The Royal Society of Victoria is delighted to congratulate Dr Ashleigh Hood, the 2022 recipient of the Phillip Law Postdoctoral Award, and the first to be awarded in the new category of Earth Sciences. Her research focuses on the co-evolution of life and planetary surface conditions over the last several billion years of Earth’s history. Ashleigh attained her PhD in geology from the University of Melbourne in 2014.

Associate Professor Stephen Gallagher has spent months at sea over the past several years, drilling into the past to obtain a record of Australian geological history. The expedition set out to recover a 5-million-year record of the Australian climate – and surpassed their expectations by uncovering 50 million years. Gallagher was pleasantly surprised at the gems of information discovered on changes to aridity, sea levels, and monsoon cycles that the core samples revealed.