January 2016 news

Welcome to another year.

Well 2015 turned out to be a fantastic year for PhD completions. Five students are now “academically qualified” for their PhD degrees – Gretchen Grammer completed around the middle of 2015, but Heidi Alleway, Thomas Barnes, Judith Giraldo and Nastaran Mazloumi all received notification of their successful completions in December/early January. We all look forward to their graduation ceremonies around April 2016 – after this time their photos on the past students/research staff page will be updated.

It was also a great year for paper writing – the lab had around 19 papers published or accepted. The majority had lead authors that were students or postdocs in the lab. Several of the papers were mentioned as news items and a number of others were tweets. We have some exciting papers submitted so watch this space!

Bronwyn Gillanders, along with Pablo Munguia, is heading to China (Xiamen) and Hong Kong in early January. Later in the year we’ll return with around 15 students, funded as part of the New Colombo Plan. This is an initiative of the Australian Government which aims to increase knowledge of the Indo Pacific in Australia by supporting undergraduates (in our case through the mobility program).

January is normally a quiet time in the lab with many research staff and students on leave. It’s also one of our key grant writing periods and a great opportunity to catch up on some literature and write some papers without too many interruptions. The undergraduate students return towards the end of February with first semester starting on 29 February 2016.