Executive Dean's Message - October 2020
Dear colleagues,
October is always one of our more stressful months, as we await the outcomes of ARC and NHMRC research grant applications, as we wrap up Semester 2 teaching, and as we start to plan and prepare for the next year. This year has been especially challenging as the wait for funding announcements seems to be never ending, as teaching has been complicated by dual mode delivery and changes to assessment, and next year’s budget is highly constrained. Thanks so much to everyone for your resilience and patience during a very challenging October 2020.
However in the midst of all of this there are some good news stories, notably including some very positive changes for universities in the recent federal budget, including 12,000 new Commonwealth-supported places for domestic students (in addition to the 17,000 new places through the Job-ready Graduates Package), 50,000 new places for short courses with priority areas including science and agriculture, and $1 billion of new funding to the research block grant for 2021 only. This is the first time that I can recall such positive changes from government for our sector, and this is warmly welcomed at this challenging time.
We also continue to celebrate the spectacular achievements of our staff and students.
Congratulations to the many staff who have received a Dean’s Commendation for Excellent Teaching in Semester 1, 2020. The staff receiving the highest number of nominations from students are Sara Herke (SMP), Adam Piggott (SMP), Artem Pulemotov (SMP), Chris McGrath (SEES), and Jack Wang (SCMB). The schools receiving the highest number of nominations are SMP, SAFS and SCMB.
Congratulations to Marshall Butterworth, Cath Carkeet, Valerie Powell, Leslie Force, Anthony O’Toole, and Greg Rees for receiving a 25 years of service award from the Chancellor and Vice-chancellor!
Congratulations to Diana Fisher (BIOL), who has been recognised by a 2020 Australian Ecology Research Award and to Warwick Bowen and team (SMP), Carissa Klein and team (SEES), and Sarah Legge and team (SEES) for being selected as finalists in the 2020 Australian Museum Eureka Prize Awards.
It is also wonderful to see Faculty of Science alumnus, and former AFL player, Justin Clarke being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship. We wish him all the best at Oxford University.
Many staff have been successful in attracting significant research funding from a wide range of sources this month, including Yongping Wei and colleagues (SEES), Aunty Dale Chapman, Melissa Fitzgerald and colleagues (SAFS), Bostjan Kobe (SCMB) and Kirsty Short (SCMB).
After a long time without field trips for teaching or research, it was wonderful to see that the Northern Australia Field Trip, run by SEES for ENVM3529 / ENVM7529, was able to be run in September and was a great success. Congratulations to Paul Dennis, Indira Jones, Michael Warne, Matt Rice and colleagues.
Congratulations to our 2020 recipients of the UQ Future Scientist Scholarship: Elyssa Hawke (Veterinary Science), Naran Gillies (Physics) and Charlie Fuller (Science/Arts).
And to UQ Gatton students Samantha Drummond, Vanessa Hartnett and Jane Evans, who were awarded Gatton Past Student’s Association scholarships this year.
In other good news, UQ agriculture has been ranked #3 in the world in the NTU rankings, whilst the U.S. News Best Global Universities rankings recognise our contribution to a number of discipline areas, including environment and ecology at #6 worldwide, biotechnology and applied biology at #10, agriculture at #15, plant and animal science at #19, and infectious diseases at #20.
Also, UQ celebrated the achievements of our outstanding staff in commercialisation, including being #1 in Australia for invention disclosures, for active non-patented IP, for commercialisation revenue and for active start-up and spin-outs.
It is also wonderful that the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2020 has been awarded jointly to Emmanuelle Charpentier (Max Planck) and Jennifer A. Doudna (Berkeley) for the development of a method for genome editing.
Kind regards,
Professor Melissa Brown
Executive Dean