build the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory.
The funding has been announced by Victoria’s state Minister for Regional Development, Jaclyn Symes, and matches the federal government’s funding commitment confirmed in April. The laboratory will be built one kilometre underground, within the Stawell Gold Mine, as a bespoke excavated cavity 30 metres long, 10 metres wide and 10 metres high. It will provide ultra-low background research facilities (free from the particles that form background radiation) needed in the ground-breaking search for dark matter.
Read MorePublished in the highly ranked ApJS and JOSS (as well as being available on arXiv for free) the “Probabilistic Regression Instrument for Simulating Models” package PRISM was a massive undertaking by my PhD student Ellert vd Velden. He built a brand-new open source MPI-capable Python package that can take ANY model from a user and map out the entire parameter space for regions that can explain the data.
Read MoreThis is the last paper from the thesis of my amazing PhD student (now Dr!) Yuxiang Qin, which was published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and explored the modifications to semi-analytic models that best describe the nature and impact of star formation and stellar feedback (i.e. when stars explode!) on the early galaxies. He created an entire new paradigm, with accompanying model/code, that others can incorporate into their own simulated universes. The preprint version of the paper is available freely.
Read MoreThis is the main collaboration paper for the dual hemisphere dark matter detector project SABRE. It outlines the various efforts underway to reduce contamination of the Sodium-Iodide crystals that react (we hope!) to colliding dark matter particles as well as an active veto system that removes background sources of radiation from our data collection.
Read MoreAt nearly a quarter billion dollars (!) of cash and inkind contributions SmartSatCRC is the largest space R&D investment in Australian history. Huge congrats to all 84 partners, but in particular UniSA and Nova Systems who led this bid from an idea just 18 months ago. On a personal level it’s incredibly exciting to know that we at Swinburne will be a core partner in this incredible new CRC developing a new era of tech for space and the better monitoring of our planet.
Read MoreAn exhaustive study using Monte Carlo simulation techniques into the expected ability of the prototype SABRE dark matter detector to find, well, dark matter.
Read MoreIt’s fair to say I love all things space, but I have a particular fascination with developing novel uses of space to help us back on Earth. At Swinburne’s Data Science Research Institute we try to bridge the divide between discoveries in academia and their potential commercial uses in Industry. Working across the university and our data science experts to find solutions to current industry needs that can make Australia a healthier, wealthier and safer country? The next few years will be fun!
Read MoreAn incredible evening interviewing Dr Megan Clark AC, Head of the Australian Space Agency, on how universities can support Space 2.0 and innovative technologies in Australia more generally, all as part of our Swinburne University of Technology research retreat.
Read MoreGreat news with the announcement that my Australian Research Council projects were funded! Huge congratulations to Dr Greg Lane of ANU and Dr Phil Urquijo of UMelb who led them (and I'll explain the science we hope to achieve with them in a bit) but while I'm delighted by my ARC funding outcomes I know that so many (too many!) of my colleagues haven't been so fortunate.
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