BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENT MATTERS | October 13, 2017

Dear all,

Lots of busy activity this week with the Faculty Safety Fair – thanks to Marita and the WHS committee for their great work (see pictures below), the Centre for Smart Green Cities member meeting, preparation of infrastructure grants due at the Faculty on Monday, and intensive work to pull together the full Taronga Partnership proposal. As well, planning is underway for the Department retreat 13-14 November where we will devote one day to research and one day to L&T discussions and planning. Coming up next week look out for the HDR Supplementary conference on Tuesday and an interesting L&T session on Thursday focused on engaging students in large units – all academic staff should put these events in their diaries!

cheerio,

Michelle

Save the Date

This coming week 16th – 20th October

Tue 17th: HDR Supplementary Conference; 9.30am – 12.15pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 18th: Department Morning Tea; 10:30am – 11:30am; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 18th: Departmental Seminar – Ayesha Tulloch, University of Queensland; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Thu 19th: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:30pm, E8C-212.

Thu 19th: L&T session – Maurizio Manuguerra – Commitment, engagement and learning in a large cohort of students; 4pm – 5pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Fri 20th: REP Workshop – On the Origins of Art; 12pm – 4.30pm; MQU Art Gallery.

Following week 23rd – 27th October

Tue 24th: REP workshop: Making your science matter: Linking science with action to improve the world; 2pm – 4pm; E6B-149 (booking essential).

Wed 25th: Department Morning Tea; 10:30am – 11:30am; The Hill.

Wed 25th: Departmental Seminar – Associate Professor Carla Sgro, Monash University; 1pm – 2pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Wed 25th: Advanced Biology Student Conference; 2 – 4pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Thu 26th: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:30pm, E8C-212.

Coming up

Every Thursday for the next few months: Writing Workshop; 2:30-4:00pm; E8C-212

Nov 1st: MQ Excellence in Research and Teaching Awards; 3 – 5.30pm; E7B Indoor Courtyard.

Nov 2nd: REP Workshop: Leadership: Defining Your Values; 2pm – 4pm; Manly Room (C5C – bookings essential)

Nov 13-14: Department Retreat for Academic Staff; venue Kooindah Waters Central Coast.

Nov 23rd: Todd Philips – Embedding Indigenous content into the Biology curriculum; 4pm – 5pm; E8A-280 (Biology Tea Room).

Dec 5th: Formal Department Meeting for Grading, followed by the Christmas Party.

Department seminar schedule
November 1st: Dr Marc Seid, University of Scranton, USA
November 8th: Associate Professor Bob Wong, Monash University
November 15th: Professor Dan Blumstein, UCLA
November 22nd: Associate Professor Nathan Lo, The University of Sydney

General News and Announcements

FACULTY OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING SAFETY FAIR

A great time was had by all!  Check out the happy snaps below.

Yes! Morning Tea

Support for the Marriage Equality runs high at MQU.  An Ally “Yes Support” Morning Tea we held this week. Biological Sciences Diversity and Inclusion participated, photos below.

Showcasing BIOL391 Biology capstone

Our capstone unit BIOL391 was showcased at an event run by MQ”s Careers and Employment Service and opened by PVC L&T Sherman Young. There was lots of enthusiasm from the audience about what we are doing. You can read about it here

http://teche.ltc.mq.edu.au/employability-myth-busted/

Catherine Le Fèvre Women in Science Symposium on the 20th of October.

This one day event is being hosted by the Department of Molecular Sciences (previously known as CBMS) in Room165/7 at MGSM, Macquarie University. The programme features a group of accomplished and dynamic leaders in different scientific disciplines (Mathematics, Environmental Science, Materials, Chemistry, and Biochemistry) who will share their personal career journeys in combination with insights into their own area of scientific expertise. The event will also celebrate Macquarie’s current research talent in the areas of both chemistry and biomolecular sciences with contributions from early career researchers.

We are encouraging both men and women to attend this complimentary event for staff, researchers of all career stages, and students.

