BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | November 18, 2016

Dear all,

Huge congrats to all of our professional staff winners, commended and short-listed at the VC’s Professional Staff awards on Monday – we know how fantastic our staff are but it’s great to see them getting the recognition they deserve at the highest levels! Speaking of which, please join us at morning tea on Monday at 10am to say a huge thanks to our admin team for their hard work. There will be a baking storm over the weekend.

We held a very successful and enjoyable retreat this week, discussing important L&T and research issues for the department. I haven’t actually been in the office since (now in Melbourne!) but we’ll pull together the outcomes over the next week or so and prioritise them for action in 2017.

As you can see from the ‘Save the Date’ section, there is a lot of activity coming up over the next few weeks. Please mark these in your calendars and I look forward to seeing as many people as possible at the upcoming seminars for our new lectureship position in genetics and bioinformatics.

cheerio

Michelle

Save the Date

This coming week 21st – 25th November

Mon 21st: High Tea to Thank the Admin Team; 10am – 11am; E8A-280 (Tea Room).

Tue 22nd: Special seminar Lectureship in Genetics and Bioinformatics Dr Jemma Geoghegan;
10-11am Biology Tea room

Wed 23rd: Morning Tea with HoD; 10-10.30am; E8A-280 (Tea Room), followed by…

Wed 23rd: Special seminar Lectureship in Genetics and Bioinformatics Dr Nicholas Matzke; 10:30am – 11.30am (Tea room)

Thu 24th:  Special seminar Lectureship in Genetics and Bioinformatics Dr Jessica Stapley 10:30am – 11.30am (Tea room)

Fri 25th: MQ Marine Science Centre Seminar Dr Bob Creese (NSW DPI) Does Marine Science Matter?: 4pm – 5pm; E8A-280 (Tea Room) – followed by drinks at the U-Bar.

Following week 28th November – 2nd December

Mon Nov 28th – Fri Dec 2nd: HDR writing boot camp; at Pearl Beach.

Tue 29th Nov: R-Users Group – Handle Phylogenetic Trees in R; 3pm – 5pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 30th Nov: Morning Tea with HoD; 10:30am – 11am; The Hill.

Thu 1st Dec: Special seminar Lectureship in Genetics and Bioinformatics Dr Alyson Ashe 10:30am – 11.30am (Tea room)

Thu 1st Dec: PhD completion seminars – Sarah Jacquet and Marissa Betts; 3-4 pm  E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room), followed by drinks.

Fri 2nd: ECR Early Career Development Workshop 2016 (see details below).

Coming up

Dec 5th: Special seminar Lectureship in Genetics and Bioinformatics Dr Karl Hassan (time TBC)

Dec 5th: MRes Poster Session; 10:30am – 11:30am; E8A-280 (Tea Room).

Dec 6th: Department Formal Exam Meeting for Semester 2 2016; 11am; E8A-280 (Tea Room). Followed by…

Dec 6th: Department Christmas Party; from 12.30pm Biology courtyard.

Dec 9th: Faculty of Science & Engineering Xmas BBQ.

Dec 13-14th: Macquarie Minds showcase; Macquarie University.

2017

Feb 21st: E8A Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am – 12:30pm; E8A-120 (Red Lab).

Feb 23rd: E8C Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9am – 12:00pm; E8C-106.

Feb 24th: F7B Digital Teaching Lab Induction; 9:30am – 11:00am; F7B-108 (and 105).

General News and Announcements

Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Professional Staff

Huge congratulations to:

Leigh Staas – winner of the award for Collaboration and Connection.

Sarah Collison – highly commended in the award category for Outstanding Service.

also short-listed were the Field Friendly team (Tarun, Andrew, Amanda and Sarah) in the ‘innovation and process improvement’ category and Marita Holley for outstanding service – well done all!

High Tea to Thank the Admin Team

Please join us for High Tea on Monday, 21st 10-11 in the Bio Tearoom, and an opportunity to thank the admin team for their tireless efforts in sorting out forms, iLearn, credit cards, accounts, timesheets, reimbursements, budgets, tracker, travels, and general befuddlement.

Baked and served by the executive team!

morning_tea

Want to book a temperature controlled research space?

The department has a number of temperature controlled rooms that are available for all staff and students to access for research. We have established a new booking system that operates in parallel to and is accessed through the department vehicle booking system. See…

https://bio.mq.edu.au/rbs/day.php?

Choose the link to ‘Controlled temperature room’ bookings on the left and the various rooms available are listed. Please note that this does not include cold rooms.

When booking, please provide details of the temperature and lighting conditions you are using. Booking requests are subject to an approval process so may initially appear as a pending booking.

As the system is currently based on the vehicle booking system, you must have had a vehicle induction to be able to use this system. If you want to book a room but have not done a vehicle induction, please let me know (grant.hose@mq.edu.au).

In time there will be an induction process for using these rooms and booking approval will be dependent on completing an induction.

MQMarine Talk

Day / Date / Time / Location: Friday 25th November, 4pm, E8A-280 (Biol Tea Room).

