 Nature
rewards excellent scientific mentors in Australasia
Media conference and embargo:
11.30hrs Friday 01 December.
Bio21 Institute, 30 Flemington Road, Melbourne
The inaugural winners of the Nature awards for mentoring in
Australasian science have been selected. There are two awards, one for a
scientist in mid-career, another for lifetime achievement.
The winner
of the mid-career award is Professor Rachel Webster, an astrophysicist from the
University of Melbourne, and the lifetime award goes to Professor Tom Healy, a
physical chemist also from the University of Melbourne.
Dr Philip
Campbell, Editor-in-chief of Nature, says: “We are delighted to recognize the
efforts and commitment of these two exceptional science mentors.”
A total of
74 high-quality nominations were received from across Australia and New Zealand
from a broad variety of disciplines. “Judging these awards was the hardest task
I've ever had to undertake,” says Professor Kurt Lambeck, chair of the judging
panel, and President of the Australian Academy of Science.
Rachel
Webster created a strong research environment from scratch when she was
appointed just over 10 years ago. In a relatively short time, she has fostered a
thriving astrophysics community and spawned a pedigree of protégés, who
attribute their success to her inspirational guidance.
Webster
has served as a role model for women in physics. She played a key role in
introducing the Women in Physics programme at the University of Melbourne, which
has been running for a decade and has bolstered the numbers of female graduates.
She is not
afraid of the big challenges – taking on coordination of Australia's
contribution to the Low Frequency Demonstrator, a potential precursor of the
planned Square Kilometre Array radio telescope.
The winner
of Nature's lifetime mentoring award, Tom Healy, “is an example of a person who
not only mentors his own students, he also succeeds in mentoring an entire field
of science,” said one of his nominators. Australian colloid and surface science
is ranked among the best in the world, thanks in large part to Healy.
A feature
of Healy's legacy is a student conference that he helped to establish nearly 40
years ago to enable young researchers in the field to network with their peers.
Healy's
main interests lie in colloid research - the study of particles in a dispersed
medium, such as sludge, slimes, aerosols or emulsions – research that is being
applied in many areas, not least in the mining industry for the frugal use of
water, an important issue in drought-prone Australia. This has taken his
mentoring beyond traditional boundaries - bringing industry, government and
academia together to solve practical issues.
Each
winner will receive AUS$10,000 and be profiled in the upcoming issue of Nature.
Dr Campbell will present the winners with their awards at a ceremony in
Melbourne on Friday 1 December 2006.
CONTACTS:
Rachel
Webster, University of Melbourne, Australia
Tel: +61 (3) 8344 5450;
rwebster@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Tom
Healy, University of Melbourne, Australia
Tel: +61 (3) 8344 6481; or: +61 0417 134430;
tomhealy@unimelb.edu.au
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Niall
Byrne +61 (417) 131 977;
niall@scienceinpublic.com
Sarah
Brooker +61 (413) 332 489,
sarah@scienceinpublic.com
By Carina Dennis, Nature’s
Australasian Correspondent
Following on from the success
of Nature’s UK mentoring awards, the awards programme was held for the first
time in Australasia this year. A total of 74 high-quality nominations were
received from across Australia and New Zealand from a broad variety of
disciplines.
“Judging these awards is the
hardest task I’ve ever had to undertake,” says Kurt Lambeck, chair of the
judging panel, and head of the Australian Academy of Science. This view was
shared unanimously by the other five judges.
From this prestigious field,
two winners emerged. Rachel Webster, an astrophysicist from the University of
Melbourne, is the winner of the mid-career award. The lifetime award goes to Tom
Healy, a physical chemist also from the University of Melbourne.
One of the exceptional aspects
in the nomination of Rachel Webster was that she created a strong research
environment from scratch – there was very little astrophysics research at her
institution when she was appointed just over 10 years ago. But in a relatively
short time, she has fostered a thriving astrophysics community and spawned a
significant pedigree of protégés, who attribute their success to her
inspirational guidance.