Register at http://www.cvent.com/d/15qtjw

The programme includes:

Professor Nalini Joshi: Chair of Applied Mathematics at the University of Sydney

Dr Cathy Foley: Deputy and Science Director of CSIRO Manufacturing

Professor Barbara Messerle: Executive Dean, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Macquarie University

Dr Lindsey Mackay: General Manager, NMI’s Chemical and Biological Metrology Branch

Professor Nicki Packer: Macquarie University and Institute for Glycomics, Griffith University

Distinguished Professor Lesley Hughes: Pro-vice Chancellor, Macquarie University

Professor Alison Rodger: Head of Department, Molecular Sciences, Macquarie University

A New Method for Submitting to Department Matters

Department Matters submissions now have their own email address.  Please send all future submissions to the newsletter to <fse.bionewsletter@mq.edu.au>!

Also, please see the following to correctly format your additions, and keep them rolling in!

You may have noticed that we try to keep all the articles to the same format for the Department Matters, however, rest assured, they do NOT all turn up in this format! To help keep your Department Matters looking as good as possible, when sending in additions to the Newsletter, please try to keep these formatting guidelines in mind.

1. Please write in third person. The information is coming from the Newsletter, not directly from you.
2. Do not use fancy text formatting. Bold heading, normal text, and only italics or bold to highlight. No font size changes will make it through, sorry.
3. If sending via email, set your email output to basic. HTML output will add all sort of formatting that will have to be removed before your article can go into the newsletter.

Keeping to these guidelines will streamline your article’s addition to the newsletter. Thank you.

Learning & Teaching Awards – Congratulations!

Congratulations to Michael Gillings and team who have been awarded a Faculty L&T grant for ‘An app for physical campus exploration of evolution / biology / Big History down Wally’s Walk’. Here are some details about the proposal:

An understanding of the magnitude and flow of time is an essential learning outcome in multiple curricula across the University. Current teaching strategies involve practical or theoretical demonstrations that are done in a piecemeal fashion by various Departments and Faculties. Here we aim to create a unified learning experience by turning Wally’s Walk into a living laboratory, linked to virtual timelines.

This proposal will establish a series of different timelines, with Wally’s Walk as a common physical backbone. Wally’s Walk is the artery that connects different parts of the University in both a physical and intellectual sense. It can be walked in less than 10 minutes, is the most identifiable geographical axis on campus, and is a scenic and popular means of moving through the University.

Our vision is to design a free mobile phone App that streams content according to the user’s position along Wally’s Walk. In practice, users would start at the Research Drive end of Wally’s Walk, where they would choose from one of a number of timelines. As they move forward, content would live stream onto their device, triggered sequentially by GPS way-points along Wally’s walk, with events scaled to their relative position along the walk. The demonstration timeline will be a history of the universe.  Walkers begin at the Big Bang, and then pass through critical events in the evolution of the Universe, eventually concluding with the appearance of humans at the end of the walk – appropriately enough, under the Museum of Ancient Cultures. In this timeline, each step along the pathway corresponds to approximately 25 million years. We anticipate generating a number of timelines: History of the Universe; History of the Solar System; History of multicellular animals; and Human evolution. In future iterations, we anticipate a timeline of the Anthropocene focused on post-Industrial Revolution, and an Indigenous Australian timeline.

Participants in the project include Greg Downey (Anthropology), David Christian (Modern History), Craig O’Neill and Michael Steel (Physics and Astronomy), Simon George (Earth and Planetary Sciences), Michael Rampe (F Human Sciences), Emilie Ens (Environmental Sciences), Glenn Brock and Michael Gillings (Biology), with advice from Leigh Staas (Biology) and Richie Howitt (Geography and Planning).

Ideas for further content, or participation are welcome!

Weekly Seminar

Day/Date/Time/Place: Wednesday, 18th October, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, E8A-280 (Tea Room).

Speaker: Ayesha Tulloch, University of Queensland.