Speaker: Bob Creese, DPI (Department of Primary industries, Port Stephens Fisheries Institute, Locked Bag 1, Nelson Bay, NSW 2315, Australia)

Title: Does marine science matter: a personal journey from snails to sharks and from research to management

Abstract
Marine scientists often claim their research will make a significant contribution to the management of the marine environment. However, possible pathways for adoption of research findings are not well understood, are rarely explicitly considered, or are poorly articulated. On the other side, marine managers and policy makers often claim that they use ‘evidence-based’ approaches. Yet, they are often poor at defining their research needs, have an inadequate understanding of scientific methodology, and are not familiar with the relevant scientific literature. This phenomenon is not new. Attempts have been made in various places and at various times to address the issue and to devise mechanisms to improve the dialogue between managers and scientists – with varying levels of success.
This talk will explore this conundrum through the lens of Bob’s own career – from a passionate young natural historian to a senior public servant. The issue has come into very sharp focus for Bob over the last 3 years because of an involvement in 2 key NSW Government initiatives – a new approach to marine management based on threat and risk assessment under the NSW Marine Estate Management Act, and the development of the NSW Shark Management Strategy which underwent a shift in emphasis only last month. The role that marine science has played in these processes will be critically examined and the need for good quality, targeted research and development will be emphasized.

ECR Early Career Development Workshop 2016

The MQ Marine Research Centre will be offering an ECR Early Career Development Workshop 2016 to Masters/PhD students, postdocs and academics on the 2^nd December 2016. The workshop will focus on avenues to improve the track records of ECRs to be more competitive both inside and outside academia, and diversifying collaborations between ECRs and senior marine researchers.

Registration is open to anyone who is interested and is free of charge. For more information on these workshops and registratons please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/ecr-career-development-workshop-2016-tickets-29139660509?aff=erelexpmlt. If you have any questions please email <marinescience@mq.edu.au>.

Please Be Aware

Tarun Rajan (Vehicle Manager) and Sarah Collison (Terrestrial Fieldwork Manager) will both be on leave from the 17th November onwards. There will be no vehicle inductions till the 12th December 2016. Amanda Sordes <amanda.sordes@mq.edu.au> (or 0479 101 272)  will be able to help out only with any accidents or emergencies. We apologise for any inconvenience and appreciate your co-operation.

Boating Officer

Josh Aldridge will provide interim support for boating in the department until a replacement for Andrew Irvine has been appointed. Josh will do boating activity risk assessments and inductions when required. Please contact Josh if you plan any boating activities.

Environmental Humanities Symposium

Here is a flyer for a Symposium organised through Environmental Humanities that people might want to go to: final-program-mq-environmental-humanities-symposium-21-november-2016

It’s a Genes to Geoscience style program

Plant of the Week

For this week – Gleichenia dicarpa – the Coral Fern

(Source: http://www.stridvall.se/flowers/gallery/album13/671_23?full=1)

New Senior Research Fellow – Introducing Ronald Lee

Ronald Lee has recently joined the Department as a Senior Research Fellow.  Physically based at CSIRO in Canberra, Ronald is a molecular geneticist by training and has developed genomic resources for many insect species to investigate how they adapt to harsh environments.  His next big challenge is the Queensland fruit fly (‘Qfly’), the most economically damaging pest of horticultural crops in Australia. Ronald’s work on Qfly is part of the $20m Macquarie ‘SITPlus’ program funded by Horticulture Innovation Australia. This research program explores key aspects of Qfly biology relevant to future implementation of the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) in Australia. In SIT, millions of reproductively sterile flies will be released to disrupt reproduction of wild populations. The success of SIT hinges on the “survival skills” and “sexual attractiveness” of mass-reared male Qflies.

Together with colleagues at Macquarie and CSIRO, Ronald will investigate fundamental questions of domestication, geographical variation, ecological competence, reproductive fitness, mating behaviour, re-mating inhibition and nutritional adaptation of Qfly. He will act as the primary liaison for numerous collaborative Qfly projects between CSIRO and Macquarie, and will supervise PhD students in these research areas.

Contact: <ronald.lee@mq.edu.au>

Biology Tutor for Curious Minds

One of the biology tutors for Curious Minds has dropped out and we are in need of a new biology tutor for the December 2016 and July 2017 residentials. The description for the tutors is – Support the Subject Leader in the delivery of topics agreed in advance in designated tutorials, laboratory sessions and excursions during the STEM for girl’s program.  See attached information. This might be of interest to a PhD student.

They are expected to live on campus at UNSW during the two week long residentials (all costs covered) and receive a small honorarium. One of the activities we are doing is on microbiology but I am sure most biology PhDs would be able to cope with the level.

Do you know of a student who might be interested?

task-statement-tutor-2016-17

task-statement2-2016-17-tutor

Conference Travel Award

The open access journal Diversity is sponsoring a 2017 travel award for excellence in any field of biodiversity.

The travel award will be given to a PhD or postdoctoral student and consists of 800 CHF toward attending a conference in 2017. Send the application by 15 March 2017. The winner will be announced on the Diversity website by 30 April 2017. Please find additional details here.

New Publications

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