Awards spotlight science of light

Achievement

For University of Adelaide physicist Professor Tanya Monro, 2010 will be a year to remember.

Professor Monro, who is the Director of the University's Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS), has this year won five major awards for her work.

Much of Professor Monro's work involves the generation and control of light using completely novel optical fibres, many of which are manufactured at the University. This enables the creation of new tools for scientific research and solutions for problems in areas such as defence, medical diagnostics, remote environmental monitoring and food and wine production.

IPAS brings together over 130 physicists, chemists and biologists to create these new sensing technologies. Since 2005, Professor Monro has generated more than $65 million in research funding and won numerous awards for her work. This year has added greatly to those awards.

In August, Professor Monro jointly won the top prize in the South Australian Science Excellence Awards by being announced South Australian Scientist of the Year (shared with Professor Angel Lopez, Centre for Cancer Biology, SA Pathology).

In October, she won the South Australia Telstra Business Women's Award in the "White Pages Community and Government" category, which led to her being automatically nominated for the national award. Last month, Professor Monro took out the national Telstra Business Women's Award, which recognises the achievements of inspirational women who work in government departments, statutory bodies or not-for-profit organisations. November also saw her being named Advantage SA's South Australian of the Year in Science (again shared with Professor Angel Lopez).

And in perhaps the most significant honour she has won this year, Professor Monro was announced as South Australia's Australian of the Year 2011. This makes her a finalist for the national Australian of the Year awards, which will be announced in Canberra on the eve of Australia Day 2011. The awards celebrate the achievements of eminent Australians who are considered "role models for us all" in helping to create a better Australia.

Professor Monro was also a finalist in two of this year's other major science awards: the Australian Museum Eureka Prize "Leadership in Science" category and the inaugural Scopus Young Researcher of the Year Awards "Physical Sciences" category.

She said the awards provided "a great opportunity to get the message out there that science is not just about the work of individuals, it's really about the work of a whole team of researchers".

"What these awards do is give us a real boost of confidence that the vision our team has is the right one. It also shows that we're not the only ones excited about our work - other people are excited about what we're trying to achieve," Professor Monro said.

She said that each of the awards was significant in its own way. "For example, the Scientist of the Year award and the nomination for the Scopus award are significant because they are recognition of the quality of your science from your peers and of the impact of this science on the international scientific community.

"The Telstra Business Women's Awards recognise that scientists have to apply a range of other business skills to their work: selling their vision to commercial partners, negotiating deals, controlling complex budgets, motivating high-performing teams, communicating to the media, as well as running the business of scientific research and development."

She said the SA Australian of the Year Award came "completely out of the blue".

"It's grounding when you see the quality of the other people nominated for that award and what they contribute to society. The exciting thing about this award is that it recognises the importance of science to our community. One of the biggest challenges for any scientist is to break that stereotypical view of what science is and what we do. Science is an extremely creative, collaborative process. It's wonderful to see the value of science being acknowledged in this way," she said.

Story by David Ellis