Title: Back to basics: Using species co-occurrence to predict and evaluate the effectiveness of managing threats to ecosystems

Abstract: Mitigating the impacts of global anthropogenic change on species is conservation’s greatest challenge. Efforts to forecast the effects of actions to mitigate threats are hampered by out-dated species-centric research ​and incomplete information on community responses. Although individual species are important, we are in the midst of a paradigm shift in which conservationists, policy-makers and researchers consider all co-occurring species and the ways in which they interact when making decisions about how to manage ecosystems. My research aims to identify symptoms of community change in networks of co-occurring species that will allow us to predict ecosystem decline and potential for recovery. In this talk I will describe some of today’s challenges for predicting and evaluating management outcomes for threatened species. Increasing evidence suggests that species do not respond independently to anthropogenic change and associated management actions. Instead, species’ abilities to persist in the presence of threatening processes as well as their abilities to recover under mitigation actions depend on both environmental drivers and the responses of the community around them. I will present new discoveries revealing the value of using co-occurrence analysis to uncover the impacts of processes such as agricultural transformation and fire succession, which may be masked in conventional studies of species richness and community composition. I will demonstrate a new approach to predicting community restructuring under threat management, which combines models of responses to threats with network analyses of species co-occurrence. The communities I describe span numerous systems across Australia, from nomadic birds in the arid rangelands to reptiles in the endangered box-gum grassy woodlands of south-eastern Australia.

Advanced Biology Student Conference

Wednesday 25th October, 2-4 pm; Biology Tea Room (E8A 280).

Come along and hear what our third-year Advanced Biology students have been doing during their PACE placements in research groups across the Department. All welcome.

HDR Supplementary Conference

Day/Date/Time/Place: Tuesday, 17th October, 9:30 – 12:15pm, E8A-280 (Tea Room).

Please come along to see talks by several of our PhD students. This supplementary conference is for those students who were not able to present in the main June conference. An abstract booklet with the schedule will be emailed around to the department closer to the date. Enquiries: contact <julian.may@mq.edu.au>

Supp HDR Draft Schedule-20171009

HDR students: 2018 WHS Committee Rep needed!

The Department’s WHS (Work Health & Safety) Committee is seeking a new HDR representative for 2018. If interested, please email Maria Vozzo <maria.vozzo@students.mq.edu.au> by 31 October stating your interest.

Learning and Teaching Seminars

L&T seminar line up, so far we have:
Who: Maurizio Manuguerra
Date: Thursday 19th October, 4-5pm (E8A 280)
Title: Commitment, engagement and learning in a large cohort of students

Who: Todd Philips
Date: Thursday 23rd November, 4-5pm (E8A 280)
Title: Embedding Indigenous content into the Biology curriculum

Both talks will be followed by the Thursday Drinks, Department event!

MQ Excellence in Research and Teaching Awards

We have a number of people and teams short-listed for the awards so please come along to support them – Register now to celebrate the many great achievements of Macquarie’s academic community.

Wednesday Nov 1st, 3-5.30pm; E7B Indoor Courtyard.

ESA EcoTas17 Student Travel Grants Still Open

Applications for ESA Student Travel Grants aimed at assisting student presenters get to EcoTas17 are still open – limited funds remaining so get in quick. See https://www.ecolsoc.org.au/awards-and-prizes/student-awards-and-grants/student-travel-grants for eligibility criteria and online application form.

Plant of the Week

This week: Eucalyptus curtisii  – Plunkett Mallee. An unusual species with a limited distribution in south-eastern Queensland, but an ideal small eucalypt for the home garden.

Are You a Carer?

Carer support workshops: 17th and 18th October, C5C level 4.

Here at Macquarie we are committed to supporting all carers in the workplace.

In honour of National Carers Week 2017 the Workplace Equity & Diversity unit would like to invite all staff with caring responsibilities and their managers to attend a series of workshops aimed at providing support and information tailored to the experience of caring responsibilities, and how to prepare for the future.

If you are a carer or know a colleague with caring responsibilities please use the registration link here – http://www.cvent.com/events/carers-week-macquarie/event-summary-25d8531c8da545e3a4e2e900d4b719ff.aspx

There are three workshops on offer for staff with caring responsibilities, and two workshops for their managers provided in one-hour sessions over two days, Tuesday 17th and Wednesday 18th October. All workshops and counselling will be provided by staff from Carers NSW. Carers NSW provides education for carers and carer support groups across NSW free of charge. Please feel free to choose more than one workshop to attend as each will cover different subject matter.

