President’s Update

Thank you to Joan Leach for the President’s Update.

Award Season

Award season is well and truly underway—I was very pleased to be invited to the Eureka awards this year.  Citizen science, quality long-form science journalism, and generally good science communication all got a shout out at the awards.  Next up, the Premier’s Prizes for Science.  While I’d like to see a named ‘science communication’ award in the mix, it is rewarding to hear quality science communication touted as a basic component to award-winning science.  And, yes, the Nobel prizes are also being revealed and with that perhaps there is an uptick in public recognition of science.  For an alternate take on how big prizes for science might backfire, I recommend this article http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/03/opinion/the-folly-of-big-science-awards.html.  It re-ignites the age old argument that science progresses ‘on the shoulders of giants’ and, more than ever, is a collaborative enterprise.  Awards for a few, the author contends, are unjust given the hundreds of small discoveries that go into making a big one.

Strategic Planning and AGM

The ASC Executive and members of the National Council are going to huddle in Canberra in November to make sure the ASC constitution is compliant with the rules for organisations, check in on our finances, and set some goals for the next few years.  This will happen right before the AGM—we’ll be announcing that formally soon—but it looks like 18 and 19 November in Canberra. If you would like to put something on the agenda for the meeting, please let me know.

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