Federation Fellow for University of Adelaide

New ARC Federation Fellow: Professor Tanya Monro
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Wednesday, 23 April 2008

The University of Adelaide has been awarded one of the highly sought after Australian Research Council Federation Fellowships, boosting its reputation as a world leader in optical fibre research.

The award to Professor Tanya Monro, Chair of Photonics at the University of Adelaide and one of the world's leaders in optical fibre technology, was announced last night by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Minister for Innovation, Science and Research Senator Kim Carr.

Professor Monro is developing a new platform for exploring and controlling interactions between light and matter using new classes of optical fibres. This will lead to innovative applications in medical research, defence and environmental science.

The University's Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Strategy), Professor Mike Brooks, said: "The University of Adelaide is absolutely delighted to hear of Professor Monro's Federation Fellowship. She is a world leader in this field, highly talented, full of great ideas about the development of applications for this new technology - and she's just 35 and the mother of three young children.

"Under her leadership and with this new Federation Fellowship, the University of Adelaide within one year will have one of the very best laboratory facilities in optical fibre research in the world."

Professor Monro said: "I am overwhelmed by the honour and opportunity that this Fellowship presents. As well as recognition of the work my team and I are already doing, this will provide a vehicle for embarking on a whole new area of research, and not just blue-sky research but research leading to real applications with major technological and commercial benefits for Australia."

Professor Monro is Director of the University's Centre of Expertise in Photonics within the School of Chemistry and Physics. Her work has already received support from both state and federal governments, as well as the Defence Science & Technology Organisation.

She is a member of the South Australian Premier's Science & Research Council, a founding steering member of the Royal Institution of Australia, and Chair of the University of Adelaide Defence Committee. In 2007, she was awarded the 'Women in Physics Lecture' by the Australian Institute of Physics and, in 2006, a Bright Spark Award for Australia's Top 10 Scientific Minds under 45 by Cosmos Magazine.

She obtained her PhD in physics from the University of Sydney, for which she was awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for the best physics thesis in Australia in 1998, and was also awarded an Eleanor Sophia Wood Travelling Fellowship.

In 2000, she received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton in the UK. She came to the University of Adelaide in early 2005 as the inaugural Chair of Photonics.

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