2012 thomson reuters australia citation & innovation awards

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Professor Brian P. Schmidt is a Distinguished Professor, Australian Research
Council Laureate Fellow and astrophysicist at the Australian National University’s
Mount Stromlo Observatory and Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
He is known for his research in using supernovae as cosmological probes. He
currently holds an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship.
Brian shared both the 2006 Shaw Prize in Astronomy and the 2011 Nobel Prize
in Physics with Saul Perlmutter and Adam Reis for providing evidence that the
expansion of the universe is accelerating. He is also a previous Thomson Reuters
Citation Award winner from 2008.
Brian makes wine and enjoys cooking. He and his wife are owners of the winery
Maipenrai, a winery in Sutton Australia which has been rated a four-star winery.
At the 2011 Nobel Prize Ceremonies in Stockholm, he presented the King Carl XVI
Gustaf of Sweden with a bottle of his wine.
Dr Alan Finkel AM PhD FTSE is Chancellor of Monash University and presidentelect
of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. He is
a co-founder and chairman of Cosmos Media, publisher of Cosmos Magazine, and
he is the chairman of the Australian Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics,
known as CAASTRO.
In addition to an on-going property business, Alan’s most recent employment was
as the Chief Technology Officer of Better Place Australia, a company that provides
clean energy to run Australia’s growing fleet of electric cars. Previously, for twenty
years Alan was the CEO of Axon Instruments, an ASX-listed, American company
that made precision scientific instruments used by researchers at pharmaceutical
companies and universities for the discovery of new medicines.
Alan established and chairs the Australian Course in Advanced Neuroscience to
provide advanced training to young scientists and he established a secondary
school science program named STELR that is currently running in nearly 300
secondary schools around Australia.
4