New Honorary Editor and Council Member

The Royal Society of Tasmania is pleased to welcome Dr John Volkman as the new Honorary Editor to the Society. He will take over from Dr Margaret Davies OAM who undertook the role for the past sixteen years. 

Dr Volkman has a long history of scientific research carried out in Tasmania and internationally. He is currently Co-Editor in Chief of the international journal Organic Geochemistry. John is a former Chief Research Scientist and Program Leader of the multidisciplinary Marine Biogeochemistry program at CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere in Hobart. He continues at CSIRO as an Honorary Fellow. Previously, he was Chair of the Tasmania Science and Technology industry Council and Aquafin CRC Environment program leader examining the environmental effects of salmonid and tuna aquaculture. He is internationally recognized for the discovery and application of lipid biomarkers in organic geochemistry, environmental studies, petroleum geochemistry, palaeoclimatology and the evolution of lipid biosynthetic pathways. Dr Volkman is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute.

 

 

 

We would also like to welcome Roxanne Steenbergen as a new member of the Royal Society of Tasmania Council

Roxanne has thirty-five years of experience in primary teaching across a range schools. For over fifteen of those years Roxanne taught gifted and talented students online through the Department of Education’s Centre for Extended Learning (now the Gifted Online program). Through this program Roxanne engaged with students across Tasmania. In 2007, Roxanne and a colleague jointly won the Microsoft 2007 Innovative Teacher Awardfor their “Cool Chemistry” project. The project involved the creation of a virtual classroom connecting two schools, two teachers and a practising chemist. Within this environment, children used a range of software to share and compare their inquiries. Roxanne also has a keen interest in literacy through childhood reading and believes every student should have books in their hands whenever they want one – whether they are classics like Journey to the Centre of the Earth or the more modern stories of the 13-storey treehouse series.She won the Scholastic Literacy Champion Awardin 2013. Roxanne retired from teaching in June 2018, but retains a strong interest in making Science teaching accessible to everyone.