Amy Thunig recognised as an Emerging Female Leader

Gamilaroi woman Associate Lecturer Amy Thunig (pictured above left) was named joint winner of the ‘Emerging Female Leader in the Government or Public Sector’ award at the 2019 Women’s Agenda Leadership Awards held on Friday, acknowledging her as one of the game changers, agenda setters and household names of tomorrow.

Thunig is an associate lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies where she is also undertaking a PhD in education with a focus on Indigenous women in academia.

As well as her academic work, Amy has published 16 media articles in 12 months, and appears regularly on television programs such as ABCs The Drum. The judges said she is a wonderful role model for women, particularly Indigenous women: “As the first member of her family to attend university, Amy has outstanding academic and also community leadership. She has overcome significant barriers and is challenging us all to think differently about First Nation’s peoples.”

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Defence funding success

Congratulations to the Department of Psychology’s Professor Mike Richardson, Associate Professor Rachel Kallen, Dr Monique Crane and Dr Ben Searle on their Australian Defence funding outcomes.

Mike Richardson and Rachel Kallen’s project will receive around $485,000 funding by Australian Defence on their research proposal ‘Developing Responsive and Adaptive Artificial-Agents for Team Training’. While Dr Monique Crane and Dr Ben Searle have been successful in an approximately $410,000 project also funded by Australian Defence on ‘Resilience for Navy Personnel Deployed at Sea’.

The research proposals from Macquarie University were two of only nine studies selected from a field of 116 Australia-wide university research proposals.

The Minister for Defence Industry, the Hon Melissa Price MP, recently announced that these research studies will be carried out over the next four years through the Human Performance Research network (HPRnet), managed by Defence Science and Technology under the $730 million Next Generation Technologies Fund.

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Modular Photonics is at it again

Leading optics and telecommunications expert, Dr Simon Gross from Modular Photonics – a start-up using IP created from Macquarie University – has been named as one of three winners of a Menzies Foundation Science Entrepreneurships Fellowship.

As announced at a gala dinner last month, Simon has received $90,000 to commercialise his research as part of a budding partnership between CSIRO and the Menzies Foundation designed to close a nation-wide funding gap.

The Menzies Foundation supports leaders who have the capacity to make catalytic change to improve Australia’s future. Established in honour of Sir Robert Menzies, the Foundation’s philanthropy supports entrepreneurs in science, leaders in schools, and guiding Australia’s response to complex global legal issues.

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Announcing the Three Minute Thesis winners

Last month, 13 of Macquarie’s best PhD communicators from across the five faculties battled it out at the MQ Three Minute Thesis (3MT) university final, cheered on by HDR colleagues and staff, supervisors, industry connections, family and friends.

Congratulations go to the 2019 3MT winner Gillian Smith (Faculty of Arts), runner up Julien Lubeek (Faculty of Science and Engineering), third place-getter Talia Nardo (Faculty of Human Sciences) and people’s choice winner Minami Uchida (Faculty of Human Sciences).