Pawsey Medal

Associate Professor Jiajia Zhou, University of Technology Sydney

Associate Professor Jiajia Zhou creates and applies nanoparticles that become luminescent in precise ways in response to light and heat. These nanoparticles are the basis for nanosized sensors, the world’s smallest and most sensitive thermometer and ways to test for minute quantities of single-molecule proteins and oligos. She works with Australian companies to apply her discoveries in diverse areas. One is a device that can accurately profile milk proteins in an hour, so farmers and producers can control for milk without unwanted proteins. Another is a single molecule antigen rapid test (SMART) to monitor mutations of the spike proteins on new strains of COVID virus. Innovative tests that Associate Professor Zhou recently developed have also been proposed for rapid diagnostics of foodborne pathogens. She now leads UTS’s team in a new ARC Centre of Excellence for quantum biotechnology that aims to develop quantum technologies that can observe biological processes.

Professor Yuerui Lu, Australian National University

Modern information technologies are increasingly focused on the development of integrated opto-electronic devices with compact footprints and integrated functionalities. Key in the downscaling of integrated opto-electronic devices to the nanometre scale has been ultra-thin, two-dimensional (2D) ‘quantum’ materials. Professor Yuerui Lu’s team at ANU has developed new types of atomically thin 2D materials and devices with peculiar optical and electronic properties, enabling new applications in electronics, photonics and space. These novel materials facilitate devices that are significantly smaller, less massive, and require much lower power to operate. His discovery could introduce new materials and devices in applications ranging from smaller and fast-speed 3D cameras for future smartphones, and low-weight and high-quality satellite electronics – making future space missions more accessible and cheaper to launch. His work was chosen by the Australian Research Council (ARC) to be a national highlight in 2020. 

Dr Keith Bannister, CSIRO

Dr Keith Bannister is an exceptional scientist who has led several projects at the forefront of radio astronomy, especially in the area of fast radio burst (FRB) research. His great strength is that he has a deep understanding of both astronomy and radio-science engineering. These qualities enable him to envisage novel and powerful techniques to advance key science goals, to bring systems based on these techniques to fruition, and then to harvest the scientific returns. By exploiting the unique wide-field capabilities of CSIRO's ASKAP radio telescope, Dr Bannister and his team doubled the number of FRBs known at the time. He then went on to devise and implement a scheme to determine their precise sky positions, thereby identifying their source location in distant galaxies. These results provided vital clues on FRBs’ astrophysical origin and also identified the location of 50 per cent of the missing baryons in the universe.

Associate Professor Xiaojing Hao, UNSW Sydney

Associate Professor Xiaojing Hao, is a world leader in next-generation kesterite photovoltaics; utilising green (earthabundant, environmentally-friendly) thin-film semiconductor materials to harvest sunlight.

Over the past four years she has led her group in setting four world records for sulfide kesterite solar cell efficiency as confirmed by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Her kesterite solar cell breakthroughs represent major advances in developing high bandgap thin film solar cells that are flexible, stable, cheap and non-toxic, showing clear societal impact as photovoltaics emerge as the front-runner in supplanting fossil fuels.

Associate Professor Adam Deller, Swinburne University of Technology

Associate Professor Deller uses high angular resolution radio imaging to study neutron stars and black holes, the most compact objects in the Universe. To do so, he has developed new instrumentation capable of jointly processing signals from radio antennas spread across the Earth and even on orbiting satellites, which has been adopted by major astronomical facilities world-wide.

His own usage of these facilities has led to breakthroughs including a time-lapse movie of the high-speed material launched by merging neutron stars in a galaxy 125 million light years away, which determined the orientation of the system first detected via the burst of gravitational waves emitted when they merged. Closer to home, he has pinpointed the location of neutron stars within the Milky Way galaxy with unprecedented precision, using radio observations so precise they could discern motion no greater than the width of a human hair at a distance of 2,000 km.

