March Newsletter: Issue 175
From the Director
Dear all,
While many of us take a breath during Easter and the mid-semester break, I can’t help but think of the continuation of sobering news about the University sector that makes one wonder what will fire us up for the second term. There surely are a lot of important stories from RSB that made the news: For the third year in a row, the Fenner Medal awarded by the Australian Academy of Science, was won by a young RSB star, this year Kai Chan, recognising his work on understanding the cellular signaling that drives heat and drought responses in plants. Congratulations Kai!! You can find the ANU media report here and the announcement of the AAS here. Four other scientists from the ANU got early career honorific awards as well, all in areas of fundamental research in Computing and Earth Sciences, which gives me hope that we are still doing really well in our core mission of advancing fundamental knowledge of importance to Australia at the ANU, despite somewhat sliding international rankings, for example here or here, which, while only rankings, will drive student enrolments and thus our funding.
In other RSB news, about three decades of research by Andrew Cockburn and his colleagues on the Superb Fairy Wren populations now predicts their possible extinction within 40-60 years, depending on varyingly extreme climate predictions. Despite the risks of species loss, it is amazing that new species of animals keep being discovered, with three new reptile species being described by Stephen Zozaya from E&E. On another positive note, research by Naomi Langmore and colleagues at the Fenner School managed to teach zoo-bred critically endangered Regent Honeyeaters to sing like a wild bird, which is essential for their survival in the wild.
The question is, how do we sustain our leading expertise, research and university funding in a climate of global uncertainty, shifting government priorities, age of mis- and dis-information and slipping international student numbers? First, giving our students a well-rounded education with critical thinking and research skills and the ability to evaluate information sources despite the threat of AI seems to be as important than ever. Second, we should think about how to target the Horizon Europe program as soon as possible, as the Government just entered negotiations that will allow Australian researchers to access the program. And after a long time of evaluation of the Australian Research and Development landscape, which has clearly suffered from more than a decade of government funding neglect, there is some hope that a new injection of money could revive the research and development landscape, see the statement by the AAS and the Strategic Examination of Research and Development (SERD) report.
The following quote by Tim Ayers, Minister for Industry and Innovation and Minister for Science -‘Meeting Australia’s big collective challenges – food and agriculture, energy security (think biofuels, my comment), new industrial and tech processes, water security and dealing with the human, animal and plant diseases of the future, to name just a few – requires a modern and fit for purpose research and development system.’- shows that we are working on critical topics. Well, we knew that, but now the minister has actually spelled it out!
With that, let’s get on with it - ‘Heads down, tails up’, as an old friend of mine, from her days as a Summer Scholar in RSBS in 1994, would have said.
Welcome
Ali Kusay
Welcome to Ali Kusay, who joined the Corry Group as a Postdoctoral Fellow in January from Linkoping University Sweden. Ali will be focussed on understanding the structure and evolution of force sensing proteins that move ions and lipids found in all kingdoms of life.
Tara Walker
Welcome to new PhD student Tara Walker. Tara joins E&E supervised by Piet Arnold within the Nicotra Group after a successful Honours project. Tara’s PhD will investigate the future of Australian native seed banks in a warming climate and their viability following heat extremes. Her project will be conducted in partnership with the National Seed Bank based at the Australian National Botanic Gardens.
Swikriti Saket
Welcome to Swikriti Saket has joined the Solomon Group from India to study CRISPR-based approaches for pathogenicity genes in Zymoseptoria tritici.
Esteve Mesén Porras
Welcome to Esteve Mesén Porras who has joined the Solomon Group as a new PhD student from Costa Rica. Esteve is working on Fall Army Worm population genomics.
Abdel El Habti
Welcome to Abdel El Habti who joins APPN as a Post Doctoral Fellow on the GRDC Canola Source to Sink project. Abdel will be located in Wagga Wagga and working closely with the team at APPN-ANU. Abdel joins us from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Essex. He has a PhD in crop physiology from the University of Adelaide and a Master of Science from the Universite de Bordeaux.
PhDs Awarded
June 2025-March 2026
Congratulations
In the Media
Samuele Ramellini (Farine group, E&E) was featured in an article in Nature about the use of AI by PhD students. Read about his contribution (and the article itself) AI AND THE PHD STUDENT: FRIEND OR FOE?
