CSIRO Alumni newsletter - February 2025
Welcome to the February 2025 CSIRO Alumni network newsletter.
In this month’s newsletter you can read about our scholarship winner, the latest research news coming out of CSIRO, register for upcoming events online and in person and find out about courses and career opportunities with CSIRO programs.
2025 CSIRO Alumni scholarship winner
We are pleased to announce that Luke Johnstone will be awarded the $6,000 travel scholarship to support his project, “Extending the Frontier of Pure and Applied Nuclear Physics”
He will be travelling to the USA to participate in a forthcoming experiment at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB).
FRIB is a new, world-leading nuclear-research facility that hosts the world’s most powerful heavy-ion accelerator. The FRIB ‘era of discovery’ will create unique partnerships between experiment and theory and is set to revolutionise research in nuclear science through experiments with unparalleled capacity to extend towards, and beyond, the known limits of nuclear existence.
CSIRO shows practical application for quantum machine learning
Researchers have compressed a large dataset with accuracy, efficiency, and speed unmatched by traditional computing.
Australian innovation ‘sifts’ space for mysteries
The specialised system was developed to rapidly detect mysterious fast radio bursts and other space phenomena.
A spoonful of science: Bioconjugation helps the medicine go down
Advances in bioconjugation and theranostics are enabling precise, targeted therapies for conditions like cancer and diabetes, reducing side effects and improving treatment effectiveness.
Help grow our alumni network
We now have over 5,000 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.
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
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 Dr. John Maclaren
John had a very long and illustrious career with the CSIRO Division of Protein Chemistry in Parkville which he joined in 1958. He was offered promotions which he declined, as they would take him out of the lab and put him behind a desk. CSIRO had to create new levels in their organisational structure to recognise his seniority in the lab as a scientist.
Vale Dr Pamela Reisner
Pamela joined the CSIRO as an experimental officer in the Division of Animal Genetics, Sydney in 1961. She then became a senior research scientist before a tenure as visiting scientist at the Institute of Arid Zone Research in Beer-Sheva, Israel in 1970. She returned to her senior research scientist role in 1970 in the Division of Animal Genetics, later becoming the Division of Animal Production, Sydney.
From 1977 – 1983 she was a Principal Research Scientist in the Division of Animal Production and then in the Division of Wildlife and Rangelands Research until her retirement in 1989.