Australian Synchrotron's National Science Colloquium Advisory Group of Twelve Named. (June 16, 2010)

On October 30, 2009 the Board of the Australian Synchrotron, under the chairwomanship of Catherine Walter, removed Melbourne University chemist Rob Lamb as director of the facility, and as a result the facility's staff began an extensive work to rules protest while a number of the members of its Science Advisory Committee resigned. On December 1, 2009 the board announced that Professor Peter Colman from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, would take up a position on the synchrotron board while Sir Gustav Nossal had been recruited by the board to be an advocate for the facility and would head a new advisory body, the National Science Colloquium.

At the time of the announcement, Professor Nossal was asked if  his Colloquium might be seen as a substitute for the Science Advisory Committee, whose relations with the board had broken down -- he said: "There is no intention whatsoever of that," and added the intention was that the Colloquium would "supplement" the Committee's work. Just what that meant was not indicated.

Now 7½ months later the 12 members of the National Science Colloquium have been named. They will include Professor Nossal as chairman and The Australian reports included will be Professors Gavin Brown, former vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, who currently directs the Royal Institution of Australia, Susan Cory, president of the Australian Academy of Science, and former director of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Margaret Sheil, CEO of the Australian Research Council, Warwick Anderson, CEO of the National Health and Medical Research Council, Lyn Beazley, zoologist and chief scientist for Western Australia, and Drs Robin Batterham former chief scientist for Australia and president of Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and Barry Jones, former federal government science minister.

Once again Professor Nossal was asked if the board instituted National Science Colloquium might give advice at odds with advice from the Science Advisory Committee, Sir Gustav said: "That is a good hypothetical question. My answer would be, I hope not," and he indicated that he strongly favoured expansion of the facility: "Its use is limited only by the imagination of the investigators, there is practically no limit to the usefulness of this machine. We think this is the best synchrotron, for its size, in the world. [But] there are some experiments you just can't do on this synchrotron and the people will go to Tokyo or to Chicago. The world doesn't stand still. Science is very competitive. In other nations, they're creeping ahead."

The Australian Synchrotron's reconstituted Science Advisory Committee following resignation of a number of it members in November 2009 consists of:

                     International members

• Prof. Hongjie Xu, Director of Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility, Member Chinese Synchrotron Radiation Special Committee
• Prof. Soichi Wakatsuki, Director, Photon Factory Synchrotron Radiation Facility Tsukuba, Japan
• Prof. Janet Smith, University of Michigan Medical School, Life Sciences Institute, USA
• Prof. Michael Hart, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Manchester, UK
• Assoc. Prof. Lisa Miller, National Synchrotron Light Source, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA
• Dr Harald Reichert, Director of Research, European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF), Grenoble France.
  

                             Australia/New Zealand members

• Prof. Ted Baker, Professor of Biological Sciences, the University of Auckland, NZ
• Prof. Mitchell Guss, Professor of Molecular and Microbial Biosciences, University of Sydney
• Prof. Brendan Kennedy, Professor of Chemistry, The University of Sydney
• Prof. Keith Nugent, Professor of Physics, The University of Melbourne.

And perhaps to come will be Uncle Tom Cobley and all.