Professor Steven Flammia, University of Sydney

Quantum information science (QIS), a field born at the interface between physics and computation, has impacted all areas of physics. Increasingly it is impacting technology. By marrying the classical theory of compressed sensing with quantum tomography, Professor Flammia’s work has succeeded in drastically reducing the number of measurements required to learn the types of quantum states and processes commonly found in laboratory experiments aimed at building scalable quantum computers. This work was significant as, firstly, it has had a real practical impact, with numerous experiments already performed that show the advantages of the new approach, and secondly, the methods introduced have had an impact beyond physics back to the original machine learning community where the idea of compressed sensing originated. Professor Flammia’s work has impacted both theory and experimental practice in the field, with direct impact on Australian efforts in quantum technology.

Dr Paul Lasky

Dr Paul Lasky has dedicated his career to furthering our understanding of the most exotic regions of the universe. He is an active member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration that, in 2016, transformed the very foundations of astrophysics by announcing the first detection of gravitational waves—tiny ripples in the fabric of spacetime—coming from two colliding black holes over one billion light years from Earth. He has identified new ways of studying the interiors of neutron stars using their gravitational-wave signatures, as well as new ways of testing Einstein’s theory of gravity in regions of the universe where new physics is most likely to occur—at the surfaces of black holes. He has also recruited and led an international team that provided direct, empirical measurements that deepen our understanding of the universe from when it was less than one second old.

2017

Associate Professor Igor Aharonovich, University of Technology Sydney

Associate Professor Aharonovich is delivering breakthrough research that underpins next generation light-based technologies spanning energy, communications and quantum information processing. His work is original, has motivated wider research and focuses on novel single photon sources, one fundamental building block in quantum information science. He has demonstrated new materials with record-setting properties which assist the further development of quantum communication systems and their deployment in real world applications. His work contributes to one of the pressing issues in the modern era – ensuring that private information and sensitive data can be secured through unbreakable encryption.

2016

Associate Professor Ilya Shadrivov, Australian National University

Associate Professor Shadrivov is developing new forms of metamaterials, with future use in photonics and communication technologies. Metamaterials are composite structures with carefully designed properties that are not found in nature. They can manipulate light and other electromagnetic waves in many unusual ways. For example, they can be tuned to absorb some ‘colours’ of light, which is useful for the next generation of security cameras which use invisible long wavelength, or Terahertz, radiation. Alternatively, metamaterials can be used in novel antennas, which will beam electromagnetic waves in carefully chosen directions and rapidly scan the surrounding environment. This is useful for many applications in modern industry, such as for car radar-type sensors in order to increase car safety.

2015

Professor Naomi McClure-Griffiths, Australian National University

Dr McClure-Griffiths is an internationally recognised radio astronomer, who has used “The Dish” at Parkes and other Australian telescopes to make stunning new discoveries about our home Galaxy, the Milky Way. Her research has provided unprecedented insights into how the Milky Way is structured, lives its life, and interacts with its neighbours. She has unravelled the complicated pinwheel-like structure of our home Galaxy and has helped explain how the Milky Way keeps finding fresh gas to make new stars.

2014

Professor Geoffrey John Pryde, Griffith University

Professor Pryde's research investigates the fundamental properties of the quantum world and how these can be harnessed for radical advances in information technologies, sensing and measurement. Working with quantum states of light, Geoff has demonstrated the first quantum measurement scaling at the absolute quantum limit of measurement precision, and has realised key steps on the path towards optical quantum computing. His recent investigations of quantum entanglement and the quantum limits of amplification are providing new resources for realising ultra-secure long-range communications.

2013

Associate Professor Christopher Adam Blake, Swinburne University of Technology

Observations by astronomers over the last fifteen years have produced one of the most startling discoveries in physical science: that the expansion of the Universe, originally triggered by the Big Bang, has begun to speed up. A new map of galaxies, created using Australian telescopes under the leadership of Chris Blake, has produced new evidence that this accelerating expansion is driven by a smooth, diffuse "dark energy" that fills the Universe and overwhelms the normal attractive force of gravity. Associate Professor Chris Blake has helped to develop techniques to measure the properties of dark energy using the acoustic oscillations in the galaxy power spectrum as a standard ruler. These techniques are now commonly applied by cosmologists worldwide.

