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Wednesday, 21 November 2007

Another academic year is now with us. 2007 is the Chinese Year of the Pig and I am reliably informed that pig people love to read and are generally thirsty for knowledge. Sounds exactly like the type of student that comes to study science at UWA so our 2007 intake should be an exceptionally good one. The 2006 students performed very well, fifty seven undergraduates and thirty four honours students had academic achievements high enough to warrant a Dean’s Letter of Congratulation. Some of our high flying students in the Advanced Science program are showing their abilities to overseas universities (Queen’s University, Canada; Oxford University, England; Sheffield University, England and Kobe University, Japan).

We have hardly had time to catch our breath from the activities and successes of 2006. Congratulations go to Colin Raston in Chemistry and Mike Tobar in Physics. Colin was awarded the 2006 Royal Australian Chemical Institute’s Leighton Memorial Medal. It is the Institute's most prestigious medal and is awarded in recognition of eminent services to chemistry in Australia. Mike Tobar was the recipient of the 2006 Walter Boas Medal, awarded by the Australian Institute of Physics for excellence in research. Since its establishment in 1984 it has been won by two other UWA physicists: Jim Williams in 1989 and David Blair in 1995. In November 2006 Mike was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics .

Towards the end of last year Eva Chye (our Assistant Director of International Strategy) organised for myself, Ian Small (Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology) and Steve Smith (Federation Fellow) to tour research institutes and universities in China, Japan and Korea. I was very impressed with the reaction to our centre, everywhere we went it was clear that it is regarded as carrying out world class research. The work it is doing attracted much attention and several of the groups we met with showed interest in establishing collaborative research. Following our visit the Director of the Korean Institute for Bioscience and Biomedicine (KRIBB) visited UWA for the signing of an MOU for research collaboration between UWA and KRIBB.

2007 is going to be an all action year for the Faculty. Even before teaching has begun we have hosted our first group of short term study students from Korea University, held another very successful Siemens Science Experience for high school students and we have participated in the National Youth Science Forum in Canberra. Staff in the Pharmacy programme are in the process of moving in to the newly refurbished Biochemistry Building.

The most striking evidence of the quality of research in the Faculty is seen in a new set of university rankings from Shanghai Jiao Tong University that puts UWA’s Life and Agricultural Sciences at 37th in the world. This makes us the top ranked Australian University in this subject field. A wonderful start to the new year, pigs really do fly!!

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