Carers Workshops:

– Health & Wellbeing for carers

– Future planning

– Getting prepared; when someone you know is ageing

Managers workshops:

– Awareness of staff who have caring responsibilities,

– Managing employees who have caring responsibilities.

1:1 Support  

There will be a carer counsellor on site over the two days who will provide half hour 1:1 support and advice for carers who wish to speak to them. You can indicate your preferred time to speak to them and we will be in touch to make a booking with you.

All workshops and 1:1 meetings will be held on level 4 of C5C.

We look forward to having you there. If you have any questions please feel free to contact lauren.dillon@mq.edu.au (Mon-Wed).

Ride2Uni Day

WEDNESDAY 18 OCTOBER

Start your day the healthy way with a FREE breakfast for all riders! Join us in the Central Courtyard from 8am – 10am on Wednesday 18 October. FREE breakfast, stretch sessions, massage, chiropractic consultations, bike health checks, maps, give-aways and fun. Burn fat not fuel, and join the commuter revolution.

Registration essential.

FIND OUT MORE AT goto.mq/ride2uni

Upcycle Competition – Register Now!

See attached poster for more information.

Closing date for entries 3rd November!

Display and judging: Monday 6th – Wednesday 8th November, with the award announcement morning tea: Thursday 9th November.

We will also be holding a SWAP PARTY with the display. More details to come.

Upcycle Comp Poster

Smart Phone and Tablet Collection

Drop off your device at the Department front desk before 4 November

To reduce e-waste and the need to extract new minerals, the Jane Goodall Institute Australia (JGIA) recycles mobile phones and tablets in any condition as well as their chargers.

All phones are data-wiped and factory reset before reuse. Before donating, use the factory reset option to delete all of your data (it is device specific but the product webpage will have instructions) and remove the devices from their iCloud accounts (in the case of iPhones). (Ipad: http://support.apple.com/en-us/ht5661 ; Iphone: http://support.apple.com/en-us/ts4515).

Want to learn more about conservation projects with JGIA? Then visit the Roots and Shoots website to see how you can become involved. http://rootsandshoots.org.au/

If you have any questions about JGIA or Roots and Shoots, please contact Dr K-lynn Smith at <NSW@janegoodall.org.au> or <klynn.smith@mq.edu.au>.

Your Biology Photos Needed

Do you have photos taken from 2016 or this year while doing cool things for Biological Sciences? We are collecting photos that are likely to be used in the annual report, on the Biological Sciences web pages or on the social media pages (facebook and twitter).

We are especially interested in images taken with you doing things, group/team activities and any interesting flora or fauna. Please provide the following information:

• What/who is in the image
• Location is was taken (if off campus)
• Who took the photos
• Year it was taken

Please follow the drop box file request link to submit your images.

Do you have a twitter account with photo you’d like to share with biological sciences? We require your permission to use those images, so please email <sci.bio-adm@mq.edu.au> advising of this.

Biological Sciences Administrative Requests

Please email any admin requests you have to <sci.bio-adm@mq.edu.au>. The email is monitored by the whole Admin Team, so your request won’t sit unanswered in a single person’s inbox should they be away or on leave. If you need to contact the individual admin staff member directly, you will find their contact details in this document.

STEM Speakers in Schools

What is it?

The Speakers in Schools program places Macquarie University academics in schools to connect students and teachers with researchers who inspire, inform and challenge students to question their thinking. Presentations discuss hot topics, global issues affecting society, have inspirational and significant impact for students.

How does it work?

We request that interested schools give us 4 weeks’ notice with some suggested dates, Alison Willard (FSE Future Students) will then liaise with you to see if any of those dates suit your schedule. The FSE Future Students Team provides transport for you (either someone will accompanying and drive you, or you can get a cab charge voucher).

Are you interested?

Please express your interest here:

https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=wRTFghenh0C-BtQNIHCtUvfrfYNGdG1CuRL70EGWeRNUQ1dEWFdVWUVFOUVGOFZLVUFXTFdYV0hSMi4u

Did You Participate in an Outreach Activity Recently for the Department?
Don’t forget to fill in the super-quick form here – – ACCESS OUTREACH FORM HERE

Get Paid for Outreach Lesson Plans!

