As those registered to participate in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey receive and return their forms over the coming weeks, the Executive Committee and Council of the Royal Society of Victoria wishes to express and explain its support for marriage equality in Australia, acknowledging there will be a plurality of views on this matter within our broad membership.
Many are questioning why legislation recognising the rights of couples from the same gender to marry is legally required. We’ve examined the matter carefully and this position paper presents our conclusions.
We are delighted to announce Dr Kaye Susannah Morgan is this year’s recipient of the prestigious Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award for the Physical Sciences.
Dr Morgan is currently a VESKI Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the School of Physics at her alma mater, Monash University, and is the Chair of Biomedical Physics with the Technische Universität München in Germany. In addition to her remarkable research into soft-tissue, multi-modal, x-ray imaging techniques, Kaye also supervises the next generation of physics PhDs and teaches a Masters course in image processing for physics.
As finalists from a very competitive applicant pool of 41 final year PhDs from across Victorian research institutions, our newest members of the Royal Society of Victoria had already demonstrated the excellence of their scientific research before they even walked in the front door; the final task before them was to communicate the methods and significance of their complex work to a general audience of scientists and science enthusiasts in a clear, concise and engaging presentation of no more than 10 minutes!
This Independent Review provides a blueprint for introducing security, reliability and emission abatement into a policy area that has been recognised Australia-wide as lacking national direction. The panel has worked hard to provide a means of breaking an entrenched political deadlock which has reduced investment and stifled development in this country, despite our significant sources of renewable energy.
The RSV’s Executive commends the leadership of the Chief Scientist in the development and delivery of this Independent Review and the dissemination of its findings.
Review by by Helen Gardiner van de Pol
As science communicators, we are always being asked to evaluate our activities and demonstrate impact. Teachers know this well. How do you know which part of what program helped form the adult you see before you today? That science outreach event you planned for 8-9-year-olds some 20 years ago, did it impact those children as intended? Did it contribute to their later decision to choose a career in science? Did it make them more scientifically literate even though they grew up to do art? If we interviewed them today, would they correctly recall your wonderful program and describe how it changed their life or would it just be part of a fog of memories which included fun trips to the museum with their favourite aunt who was a scientist?