Sharing Bioderived Element Resource Separation Technology (BERST)
Vrinda Prabhu (Byrt Group, PS) joined an Austrade Trade Mission to Fiji to share information about ANU's Bioderived Element Resource Separation Technology (BERST) for harvesting critical resources from wastewater. Vrinda met with The Water Authority of Fiji, The Ministry of Environment Fiji, University of South Pacific Researchers and Oceania Water Group.
Caitlin Byrt (PS) shared an invited short update presentation with Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Australia-Japan Foundation (AJF) on BERST and outcomes of workshop activities that AJF supported. Byrt Group team members were interviewed for an article about nature-inspired wastewater innovations, see: Sponsor Details: Water In Mining 2026.
Biofuels discussions with WIN News
Owen Atkin (PS) and Florence Danilla (PS) were interviewed by WIN News Canberra regarding recent work on transforming canola from a traditional oilseed into a viable biofuel source. Watch the full interview on Facebook (you do not need an account to watch the reel). Bob Furbank (PS) was also interviewed on ABC Radio 666 and ABC Radio Bega on the same topic.
RSB Women in the spotlight
Ulrike Mathesius (PS), Susanne von Caemmerer (PS), Megan Outram (Tham Group, BSB) Suyan Yee (Chan Group, PS) and Rose Zhang (Byrt Group, PS) were featured in special newsletter from Australian Society of Plant Sciences (ASPS) celebrating International Women's Day. Read their contributions in the March edition of Phytogen.
From the ARC Training Centre for Future Crops Development
Royal Canberra Show - Food for Future
A sizable group of Training Centre Students and RSB volunteers had a great time at the Royal Canberra Show in February engaging with the public, speaking about their science, and talking to people about their views on science, agriculture, farming and genetic modification. Over three days the team interacted with people from many walks of life including plenty of excited children, banana growers, sheep farmers, professors, high school teachers, tradies and ANU undergraduates as well as the other science programs there from ANU and the broader Canberra region. Activities included exploring where crops are grown and where they originated, DNA extractions from banana, seed planting and trivia. It was a great exercise for us to understand what the public knows and how they think about agriculture and science, while sharing our Centre and broader mission.
A special thank you to our three organisers Zuzana Plskova (Pogson Group, PS), Asma Zia (Chan Group, PS) and Jamie Piroe (Pogson Group, PS) as well as our volunteers: Alex Jose (Mathesius Group, PS), Cara Huang (Melonek Group, PS), Paolo Balahadia (Danila Group, PS), Hafiz Sabah-Ud-Din Mazhar (Danila Group, PS), Arslan Mahmood (Millar Group, PS), Swikriti Saket (Solomon Group, PS), Samantha Whitling (Schwessinger Group, PS), Ayesha Wellawatta (Pogson Group, PS), Crys Clitheroe (CPAS), Derek Collinge (Pogson Group, PS) and Lauren DuFall (Pogson Group, PS).
PhD Exit Seminars
The Training Centre for Future Crops is very proud of our student cohort, but especially of Reshma Roy (Millar Group, PS) and Ebtihal Mohamed (Byrt Group, PS) for recently completing their PhD exit seminars!!
The timing of their exit seminars could not be more relevant, with Reshma’s project focused on developing Carinata as a cover crop and sustainable aviation fuel and Ebtihal researching Carinata for use as a biodiesel, their research is sure to attract some attention. Congratulations to them both and best of luck as they approach the PhD finish-line.
From the APPN
APPN National Forum
On 24-26 February, five APPN-ANU staff attended the APPN national forum at La Trobe University in Melbourne with staff from nodes around Australia. At the forum we heard about the work the other nodes and the central data team are doing and toured the controlled environment facilities at La Trobe. It was also a good chance to meet our interstate colleagues and discuss ways in which we can collaborate.
Richard Poire (APPN) gave a presentation on the work we are doing at APPN-ANU and Frederike Stock (APPN) presented a session on the operational improvements using Smartsheet that APPN-ANU has implemented to more efficiently manage our projects and workflows.