MQ’s Immunisation Policy

The Immunisation Policy addresses the minimum standards of immunisation requirements for staff, students, contractors, and volunteers who undertake activities where there may be an increased risk of contracting vaccine-preventable diseases as part of the business of Macquarie University. The Immunisation Procedure establishes how the University will meet the requirements of its Immunisation Policy.

The Immunisation policy and procedure have been developed to assist the MQ community with managing the risks associated with potential exposure to vaccine preventable diseases. Immunisation is a control measure related to an identified risk. The expectation is that specific areas refer to the Immunisation Policy and Procedure where a need has been identified through the risk management process.

Potential for significant exposure to vaccine preventable diseases should be considered like any other hazard associated with university work and study. Please note immunisation documentation is a health care record and should be treated in accordance with our Privacy Management Plan. Particular consideration must be given to health care workers/students undertaking frontline activities in clinical settings/placements. The health and safety advisor contact for your faculty/DVC portfolio can assist with risk management and implementation of the immunisation program. If you require assistance please email <ohs@mq.edu.au>.

staff.mq.edu.au/work/strategy-planning-and-governance/university-policies-and-procedures/policies/immunisation

Share the Air Survey – (smoking on campus)
A key stakeholder “Share the Air” working party has been established to review the current practices and support the University community. A campus community survey is available for completion at https://mqedu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8ea1BasqRRR4zhr
Once the survey data is collated and reviewed, at the end of October, a report on the community position and a possible plan to assist the University to establish that position will be presented to Council for their endorsement.

REP Masterclass: ‘On the Origins of Art’

Friday 20 October 2017 (12-noon – 4:30pm)

Engagement with and appreciation of art could be described as defining of all human cultures. Why? Can we ask or answer the question of where human art came from and why we are an artistic species. Elizabeth Pearce is the chief curator of an exhibition at the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) in Hobart which is exploring these issues. Her exhibition and thinking draw on contributions from philosophy, neuroscience and psychology to explore these issues. In this transdisciplinary workshop, we will explore where human artistic endeavour might have come from.

This workshop will involve presentations and a panel discussion. Participants (and topics) include:

John Simons (Chair);

Elizabeth Pearce ‘On the Origin of Art’

Rob Brooks ‘Sexual conflict in art’

Paul Mason ‘The Total Art Work’

Branka Spehar ‘The Pleasure of Seeing’

Frederick Hardtke ‘Giving Context to Prehistoric Art’

Jane Clark ‘So much we still don’t know’

Click here to register for ‘On the Origins of Art.

REP Workshop: Making Your Science Matter: Linking Science with Action to Improve the World

Two-hour workshop running on Tuesday, October 24th (2-4 pm)

Instructors:
Dr. Elizabeth Madin, Macquarie University
Dr. Emily Darling, Wildlife Conservation Society
Dr. Marah Hardt, Future of Fish
Prof. Lesley Hughes, Macquarie University

Co-badged with MQU Marine Research Centre

We all want to feel like our research matters…but it is sometimes hard to know how to make it relevant to people and institutions beyond academia. How can we best make our science understood, appreciated, and perhaps even acted upon by policy-makers? These are the kinds of questions we will delve into. Inspired by the book “Escape from the Ivory Tower” by Nancy Baron, this short course will help you improve your ability to design and communicate your science to benefit the world at large.

Participant numbers will be capped (first-in secures a place).

Click here to register for ‘Making your science matter: Linking science with action to improve the world.’

REP workshop: Leadership: Defining Your Values

Half-day workshop, running on Thursday 2nd Nov (2-4pm).

Organised by Mauricio Marone (FBE) and Mariella Herberstein (FSE).

Whether we know it or not, we all engage in leadership at some stage – be it as a tutor organising a group of students, leading a research group or organising a social event. In this workshop we explore the idea that ‘leadership’ begins with you. It is about understanding what you value and how you bring those authentic values to your leadership activities. Working in small groups we will explore how you approach a situation where leadership is required, help you identify your core values as well as explore how your personal values align with those of an employer. By increasing your awareness of the role of values in leadership, we hope this workshop will set you on a trajectory of ever increasing leadership activities.

Click here to register for ‘Leadership: defining your values’

New Publications

In the Media

Recent Completions