2011 Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure

Astronomy: Future astronomy research infrastructure will become increasingly
expensive and larger scale in terms of size and complexity. As such, it will become
increasingly international, requiring multi-national partnerships in order to be able to
afford and operate it. Key examples are the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and
Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT), both of which will be billion-dollar projects that will
involve global participation (spanning Australasia, Asia, North America and Europe).
Australia needs to have the appropriate research infrastructure funding mechanisms
and governance arrangements in place if it is to be an effective player in such global
projects. Increasingly, accessing and participating in international facilities will provide
the most effective way of managing future research infrastructure investments in
astronomy by delivering an evolving portfolio of astronomy facilities and access
arrangements.
A portfolio of facilities is needed to do world-class science, including continued and
future access to facilities such as 4-metre and 8-metre class optical telescopes, survey
telescopes, extremely large optical telescopes, national radio observatories and a
range of telescopes operating across the spectrum. The development of state-of-the art
instrumentation for existing facilities will also provide the capability required to address
some aspects of the big questions.
Computational and Simulation Science: Data-intensive scientific discovery is a
future direction for research globally, due in large part to the ‘data deluge’ across
numerous disciplines. As with ICT generally, the pace of change is relentless.
Nevertheless research productivity gains have been limited often due to: relative
novelty of technology and practices, skills and ease-of-use. This can illuminate the
path forward: sustained infrastructure investment, accompanied by training and
education programs in computational techniques and in the design and use of
robust models. Most critical is a clear focus on research user needs and usability
of the technologies.
Realising the benefits of the ICT advances will entail a phase change in algorithms
and simulations practices, a coming revolution that should inform initiatives in
Australia. While such systems would only rarely be available to Australian
researchers in the near term, their impacts would be felt through discoveries
enabled and competitive pressures.
Sensors and Measurement Systems: This area needs to establish capabilities
that bring together emerging materials systems and fabrication technologies to
create new forms of sensing devices capable of measuring the chemical,
biological, or physical characteristics of systems of a diverse range of scales
ranging from single molecules to entire ecosystems. Such devices will increasingly
need to be capable of multiplexed sensing, of being integrated with other sensing
modalities and high throughput techniques.
This will impact on a broad range of areas of research and industry spanning from
the environment and agriculture, medical diagnostics and fundamental discovery in
the biological sciences, and in safeguarding Australia. Much of this activity can be
undertaken by building on the scope of the current area of ‘fabrication’. Sensors
and Measurement Systems will have strong synergies with the areas of advanced
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