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News archiveSchool of Physics begins research at a new ultra-bright x-ray coherent diffraction facility. Photo by Steve Morton. A new ultra-bright x-ray facility has been recently commissioned at the School of Physics. The facility can produce diffraction images of nanostructures with spatial resolution of better than 5 nm. A 3rd Year Physics student, Stephanie Windebank (pictured on the right) has conducted a mini-project, under supervision of A/Prof. Andrei Nikulin (pictured on the left), to study specific Bragg diffraction patterns from a rolled multilayered AlGaAs nano-tube. Opening of the Hutton-Westfold Observatory Associate Professor Michael Morgan with Dr Dot Hutton and Mr Simon Westfold The new Hutton-Westfold Observatory was opened on Monday 23rd of March, and will be used extensively by Monash students of astrophysics. With this new facility, students will observe clusters of stars thousands of light years away and search for the presence of dark matter in distant galaxies. The observatory is named in honour of the late Don Hutton and the late Kevin Westfold, who made great contributions to astronomy and student learning at Monash University over the course of several decades. Jayden Newstead wins AIP prize for 3rd year laboratory Monash student Jayden Newstead has received the Third Year Physics Practical Award from the Australian Insititute of Physics. The Award of $250 is given annually for the best practical report by a third year student at a Victorian university. Jay elected to substitute some of the standard practicals for the opportunity to work on a research mini-project. Instead of doing a third-year practical, Jay designed a new one. Jay's new experiment, titled “Faraday Rotation: A New Twist on Signal Transmission”, uses a laser beam to transmit an audio signal from the student's iPod (or similar) across the lab to a receiver which converts the laser beam back into sound. The “twist” is the use of polarisation modulation, rather than more conventional amplitude or frequency modulation, to encode the signal onto the laser beam. Project supervisor Dr Lincoln Turner suggested that Jay use the unconventional modulation mode as it allows extremely high-fidelity transmission with the residual noise due to the finite number of photons in the laser beam. “It enables students to ‘hear’ that the light beam is made up on individual photons”, Dr Turner said. The new practical will become part of the third-year teaching laboratory in 2009. Mind Over MatterIt cannot be seen or felt - but a Monash University astro-particle physicist says dark matter must exist. 2nd Australian Tomography WorkshopThe School of Physics is co-hosting Aus Tomo II on the 13th and 14th November with CSIRO and The Australian Synchrotron. 3rd Year Physics Award Third year physics student, David Bentley, has been awarded the 2008 book prize by David Ludowyck from Cambridge University Press. This annual book award is presented to the best student in PHS3031 - Foundations of Contemporary Physics, and is made possible through the generosity of Cambridge University Press. Pictured: David Bentley (right) and David Ludowyk (from CUP) Eureka: Science Photography awardMr Steven Morton from the School of Physics has been awarded 2nd place for his NHMRC award winning photograph (see below) at the annual Australian Museum Eureka Science photography competition. In 2007 Steven was the joint winner for this award. For more details please visit the Australian Museum web page. Research NewsA new Research news page has been created to showcase some of the recent projects undertaken within the School. Students get inspired at the Australian SynchrotronThe Mars Phoenix Lander Mars is a cold desert planet with no liquid water on its surface. But in the Martian arctic, water ice lurks just below ground level. Landing on the 26th of May 2008, Phoenix will be the first mission to return data from either polar region providing an important contribution to the overall Mars science. It will be instrumental in achieving the science goals of NASA's long-term Mars Exploration Program. Here at Monash, a direct webcast of NASA TV was broadcast on Monday 26th of May in the School of Physics “Astro-lab” (27-211) , showcasing the ingenuity of exploring and discovering new worlds to an audience in real time around the world. For more information on the Phoenix Mission go to: http://phoenix.lpl.arizona.edu/ Student Leadership Program, Monash UniversityApplications are now open for positions in the 2009 Vice Chancellors Ancora Imparo Student Leadership Program. The aim of the program is to provide students with an understanding of the visionary and inspirational principles that guide current leaders and have guided leaders in the past. Successful applicant attend a three-day residential course in February followed by eight monthly seminars throughout the year. For more information please visit Student Leadership Program, Monash University or email leadership.enquires@adm.monash.edu.au Monash Physics Graduate – Victorian Graduate Teacher of the YearAndrew Thomson who graduated in 2006 has just been selected as Victorian Graduate Teacher of the Year for 2008. Andrew was appointed as a physics teacher, back in his home town of Warrnambool, immediately at the end of his Dip. Ed. in October 2007. He had carried out part of his teaching rounds at Warrnambool College and obviously impressed them as they offered him a job during the teaching round. We can see that their confidence was well-placed! His enthusiasm when discussing teaching physics is very evident and we hope that this will also imbue some of his students with a love of physics. It has been a big week for Andrew. As part of his third year physics in 2006, he carried out a PHS3350 project on the Mössbauer spectroscopy of iron sites in clay minerals and the research paper based on this work has just been published. The School of Physics congratulates Dr Trevor Hicks on the award of a an Honorary Fellowship from the Australian Institute for Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE). Trevor who has retired from the School of Physics, has served the University as its AINSE Councillor for many years and had a long and distinguished research record with AINSE. He is most deserving of this honour that was bestowed at the Council Dinner on Thursday evening December 6. On the 28th November, eight Australians were presented by His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery AC CVO MC - Patron in Chief of The General Sir John Monash Foundation - with Australia's General Sir John Monash Awards, recognising their excellent academic achievement and future leadership potential. Dilani Kahawala, 22, from Victoria - Area of study: Theoretical Physics - Quantum Gravity Dilani is a graduate from the School of Physics. 