The Royal Society of Tasmania invites all members and supporters to a lecture on 7 November 2021, at 3 pm by Dr Lila Landowski.

The lecture will be presented in person at the RST Lecture Room in TMAG (Hobart) and as a Zoom webinar.

If you wish to attend in person: Register using Eventbrite before Saturday 6 November using this link. The password is RST. Attendance in person is limited by current pandemic restrictions to 20.

Attendance is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Non-members are welcome to attend and donations are appreciated at the door or through our website. Suggested donation $6; $4 for students and Friends of TMAG.

If you wish to attend via ZOOM: Follow this link to register for the Zoom webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Attendance is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Non-members are welcome and donations are appreciated through our website. Suggested donation $6; $4 for students and Friends of TMAG.

Our brains change as we age, making it significantly harder to learn – but it doesn’t mean an old dog can’t learn new tricks!

There are smarter ways to learn than whatever it is you are doing right now. Lila will take you on a journey through the brain, examining some of the existing research on learning, and empower you with tools that help you learn faster and more effectively.

Dr Lila Landowski is a multi-award-winning neuroscientist and lecturer at the University of Tasmania, an Executive Director of the Australian Society for Medical Research, a Director of Epilepsy Tasmania, as well as a regular guest expert science communicator for the ABC. Her research background spans across stroke, nanotechnology, fatigue, dementia, axon guidance and peripheral nerve regeneration.

As a thought leader in science and science advocacy, her honorary titles include being a “Superstar of STEM,” an ambassador for public school education, a patron of National Science week, and being named a “Science superhero” by Australia’s Chief Scientist.

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites all members and supporters to a lecture on 3 October 2021, at 3 pm by Associate Professor Rebecca Carey.

The lecture will be presented in person at the RST Lecture Room in TMAG (Hobart) and as a Zoom webinar.

If you wish to attend in person: Register using Eventbrite before Saturday 2 October using this link. The password is RST. Attendance in person is limited by current pandemic restrictions to 20.

Attendance is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Non-members are welcome to attend and donations are appreciated at the door or through our website. Suggested donation $6; $4 for students and Friends of TMAG.

If you wish to attend via ZOOM: Follow this link to register for the Zoom webinar. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Attendance is free for members of the Royal Society of Tasmania. Non-members are welcome and donations are appreciated through our website. Suggested donation $6; $4 for students and Friends of TMAG.

Volcanic eruptions on land are spectacular events for scientists and the public alike. Eruptions on the sea floor are probably no less spectacular, but they are rarely observed.

The lack of observational opportunity has severely hindered the scientific understanding of submarine volcanism. The deep-sea eruption of Havre submarine volcano north of New Zealand in 2012 was an exceptionally powerful event that produced a gigantic 400m² raft of floating pumice which alerted scientists to the eruption. Ship and robotic vehicle surveys of the volcano in 2015 provided an unprecedented dataset from which to discover the similarities and differences between eruptions and their products on land versus in deep submarine settings. Our team-based studies of this event have elucidated the special complications that arise for eruption into water versus air. Our insights can be used by science teams for future submarine eruptions.

Associate Professor Rebecca Carey is a former Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow, Tasmanian Tall Poppy Scientist of the Year, and the 2020 winner of the Australian Academy of Science Dorothy Hill Medal. Rebecca is interested in volcanic processes and environments, geological hazards, and indigenous cultural narratives around volcanic events. She leads the volcanology group at the University of Tasmania which includes two postdoctoral researchers, five PhD students and other students at Honours and undergraduate levels. Her current projects range from microanalytical studies of products from single eruptions to volcanology, the geochemistry of hot-spot volcanoes offshore Australia and the role of mantle plume volcanism in tectonics, and field studies of ancient mineralised volcanic terrains in Australia.

Joint RST and Beer Aquatic event featuring Professor Pete Strutton

Date: Thursday 26 August, 6:30 pm – No registrations or tickets, but arrive early to secure a seat.

Venue: Hobart Brewing Company, 16 Evans St, Hobart

We all know that two-thirds of the Earth’s surface is ocean, but did you know that land-derived particles can have a huge impact on the marine ecosystem? Marine life that lives thousands of kilometres from any land mass depends on land surface processes for key nutrients, and in the ocean-dominated Southern Hemisphere some of those processes are pretty surprising. In this special event, co-hosted with the Royal Society of Tasmania, Prof Pete Strutton will talk us through those processes, and the important business of how we can track this land-sea connection in the remote oceans of the world.

Professor Pete Strutton is a biological oceanographer at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. His field of research is the interaction between physical and biological processes in the ocean, and the consequences for ocean productivity and air-sea CO₂ exchange. He has a PhD in Marine Science from the Flinders University of South Australia and has held positions at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Stony Brook University and Oregon State University before joining UTAS as an ARC Future Fellow in 2010. He is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes.

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites all members and supporters to a Zoom webinar on September 5, 2021 at 5 pm in which Dr Alessandro Silvano will present his RST Doctoral Award Lecture. Note the unusual time 5 pm.

This webinar will be presented from the UK so it will not be possible to attend in person.

To view the webinar on your own device, you must register in advance. Use this link to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Dr Silvano will explore the oceanic processes that drive melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Different processes lead to certain areas of the Antarctic Ice Sheet being more susceptible to rapid ocean-driven melting, while other areas are more resilient. He will describe the emergence of feedback between the ice sheet and Southern Ocean. Increased ice melting leads to warming of the oceanic waters surrounding Antarctica and has consequences for future sea level rise. Furthermore, increased melting of the Antarctic Ice Sheet affects the global ocean and its ability to store anthropogenic heat and carbon.

Alessandro Silvano

Alessandro Silvano is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton (UK), investigating how currents in the Southern Ocean regulate the oceanic heat transport toward the Antarctic Ice Sheet, causing ice melting and sea level rise. Alessandro has recently completed a PhD at the University of Tasmania and CSIRO, where he worked on ice-ocean interaction in East Antarctica, with a focus on the Totten Glacier. Dr Silvano won one of the 2020 RST Doctoral Awards.

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites all members and supporters to a Zoom webinar on August 1, 2021 at 5 pm in which Dr Adam Abersteiner will present his RST Doctoral Award Lecture. Note the unusual time 5 pm.

This webinar will be presented from interstate so it will not be possible to attend in person.

To view the webinar on your own device, you must register in advance. Use this link to register. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Kimberlites are rare igneous rocks that originate from the deepest-derived magmas on Earth. Despite their rarity, they have attracted an almost disproportionate amount of attention in geoscience as they entrain fragments of mantle rocks (i.e. xenoliths) and are the major source of diamonds. Thus, kimberlites present unparalleled insights into the composition and nature of the Earth’s deep mantle. However, one of the greatest challenges in understanding how kimberlites form is deciphering what the original composition of magma was in the source, as by the time the magma reaches the surface and solidifies, it has undergone extensive alteration.

This presentation will highlight research advances developed during the course of Adam’s PhD. The focus will be on the systematic study of melt/fluid inclusions in kimberlite minerals and the novel insights they present, contrary to classic models, into the composition and evolution of kimberlite magmas.

Dr Adam Abersteiner is a Postdoctoral Researcher in geochemistry and melt inclusions at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He completed his PhD in 2020 from the University of Tasmania under the supervision of Professor Dima Kamenetsky. Adam received his undergraduate Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Melbourne and pursued his Honour’s Degree at the University of Tasmania.

During Adam’s time as a student, his research focused on understanding the composition of kimberlite magmas (i.e. the deepest derived magmas known) and how they evolve during their ascent through the Earth’s mantle and crust. His research focused on analysing melt and fluid inclusions entrapped in kimberlite minerals in order to reconstruct the original composition(s) of kimberlite melts prior to alteration processes. Adam’s research interests have now branched into understanding different topics in petrology, such as chromite geochemistry and various alkaline magmas.

The RST – ATSE public forum featuring Nathan Bindoff, Mary O’Kane and Andrew Catchpole, on Wednesday 23 June 2021 is now available on the RST YouTube channel. Read more about the lecture here.