CSIRO Alumni newsletter - February 2024
Happy New Year and welcome to the February 2024 CSIRO Alumni network newsletter.
In this month’s newsletter you can read about our 2024 scholarship winner, the latest CSIRO news, check out the events coming up later in February and learn about the work that Dr Nick Cutmore and MRead are doing.
2024 CSIRO Alumni Scholarship in Physics awarded to Chloe Wilkins
We would like to congratulate Chloe Wilkins on winning our 2024 scholarship. Chloe's project is titled, "Characterising the Sun’s open-closed magnetic flux boundary towards understanding the acceleration of the slow solar wind."
Chloe will be using the scholarship funds to travel to Durham University.
CSIRO and Swinburne invest in green steel and mineral processing to help industry get to net zero
The new partnership will tackle global decarbonisation with innovative green steel and mineral processing research and development.
CSIRO study shows marine heatwaves have significant impact on microorganisms
Prolonged oceanic warm water events are altering the microorganism communities that form the base of the marine food chain.
Help grow our alumni network
We now have over 4,800 members but we know that there are many more former colleagues out there. Help us build the alumni network and forward this newsletter on or share the link to alumni registration.
Many presentations and seminars are now being held online – so you can attend from the comfort of your own home. Our alumni calendar lists both CSIRO and external events, so you can find out about a wide range of events.
Promote your own events
To help connect alumni with one another, we encourage you to list your own events on our website. Let us know if you are organising, presenting or attending events and we can help promote it to the alumni network – please email alumni@csiro.au
We feature a range of alumni stories on our website celebrating the achievements of our members. We encourage members to get in touch and send in their stories of trials and tribulations – all in the name of scientific research!
So, if you have received an award, written a book or have any stories that you’d like to share with the alumni network, please email alumni@csiro.au
Dr Nick Cutmore and MRead
Dr Nick Cutmore is one of our CSIRO Alumni members and is the Executive Director and Chief Technology Officer of MRead.
MRead is on a mission to eliminate the threat of landmines through building new detection capabilities for humanitarian demining.
Nick joined CSIRO in 1983 as a Research Scientist developing technology for online analysis in the minerals and energy industries. Nick remembers it was a fantastic team of people to work with, including his mentors John Watt and Brian Sowerby.
In 2023 Nick left CSIRO to join the founding team of MRead as CTO and Executive Director. But he is still very much in contact with his former colleagues at CSIRO.
“I have not only stayed in contact with my old team at CSIRO, but sometimes occupy a hot desk in their facility at Lucas Heights! MRead is contracting current product developments to CSIRO and I’m fortunate to maintain close contact with the technical teams involved. Working with highly talented young scientists is a great motivator for a new spinoff company like MRead.”
Nick would like to encourage alumni to get in touch, too. “MRead is less than a year old, and like most spinouts will go through future capital raisings to fund the staged development and deployment of our technology. If you are interested in joining us in future raisings, then drop us a note!”
Read more about Nick’s career and the amazing work done by MRead
On a sadder note, if you would like to let the alumni network know about the passing of one of our members, please email us and we can post a notice to the news page and also feature an obituary within our stories section.
We invite alumni members to add their own tributes, so please contact alumni@csiro.au if you would like to share your memories of them.
Vale Robert (Bob) Hunter
Bob’s whole professional career was with CSIRO, serving in Townsville, Perth and Rockhampton. The aim of much of Bob’s research was to increase annual liveweight gain of cattle in northern Australia mainly by reducing dry season weight loss.
Vale Bill Doughty
William (Bill) John Doughty – passed away in January 2024 from lung cancer. He worked at AAHL from 1984 until around 2002. He worked in North Suite and ran Tissue Culture for many years.
Vale Mina Brock
Mina was a valued Research Technician in the Hobart Labs for 28 years and there will be many people who have benefited from Mina’s hard work and technical expertise and research support over this time.