News Archive

The Faculty of Life and Physical Sciences has been celebrating since the last issue of Science Matters with the opening of two new research centres.

In October, Vice-Chancellor Alan Robson opened the Centre for Strategic Nanofabrication with new director, Professor Colin Raston, outlining its role and the growing importance of nanochemistry to Western Australian industry.

Also in October, the Minister for Energy, Resources, Industry and Enterprise, the Hon Francis Logan MLA, opened the State Centre of Excellence in Plant Metabolomics. Its director, Federation Fellow Steve Smith, said the centre used genetic approaches to investigate the metabolic basis of plant growth and development.

We also celebrated the contributions of two of our staff in enhancing the student learning experience. Lance Maschmedt in the School of Physics and John McGeachie in the School of Anatomy and Human Biology received Carrick Institute Citations for outstanding contributions to student learning.

Teaching at UWA is the focus of much attention at the moment with the release of the paper Courses for Tomorrow’s World; An Issues and Options Paper on the Structure of Academic Programs at The University of Western Australia. One of the more radical options is the proposal to have only three undergraduate degrees - the BA, the BSc and a new B Phil. Debate and discussion on this paper should keep Faculty staff busy for quite some time.

This semester’s graduation ceremonies saw our first graduates from the new Master’s program in Pharmacy. I was lucky enough to attend the graduation dinner held for these students, their families and supporters of the program. It was a great evening with a wonderful sense of occasion. This semester also saw the first students entering the new Masters in Infectious Diseases so it won’t be too long before we celebrate their graduation.

Recently we had the announcement of Australian Research Council (ARC) and National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) grants and fellowships. Several of our staff were awarded ARC professorial fellowships - congratulations to Gillian Rhodes and Colin McLeod in Psychology and Mike Tobar in Physics. Gavin Flematti and Melissa Latter (Chemistry), Jean-Michel le Floch (Physics), Mihua Lee (Biochemistry) and Monika Murcha (Plant Energy Biology) were awarded Australian Postdoctoral Fellowships while Peter Eastwood (Anatomy and Human Biology) was awarded a NHMRC research fellowship.

Staff were also awarded more than $3m in grants from the NHMRC; more than $1.5m in ARC Linkages projects, Linkage International and Linkage Infrastructure; and more than $6m in ARC Discovery projects. The Faculty’s greatly improved performance in winning ARC Linkage Projects reflects the hard work put in by the Faculty’s research committee. Our success in gaining research grants and fellowships provides another opportunity to pop the champagne corks.