April 2023 - CSIRO Alumni newsletter
Welcome to the April 2023 CSIRO Alumni network newsletter.
In this month’s newsletter you can read about our latest news, delve into the stories of Australia’s early female chemists, sign up to a range of events, hear about alumni members achievements, our upcoming courses and learn about the Microbiome one system health (MOSH) future science platform.
We are also launching the CSIRO Graduate Program, so help us spread the word and recruit the next generation of inventors, innovators and change makers.
CSIRO roadmap charts major role for storage through energy transition
A new CSIRO Roadmap shows that energy storage capacity must increase significantly over coming decades to meet rapidly rising electricity demands.
CSIRO embarks on mission to create a 'weather service' for water quality
CSIRO has launched a world first mission to develop an extensive network of Earth observation satellites and ground-based water sensors to deliver near real time monitoring and forecasting for water quality
Calling all citizen scientists: hunt for shark egg cases launches in Australia
The Great Eggcase Hunt has landed on Australian shores, calling on citizen scientists to help researchers learn more about sharks, skates and chimaeras by finding and recording egg cases washed up along our coasts.
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
Experimental physics on the pedestal: Professor Peter Hannaford receives Order of Australia AC 2023
Victorian Professor Emeritus Peter Hannaford has received the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC) in the 2023 honours list in recognition of his “eminent service to science, particularly to experimental physics, as an academic and researcher, to professional institutions, and as a role model for young scientists.”
A history of CSIRO’S Central Australian Laboratory 1953 – 2018
CSIRO’s Central Australian Laboratory and its earlier incarnations in Alice Springs supported arid zone research for over 64 years until its closure in 2018. Former scientists Margaret Friedel, Steve Morton, Gary Bastin, Jocelyn Davies and Mark Stafford Smith have recently published its history. Written in two parts, this history is available in Historical Records of Australian Science, along with extensive supplementary material that includes a list of all known staff members and a comprehensive list of publications in many categories for both papers.
RapidAIM Digital Crop Defence
A staggering 30 per cent of global crop production is lost due to pests each year. Among the different types of pests, the fruit fly’s pesky offspring is responsible for its place as the world’s number one biosecurity threat for horticulture.
Our scientists saw this as an opportunity to create a solution to help in the fight against the fruit fly. This eventually led to the creation of an innovative technology – RapidAIM. RapidAIM is a real-time pest detection system that combines cutting edge hardware and software, with advanced biomimicry and AI pattern recognition to identify pests the moment they set foot on a farm.
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.
Vale Professor Will Steffen
One of Australia’s leading climate scientists, Professor Will Steffen passed away in January. Steffen has been hailed as a brilliant climate thinker, selfless mentor and gifted communicator.
Vale Robert Taylor
Rob was a brilliant researcher at CSIRO in the pyrotechnical metallurgy department and retired from this career after 41 and a half years.
A microbiome is a community of microscopic organisms, invisible to the naked eye, but working together as an integral part of a system. Microbiomes are ubiquitous and essential to the function of all natural ecosystems and all living things. Our MOSH Future Science Platform will develop new understanding of how microbiome connect across the environment-to-human continuum through using multi-omic techniques. This will help us predict the effect of disruptions to microbiomes as well as directly manipulate microbiomes for targeted interventions. How do bacteriophages, considered a promising solution to antibiotic resistance, for example, control the spread of these harmful genes from the environment to humans? Other area of investigation by MOSH include: