The Royal Society of Tasmania

The advancement of knowledge

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Innaugural Peter Smith medal

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The 2019 Peter Smith medal lecture was delivered by

Dr. Lucia McCallum

on Tuesday, 1 October 2019

at the Royal Society of Tasmania lecture room, Dunn Place, Hobart.

 

The Dish redux – from the Apollo Mission to Earth surveying.

 

 

Dr Lucia McCallum is the inaugural recipient of the Peter Smith Medal.

Established in 2017, this medal is awarded biennially by The Royal Society of Tasmania to an outstanding early career researcher in any field.

Dr McCallum is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the UTAS School of Maths & Physics, radio astronomy group. She is a geodesist – or Earth surveyor.  Her field of research is the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique, using signals from far distant radio galaxies to measure the Earth. 

 

Mt Pleasant Radio Telescope, JJ Harrison

Lucia is involved with the AuScope VLBI project, which utilises the UTAS Mt Pleasant radio telescope (which can be seen to best advantage from a table at Frogmore Creek Winery, Cambridge) as well as two other UTAS operated radio telescopes in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This facility array ties in Australian geodesy with the International Geospatial Reference Frame and is coordinated within the International VLBI Service and the Asian Oceania VLBI Group.
VLBI measurements provide imperative scientific information on the rotation of the Earth, the movement of continental plates and the effects of earthquakes. VLBI also provides the reference frame for all other types of geographic positioning technologies such as GPS, which we have come to rely on in our smartphones and which is allowing the development and operation of autonomous vehicles.

 

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Lucia received her Diplom-Ingenieur  from the University of Technology of Vienna, Austria, with a thesis entitled “Calculation of the Earth Rotation Vector with VLBI and Ringlaser measurements”. She continued to pursue her research in VLBI satellite tracking, and was awarded her PhD in Vienna in 2013.
Her first post-doctoral appointment led her to Hobart in 2014. In 2015, she was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Fellowship by the Austrian Science Fund – ‘Sibling Radio Telescopes for Geodesy – Optimising the use of co-located VLBI telescopes in the southern hemisphere’.
In 2017 she received a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council, with the project ‘Achieving millimetre geodesy with space tie satellites’. Her research interests include global reference frames, earth rotation, and the emerging field of space ties.

 

The Society congratulates Dr McCallum on her  achievements.

 

 

More about the Peter Smith Medal
The Peter Smith Medal was established in 2017 and is awarded biennially to an outstanding early career researcher in any field. The winner receives a medal and delivers “The Peter Smith Lecture” to the Society. To be eligible for nomination, the research and/or works must be largely carried out in Tasmania or under the aegis of a Tasmanian-based organisation and within the Society’s purview. The Award is not restricted to Australian nationals. The medal will be open for nominations again in 2020 – click here to go to our Award & Medal guidelines

Christmas Lecture – Dr Alison Alexander – Maria Lord: from convict to Governor’s lady

In case you hadn’t noticed, Christmas is just around the corner.

 

The Royal Society of Tasmania

will present the Christmas Lecture on 

  Tuesday 3 December 2019

at CSRIO Lecture Theatre

Castray Esplanade, Battery Point

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  We are delighted to announce that our 2019 Christmas speaker is the renowned Tasmanian historian and author

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Dr Alison Alexander

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The topic draws from the one of her earlier and most popular works:

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The lecture will be followed by a two-course buffet meal.

Click here for your invitation to the dinner:   2019 Christmas Dinner Invitation

Bookings close 20 November 2019

Click here to view the Christmas Function Dinner Menu.

 

 

 

 

 

2019 Peter Smith medal – Dr Lucia McCallum at TMAG

The Royal Society of Tasmania

presents

the Innaugral Peter Smith medal lecture by

Dr. Lucia McCallum

on Tuesday, 1 October 2019

at the Royal Society of Tasmania lecture room,

Customs House, Dunn Place, Hobart

The Dish redux – from the Apollo Mission to Earth surveying

 

Whether we are talking about climate change, sea level rise or the exploration of natural resources, “Earth measurement” and “precise positioning” have long found their way into our daily vocabulary. Fundamental to all those applications is an accurate, stable, and accessible coordinate system. Today’s best coordinate reference is generated from a multitude of modern Earth surveying techniques, one of them making use of black holes as the most stable pillars of the Universe.

The Hobart radio telescope, once designed as part of the Apollo Missions, nowadays plays a crucial role to measure our dynamic Earth. This is a diverse task of managing old and new technology, establishing truly global collaboration, and performing innovative research delivering encouraging results.

 

 

Dr Lucia McCallum is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Physics Department of the University of Tasmania. She is a geodesist – or Earth surveyor – with a proven record in the Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) technique. Her main research interests are global reference frames, Earth rotation, and the emerging field of space ties.

Following a surveying degree, she performed her doctoral studies in Geodesy at TU Wien, Austria. Her first post-doc appointment led her to Hobart in 2014, where she now has settled with her young family. In 2015, she was awarded the Erwin-Schrödinger Fellowship by the Austrian Science Fund, and in 2017 she received a Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council. She is now the winner of the inaugural  Peter Smith Medal.

 

 

 

ψ The Peter Smith Medal was established in 2017 and is awarded biennially to an outstanding early career researcher in any field. The winner receives a medal and delivers “The Peter Smith Lecture” to the Society. To be eligible for nomination, the research and/or works must be largely carried out in Tasmania or under the aegis of a Tasmanian-based organisation and within the Society’s purview. The Award is not restricted to Australian nationals. The medal will be open for nominations again in 2020.

Nominations open for Royal Society Doctoral Awards 2019

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The Royal Society of Tasmania Annual Doctoral (PhD) Awards

Call for Nominations

Closing date: 15 November 2019

 

 

The Royal Society of Tasmania established this award in 1998 to honour young, recently-graduated doctoral (PhD) awardees who have made significant advances in the course of their doctoral research. Each award is valued at $1000. Two awards may be made in any one year.

Conditions

• To be eligible for the Award, no more than three years should have elapsed since the conferring of the PhD degree on the nominee (as at the closing date for nominations – 15 November 2019).

• The honours may be awarded in any field within the purview of the Society, ie sciences, medicine, arts or humanities.

• The Awards are for work leading to significant advances based on the PhD research, as evidenced by published or in press peer-reviewed papers in the national/international literature.

• The works are to have been largely carried out in Tasmania or under the aegis of a Tasmanian-based organisation.

• The Award is not restricted to Australian nationals.

• Nominees must have been under 35 years of age on the day of conferment of the PhD.

 

Submitting nominations

Please email nominations to      royal.society@tmag.tas.gov.au    

and marked: Doctoral Award Nomination

For attention: Honorary Secretary

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What to include:

• A full academic curriculum vitae including the date of birth, the date of conferring of degrees (including the date of PhD conferment) and a full list of published works. The most significant works are to be highlighted with an asterisk. Where the candidate’s standing relies on many co-authored papers, the candidate’s roles in those significant publications should be indicated.

• An abstract (not more than one A4 page) of the PhD study, including the thesis title.

• A letter of nomination from the candidate’s Department Manager and/or PhD supervisor. Applications will not be considered without this document, which must include a statement of the new and original contribution to the field of research.

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Key dates:

· Nominations must be received by 15 November 2019.
· The Awards will be announced at the Society’s Annual General Meeting in Hobart in March 2020.

 

Prof. Ross Large AO,

President

September at QVMAG – Dr Tas van Ommen

The Royal Society presents Dr van Ommen who will share his knowledge of climate change gained over six research expeditions to the Antarctic. 22 September 2019 @ 1.30pm in the Meeting Room at Inveresk


September at TMAG – Dr Anita Hansen

The Royal Society of Tasmania

presents

Dr. Anita Hansen

 

Creating History: how does a settler society create its own independent history and identity?

 

Tuesday, 3 September 2019

8.00pm in the Royal Society Rooms,

Customs House Building, Dunn Place, Hobart

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This is a companion to last month’s lecture by Marley Large, Snapshots of 175 Years of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s Minutes which looked at The Royal Society of Tasmanian’s history through its Minute Books.

The Royal Society of Tasmania developed the government gardens into a true botanical gardens and created a museum that was to become the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, as well as starting a wonderfully eclectic library: WHY?

This 175th anniversary of The Royal Society of Tasmania is a time to look, not only at the physical and scientific achievements of the Society, also at the cultural and historical legacy of the Society to Tasmania and Tasmanians as we moved from an English penal colony to the vibrant cultural centre that is Tasmania today.

 

 

Born in Denmark, Dr Anita Hansen moved to Australia with her family as a child. Her artist mother was fascinated by the exotic plants and animals of their new home and taught Anita to draw them. Anita has worked as an artist all her life – in Tasmania, interstate and overseas. She holds a doctorate from the University of Tasmania (Nineteenth century natural history art and belonging in Tasmania), a Master of Fine Arts (Orchid Illustrations of William Archer 1847–1874), a Graduate Diploma in Plant and Wildlife Illustration (University of Newcastle) and a Bachelor of Fine Art degree (University of Tasmania). Anita received a Fellowship with the Cultural Studies Department at the University of Toronto.

Anita co-edited The Royal Society of Tasmania’s books The Library at the End of the World: Natural Science and Its Illustrators and Poles Apart: Fascination, Fame and Folly, also writing about the artists whose illustrations were featured in the books. She has published a number of journal articles. Anita has curated a number of exhibitions in Tasmania and interstate, recently curating exhibitions for The Royal Society of Tasmania’s 175th anniversary (Louisa Anne Meredith: a remarkable woman, Poles Apart: Fascination, Fame and Folly) and was on the Steering Committee for the DINOSAUR rEVOLUTION exhibition, as co-ordinator of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s 175 anniversary committee.

Science Week – Dr Barbara Holland @ Beaker St

Friday 16 August – Main Stage Seating open from 8:25pm

Dr Barbara Holland and Meow-Ludo Meow Meow
With MC Mark Horstman

 

In TMAG’s Central Gallery

 

Presented by The Royal Society of Tasmania

 

 

 

Dr Barbara Holland, UTAS – 8:45pm

Why be Happy When You Can be NORMAL?

 

What is normal anyway? Any good statistician will be able to tell you the answer. Normal is a distribution. The normal distribution holds a famous spot in statistics due to the Central Limit Theorem which, in layman’s terms, explains why bell-shaped curves are so ubiquitous in describing a wide range of phenomena. Back in the good old days of the 19th Century, the normal distribution went by the name “Law of the Frequency of Error.” Indeed, one of the things the normal distribution should be able to explain is the behaviour of polls and how accurate their predictions should be. In this talk, Barbara will discuss what our faithful friend the normal distribution can tell us about why polls should work and try to give some insight into why they failed so spectacularly at the last election!

 

About the Speaker:
Dr Barbara Holland is an Associate Professor in the discipline of Mathematics within the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Tasmania. She works within the Theoretical Phylogenetics research group and lectures in Statistics. Since beginning her PhD she has enjoyed the challenge of working with biologists in trying to translate the problems they face into the language of mathematics.

Click on the Beaker Street link here for more information and booking details

National Science Week – Beaker Street (Hobart)

Friday 16 August & Saturday 17 August
6:00pm – Midnight.

Hobart Town Hall and TMAG.

The Australian Academy of Science is a proud partner of BeakerStreet@TMAG.

 

You are invited to join the Academy for four fascinating talks at Hobart Town Hall, featuring Academy Fellows, Professor Martina Stenzel, Dr Steve Rintoul, Professor Jenny Graves, Professor Mike Archer and Robyn Williams. Following each talk, all guests are invited (and musically escorted!) across the road to Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery for more science, including talks, workshops, art, music, food, bars and more. Tickets to each talk are sold separately. Check www.beakerstreet.com.au for details and tickets.

 

Friday 16 August 

5.30pm: Professor Martina Stenzel – The chemistry of life

6.30pm: Dr Steve Rintoul in conversation with Professor Robyn Williams – Ice, wind and waves: In search of climate clues in the Southern Ocean

7.30pm: Professor Jenny Graves in conversation with Professor Robyn Williams – The future of men?

8.30pm: Professor Mike Archer – Bringing back the dead: why extinction should not have to be forever.

 

About Beaker St:

During National Science Week in Hobart, BeakerStreet@TMAG is a pop-up science bar, a parlour of curiosities, an inn for inquiring minds. Come along to quench your thirst…for knowledge. You will encounter live music, zoological oddities, photographic inspiration, amiable wandering scientists, seriously good food and drink, and such a bounty of distractions that you may forget to go home. Entry at TMAG is free, but tickets must be purchased for some events.

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Friday 16 August & Saturday 17 August
6:00pm – Midnight
Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery

August at QVMAG – The Governor of Tasmania

 

Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner AC, Governor of Tasmania, will give a talk on the history of the Government House gardens. Sunday 25 August in the Meeting Room, QVMAG, Inveresk.