for Grad. Students

The Institute offers awards for postgraduate students whose research projects are associated with nuclear science, or its applications, and require access to the unique national facilities at the Lucas Heights Science & Technology Centre.

This week, along with the announcement that Dr Ian Smith will return to New Zealand to take up non-executive directorial roles after steering ANSTO through the commissioning of OPAL, AINSE announced the 2008 postgraduate research awards.

Smith was himself an AINSE postgraduate scholar back in the late '60s. The new cohort of scholars takes the total of AINSE PGRAs to 276 since the first scholarships were awarded in 1960.

Dr Dennis Mather, Executive Secretary of AINSE said that this year there had been unprecedented interest in the program with 58 applications being received from 24 universities across Australia and New Zealand. The proposed research would involve a broad range of ANSTO facilities including those in the Bragg Institute, the Institute of Materials Engineering, the Institute of Environmental Science and the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Research. The final decision was a tough one and in the end 15 new PGRA scholarships were awarded.

A new feature in this year's scholarships is the introduction of the John Ferris Memorial Scholarship, which was awarded to Jamie Howarth at the University of Otago, ironically the university at which Ian Smith was Deputy Vice Chancellor Research immediately prior to taking up his position at ANSTO four years ago.

Jamie is being supervised by Assoc. Professor Sean Fitzsimons, Head of Department, Department of Geography at Otago and by Dr Geraldine Jacobsen at ANSTO. He will be researching radiocarbon contamination in lacustrine sediments: to gain an understanding of the process and developing a reliable dating strategy. This research will feed into our understanding of climate change in the past and will inform the development of climate change models for the future, said Mather.

International Conference Travel Scholarships

Applications are invited from students and post doctoral fellows from AINSE member universities who wish to present their AINSE supported research at an international meeting which is being conducted outside Australia .