2012

Professor Tanya Monro FAA FTSE, University of Adelaide

Professor Tanya Monro is a dynamic, creative and productive physicist who has made numerous internationally significant contributions and world firsts in emerging areas of optical physics, most notably in sensing and nonlinear optics. She and her team have discovered new ways of generating, controlling and manipulating light and its interactions with molecules and developing advanced technology for structuring materials on the nanoscale. This research has spanned the development of new theoretical models, the identification of new regimes and fabrication and experimental breakthroughs, and has led to the development of new forms of optical fibres for use in telecommunications, biology, health, food and wine, environmental monitoring and defence.

2011

Professor Bryan Gaensler, University of Sydney

Bryan Gaensler's pioneering studies of cosmic magnetism have opened a new window on the Universe. Bryan has derived detailed three-dimensional maps of large-scale magnetic fields throughout the cosmos, and is now using these results to understand what has created and sustained cosmic magnets over billions of years of the Universe's evolution. As a by-product of studying astrophysical magnetism, he has also made the stunning discovery that the Milky Way is twice as thick as was previously thought, a result that fundamentally changes our understanding of our home Galaxy.

2010

Professor Andrew White, University of Queensland

Quantum optics – the study of the quantum nature of light – provides a technological platform for quantum computing in which the individual quantum bits of information are carried by single photons. Andrew White is a pioneer in the experimental development of the quantum optical approach to quantum computing. He performed the first unambiguous experimental demonstration of an entangling quantum-logic gate with photons in 2003.

2009

Dr Stuart Wyithe, University of Melbourne.

Stuart Wyithe has made outstanding contributions to cosmology, and to our understanding of the likely structure of the universe as the first stars formed, with work on the birth of black holes, stars and galaxies. Together with collaborators, he has developed clear predictions of the expected observational signatures of these processes. Searches for these signatures are now being undertaken using new instrumentation on existing international observatories, such as the Gemini Telescopes and the Hubble Space Telescope, and on new long wavelength radio telescopes being constructed around the world.

2008

Dr Kostya (Ken) Ostrikov, University of Sydney

Ken Ostrikov has achieved international repute through his contributions to diverse multidisciplinary fields, particularly in plasma nanoscience, where he is widely recognised as a pioneer and world leading authority. He has used innovative approaches to the creation and manipulation of atomic and nanoscale building blocks, the organisation of nanomatter by plasma, and describing the interactions between plasma and solids. His research has created new ways to generate self-assembled nanomaterials, nanoelectronic and photonic structures, and devices for future computer chips, solar cells, communications systems and biosensors.

2007

Professor Ben Eggleton, University of Sydney

Ben Eggleton has pioneered research in optical device physics and photonics that underpin the development of the next generation of communication technologies and has made seminal contributions leading to the development of the photonic chip. His research achievements include the first experimental observation of nonlinear pulse propagation in photonic crystals, ground-breaking work on geometries for photonic crystal fibres, and the demonstration of highly original and significant nonlinear waveguide.

2006

Dr Mahananda Dasgupta, Australian National University

Mahananda Dasgupta is a leading international researcher in the field of nuclear fusion physics. Her cutting-edge contributions include precision measurements of unprecedented accuracy. She has developed theoretical models to describe quantum tunnelling of composite objects and designed efficient experimental particle detection equipment. Mahananda completed her PhD at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Bombay.

2005—M.Y. Simmons
2004—M. Bilek
2003—H. Wiseman
2002—S.V. Vladimirov
2001—B.P. Schmidt
2000—A. Murphy
1999—C.M. de Sterke
1999—R.R. Volkas
1998—I. Bray; Y.S. Kivshar
1997—MT Batchelor
1996—RG Elliman
1995—PA Robinson
1994—PTH Fisk
1993—ST Hyde
1992—DJ Hinde
1991—AE Stuchbery
1990—WK Hocking
1989—KA Nugent
1988—INS Jackson
1987—JWV Storey
1986—B Luther-Davies
1985—RM Pashley
1984—PR Wood
1983—MA Dopita
1982—JA Piper
1981—MA Green
1980—JE Norris
1979—GJ Clark
1978—RN Manchester
1977—JN Israelachvili
1976—WM Goss
1975—RJ Baxter
1974—DB Melrose
1973—BHJ McKellar
1972—KC Freeman
1971—BW Ninham
1970—RA Challinor
1969—KG McCracken
1967—RM May