2008 Dean's Excellence in Teaching Awards for the Faculty of Science-- Dr David Paganin, for sustained achievements in motivating and inspiring students to learn physics David is an outstanding teacher and this award is in recognition of the significant and innovative contribution he has made to teaching in the School of Physics. 2007 Mollie Holman Doctoral MedalDr John Daniels has been awarded the 2007 Mollie Holman Doctoral Medal. This is awarded annually to the most outstanding doctoral candidate in each faculty. John was awarded his PhD in 2007 under the supervision of Associate Professor Trevor Finlayson. The title of John's thesis was: “Diffraction Studies of Ferroelectric Materials during Application of Electric Fields”. Currently John is working as a Postdoctoral researcher at the ESRF in Grenoble, where he describes “life as good!” NHMRC Award School of Physics scientific photographer Steven Morton played an instrumental and creative roll in the production of the image that saw Brian Cooke of the Microbiology Department, receive the inaugural National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Award for “Science to Art”. This award was for the outstanding image from health and medical research. The image shows the surface of a human red blood cell infected with a malaria parasite. Detailed information on the awards, the image and the science behind the image may be found at: The School of Physics congratulates Dr Trevor Hicks on the award of a an Honorary Fellowship from the Australian Institute for Nuclear Science and Engineering (AINSE). Trevor who has retired from the School of Physics, has served the University as its AINSE Councillor for many years and had a long and distinguished research record with AINSE. He is most deserving of this honour that was bestowed at the Council Dinner on Thursday evening December 6. On the 28th November, eight Australians were presented by His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery AC CVO MC - Patron in Chief of The General Sir John Monash Foundation - with Australia's General Sir John Monash Awards, recognising their excellent academic achievement and future leadership potential. Dilani Kahawala, 22, from Victoria - Area of study: Theoretical Physics - Quantum Gravity Dilani is a graduate from the School of Physics. A starring role at NASAEARLY CAREER RESEARCHER AWARD FOR PHYSICS LECTURERDavid Paganin, a Senior Lecturer from the School of Physics, recently received the 2007 "Faculty of Science Award for Excellence in Research by an Early Career Researcher". Since the commencement of his employment in the School of Physics in 2002, Dr Paganin has published 42 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, together with a 400-page monograph on "Coherent X-Ray Optics". In total, his papers have received over 1000 citations in the open literature. Dr Paganin has had continuous ARC funding since the beginning of 2003, and aspects of his work arising from his PhD studies have been commercialised. Dr Paganin has an excellent record of supervision and has been nominated by his students for a 2007 supervisor award by the Monash Postgraduate Association. He currently co-supervises or supervises four honours students, seven PhD students, and two post-doctoral fellows. The history of Physics at Monash.Cambridge Quantum Mechanics Prize School of Physics Quantum Mechanics lecturer, Dr David Paganin (left), congratulates Peter Morton (centre), Monash third year physics student, on receiving the 2007 prize for best results in Quantum Mechanics. This prize, awarded for the first time in 2006, was presented to Peter Morton by David Ludowyk (right), Australia and New Zealand representative for Cambridge University Press. Awards Third year physics student, David Hartley (left), being presented with a book prize by David Ludowyk from Cambridge University Press. This award was made on the basis of outstanding results in the first semester unit PHS3031 - Foundations of Contemporary Physics. AwardsMollie Holman MedalSteven Homolya was awarded the 2005 Faculty of Science Mollie Holman Medal at a Graduation Ceremony held in Robert Blackwood Hall on April 27, 2006.  Steven is a graduate of the School of Physics who undertook a PhD in theoretical physics supervised by Associate Professor Charles Osborne. The Mollie Holman Medal is an annual Monash prize awarded to the most outstanding PhD thesis in a Faculty. The medal commemorates the outstanding service Mollie Holman made to postgraduate study during her long career at Monash. In particular the award recognises an excellent thesis with significant impact and for the clear exposition of ideas and writing in the thesis. Steven's thesis topic is "Spectral properies of irregular resonators: the role of the Berry conjecture in predicting the effects of fractal and non-fractal roughness", and the content of his work is best summarised as follows: This thesis analyses how the vibrations from drums echo the shape and rougness of the drum perimeter. A computational model is used to resolve part of a famous conjecture due to Rayleigh, Weyl and Berry by developing a generalised measure for boundary roughness that matches the vibrations such enclosures can sustain. Steven wrote several high quality publications during his candidature, including "Generalisation of the modified Weyl-Berry conjecture for drums with jagged boundaries" S. Homolya, Physics Letters A, 318, 380-387 (2003). Dr Homolya now works for CSIRO at Clayton. Thomas H. Laby MedalThe Thomas H. Laby Medal, administered through the Victorian Branch of the Australian Institute of Physics, is awarded annually to the most outstanding Honours Physics student(s) in Victoria. We are thrilled that the two joint winners of the 2004 Laby Medal were both from Monash University's School of Physics: Steven Lade and Shane Kennedy. We warmly congratulate both Shane and Steven for this great achievement, and wish them all the very best for every continued success! 2005 Australian Synchrotron Research Program (ASRP) Gold MedalFormer Monash physics PhD student, Dr Stephen Mudie, has been awarded the 2005 Australian Synchrotron Research Program (ASRP) Gold Medal. Stephen received the award on December 5 at the ASRP/Australian Synchrotron Users' Meeting, which was held at the University of Melbourne. |