Annual Report 2009.pdf - School of Physics - University of Melbourne

group reports & publicationsarc centre of excellencefor coherent x-ray science (CXS)Professor Keith Nugent2009 was a great year for CXS. It began with the newsthat we had done very well in the ARC review at theend of 2008 and that our funding level is to be increasedand extended until December 2013. This is very excitingfor us and we celebrated in a joint event with anotherUniversity of Melbourne led centre, the CoE for Free-Radical Chemistry and Biotechnology which also had asimilarly successful review outcome.The acquisition of guaranteed funding for a further fiveyears means that we can re-focus on the long-termgoals that should be at the centre of the planning ofan organisation such as CXS. With this in mind, inSeptember, CXS held a very enjoyable and productiveplanning retreat in Beechworth in which we gaveconsiderable thought to the directions we should take.With the able assistance of the members of our ScientificAdvisory Board, well-informed decisions were made andwe are already seeing many of these bearing fruit.Another response to the review was our decision todo some re-casting of the directions of the centre.Accordingly, we invited a group led by Dave Kielpinskifrom Griffith University to join us so that we can enhanceour experimental work in the study of the interactionof high-fields with atomic structures, an importantaspect of our long term goal of enabling the analysis ofmolecular structures using X-ray free electron lasers.We have named this new part of CXS the AttosecondScience Program as it will concentrate on the interactionof extremely short light pulses with atomic systems.An attosecond is extremely short – there are 10 18attoseconds in one second , which is a 1 followed byeighteen zeroes, and this is the same as the number ofseconds in the age of the universe.As part of this re-structuring, we also have elected toclose down the Detectors & Beamline DevelopmentProgram based at Monash University. This decisionwas made easier by the news that Chris Hall had beenoffered an ongoing position at the Australian Synchrotronwith the result that the program was no longer viable.Rob Lewis also took the opportunity to resign fromCXS so as to enable him to re-focus on his work relatedto biomedical imaging. We wish both of these formerCXS members well in their future research and fullyanticipate an ongoing relationship with both of them. Ourassociation with work on detectors will continue as wedeepen our relationship with the Cooperative ResearchCentre for Biomedical Imaging Development.Scientifically, the centre continues to perform superbly.CXS members continue to be highly productive andpublishing high-impact science. There are a numberof measures of the impact of our work but one that isnotable is the number of our papers that are featured onthe covers of journals. This year, three CXS papers werefeatured on the cover of the journal in which they werepublished. This is an exceptional result and indicates thatworld continues to take note of the quality of our science.A centre is more than the sum of its parts and thesum of its outputs. We have continued to ensure thatmembers of CXS have access to a vibrant program ofcentre activities, meetings, workshops and visitors. Wewant CXS members to be able to meeting the leadingscientists in the world and discuss their ideas with themand with each other. This has led to a number of veryproductive workshops, also outlined in this report, as wellas innovative ideas such as the “ Talking Backwards”workshop in which physicists were asked to explainedbiology to CXS members, and biologists asked toexplain physics. This is in addition to CXS workshopson commercialisation, intellectual property, careers andscience. We thank our active IP and Advisory Boardmembers for their contributions to all of these activities.2009 was also a year in which some of our outreachactivities hit a new level of achievement. The movieproject continues to proceed well and we were ableto see a preview of it at our end-of-year function. Wealso formed a partnership with Santa Maria College,Northcote which we have called Growing Tall Poppies. Thisprogram was supported by the Catholic Education Officeand the University of Melbourne through a KnowledgeTransfer grant, and it went on to be selected as thewinner of the Victorian State Impact Award from thenew Schools First grant system sponsored by the NationalAustralia Bank and the Federation of Young Australian.As a result, the partnership was awarded a cash grant of$100,000 to support its further development. This awardhas led to considerable publicity for CXS and Santa MariaCollege and will lead to further exciting developmentsover the coming years.We have had some staff depart from CXS and so wewish them well. In particular, Garth Williams has beenwith CXS since its beginning and he has now moved onto an ongoing position at the X-ray free electron projectat the SLAC laboratory run by Stanford University inCalifornia. We wish Garth well, but expect to continue towork with him in the coming yearsFor publications produced from the University ofMelbourne Physics staff, please refer to the Optics groupreport. For publications produced by all ARC nodes andparticipating partner institutions, please refer to:www.coecxs.org40www.physics.unimelb.edu.au