News and views

Supercomputers enhance our everyday lives. Australia needs a coordinated national strategy to secure its high-performance computing and data infrastructure.

While there is a slight increase in Government investment in R&D from 2022-23 to 2023-24, there is much still to be done if we are to see a full turnaround in the decades-long downward trend in R&D investment. Australia’s investment remains well below the OECD average.

Today we celebrate our 70th anniversary since the foundation of the Australian Academy of Science.

Read on for a glimpse of who we are.

The President of the Australian Academy of Science, Professor Chennupati Jagadish, said the Australian Government cannot build a stronger, more resilient nation with a stagnant research and development system that relies on decades-old settings.

The Academy’s 2023 Frew Fellow, Professor Jelena Vuckovic, toured and lectured in Australia recently as a recipient of the Academy’s Geoffrey Frew Fellowship. The Fellowship brings distinguished overseas scientists to Australia to participate in Australian spectroscopy conferences and to visit scientific centres, and was initiated in 1970 through a personal donation from Mr G S V Frew.

Governments and society in 2023 turned to science for evidence to inform vital decisions we faced. Yet we also saw overall investment in R&D drop to an all-time low. 2023 is the year that science became more valued, but more vulnerable.

The Australian Academy of Science welcomes today's decision by the Court of Criminal Appeal to squash the convictions of Kathleen Folbigg. But make no mistake, that without law reform, these sort of miscarriages of justice will continue.

Australian scientists have welcomed today’s decision by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal to quash Kathleen Folbigg’s convictions.