Professor Paul Mulvaney.
Dear reader, we hope you like this new look annual report. Given it reviews our efforts in the already notorious year of 2020, I’m very proud of all the hard work, resilience and determination it represents.
Hopefully it provides an entertaining and informative antidote to the remarkable and challenging 12 months we have all just experienced. As you will see, the Exciton Science community has stuck together and supported each other throughout. We’ve seen productive collaboration and some great science being done, despite the adverse conditions imposed by the pandemic. Nevertheless, we still have a number of staff and students stranded overseas and they are sorely missed. We are working hard to get them back to Australia.
In 2020, we have seen some great progress on our three core Research Themes:
Please read the report to see the highlights and impressive progress being made. You’ll note that we have hit most of our KPIs, except those directly impacted by travel restrictions. As Director I was amazed to see that, despite reduced travel and staff exchange between nodes, some 25% of published scientific work in 2020 involved two or more nodes working together.
The Exciton Science family has grown in 2020. Our 14 Chief Investigators are joined by 26 Associate Investigators, who are helping us reach key milestones or adding specialist skills to the Centre. In some cases, they bring new capabilities. So welcome to new AIs: Colette Boskovic (UoM), Tu Le (RMIT), Anita Ho-Baillie (USyd), Chris Ritchie and Joanne Etheridge (Monash) and Jon Beves (UNSW). We have 11 Partner Investigators, primarily representing industry and overseas collaborators, and we have more than 40 postdoctoral researchers and 90 graduate students, bringing Exciton Science to just over 200 members.
We are privileged to have a very distinguished International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC). Once again, we thank Professor Elsa Reichmanis (Chair, LehighU), Jenny Nelson (ICL), and Marc Baldo (MIT) and we say thank you to Prof Hiroshi Masuhara (Taiwan) and Neil Greenham (Cambridge) who both stepped down at the end of their terms in 2020. We will welcome new members Prof Takuzo Aida (University of Tokyo) and Prof Jochen Feldman (Ludwig-Maximillians University, Munich) as incoming members of ISAC in 2021.
We also wish to acknowledge the role of Prof Mark Considine from the University of Melbourne, who finished up his term as Provost and Chair of the Centre’s Advisory Board in 2020.
The Centre is only as strong as the commitment of the people who work and study within it: Our professional staff have worked tirelessly to keep the Centre functioning throughout the pandemic. So next time you see them, please don’t forget to thank them for their ongoing support, friendliness and enthusiasm: Kate Lowry (COO); Kate Hall (Finance Manager), Sam Gaul (Node Administrator), Johanna Monk (Centre Administrator), Jasmine Lynch (Outreach Officer), Iain Strachan (Media and Communications Officer), Brooke Nati (Node Administrator, RMIT), Piumika Perera (Node Administrator, UNSW), Jenny Chen (Node Administrator, Monash) and Michelle Sullivan (Node Administrator, USydney). They provide the glue that binds our distant nodes together and I would like to thank them all for their efforts in 2020, as we push to keep the Centre an exciton place to be!
Final thanks to Idaho Design for the great layout of the annual report and to everyone who has helped provide content and assistance with its preparation.
Professor Paul Mulvaney.
Director, ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science.
March 2021