Australian Synchrotron's Troubled Recent Past Appears Overcome. (March 10, 2011)

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. This Tuesday the current international scientific advisory committee (SAC), concluded its meeting in Melbourne and according to ScienceInsider's Elizabeth Finkel found that the "Australian synchrotron is pulling together under new leadership and churning out good science".

Although the facility returned to full operation in April last year it was not until a fortnight ago, February 28, 2011, that the managing board appointed crystallographer Keith Nugent as part-time director and physicist Andrew Peele as science chief.

Dr Finkel writes:

The popular appointments have boosted morale. "It's very clear the synchrotron is now science led," says SAC chair Ted Baker, an x-ray crystallographer at the University of Auckland. The synchrotron, he says, is "doing brilliantly" in terms of generating scientific publications and maintaining high-quality beamlines.

The challenge now, Baker says, is to convince officials in the State of Victoria and the federal government that things are back on track. The synchrotron has no guaranteed funding beyond June 2012, putting plans for more beamlines on hold. "It's critical that the Victorian and Federal governments understand what a jewel they've got," says Baker.