Much of Webster’s research
career has focused on gravitational lensing, where the light from bright and
distant astronomical objects, such as quasars, is bent by the gravity of
intervening masses, like galaxies, allowing scientists to probe the nature of
both entities. Webster led the study that discovered ‘microlensing’, which is
the gravitational lensing effects of individual stars in distant galaxies – and
spurred a whole new field of astrophysics.
She has also been involved in
many radio astronomy projects and led the largest survey to date of neutral
hydrogen in the nearby universe. Results from this project will shed new light
on star and galaxy formation, and will not be surpassed until a new generation
of more sensitive radio telescopes is built, such as the Square Kilomere Array,
at least 20 years from now. It’s worth noting that Webster had never worked in
neutral hydrogen astronomy before this major survey. This exemplifies the
adventurous spirit that she shares with her team. “Her students and colleagues
flourish in the rigorous yet adventurous intellectual climate she fosters,” says
Andrew Melatos, who continues to be mentored by Webster at the University of
Melbourne.
Webster is admired for her
ability to seamlessly traverse theory and observation, a lesson she impresses
upon her students. “Webster argued that anyone planning on becoming a theorist
ought to spend some time confronting the data,” says David Hogg, of New York
University (NYU), who was first mentored by Webster as an undergraduate in the
early 90s. “So she put me on a project designed to make a young and naïve
proto-theorist understand that real data are complicated, dirty and stubborn,”
says Hogg. But the lesson served as an inspiration rather than deterrent – Hogg
pursued more observational projects with large data sets and now runs a group at
NYU dedicated to statistical astronomy.
Throughout her career, Webster
has served as a role model for women in physics. She introduced the Women in
Physics programme at the University of Melbourne. This programme has been
running for nearly 10 years and has markedly bolstered the numbers of female
graduates. “Webster was someone I felt I could relate to. Until that point, I
had almost exclusively encountered middle-aged male professors during my physics
studies and most of my fellow classmates were also male” says Annette Ferguson,
of the University of Edinburgh who first made contact with Webster during her
undergraduate years.
Nominators emphasize Webster’s
wisdom in matching the individual with opportunities. “Webster sees the skills
of each individual and then designs projects to suit these strengths,” says
Alicia Oshlack of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in
Melbourne. She is commended not only for her continual attention to the career
development of her protégés, but also for appreciating that not everyone will
have the same career trajectory as hers.
“She assumes you are a complex
person who also happens to be a scientist, instead of a scientist who it so
happens turns out to be a complex individual,” says Maurizio Toscano, of the
University of Melbourne.
Australian colloid and surface
science is ranked among the best in the world, thanks in large part to Tom
Healy, the winner of Nature’s lifetime award for mentoring excellence. He has
cultivated generations of high-performing scientists that have excelled both
nationally and internationally.
“Tom Healy is an example of a person who not only mentors his own students, he
also succeeds in mentoring an entire field of science,” says William Ducker, of
the University of Melbourne.
It is not only the supportive
“family-like” atmosphere he creates for his own students and colleagues, but his
selfless generosity in guiding others that is exceptional. “Mentoring is a way
of life for Tom,” says Calum Drummond, chief of Industrial Physics at the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), who has
been mentored by Healy throughout his career.
Healy’s main interests lie in
colloid research – the study of particles in a dispersed medium, such as an
aerosol or emulsion – including the properties of aqueous interfaces,
coagulation of colloidal particles, and the
adsorption of ions and molecules at solid-liquid interfaces. Healy is noted for
carrying out both fundamental and applied research with equal vigor and much of
his work has underpinned important developments in various industries, including
mineral processing and nanotechnology.
Healy’s supportive and
collegial approach fosters scientific excellence and collaboration amongst
students and colleagues. He is renowned for bringing people together from
diverse fields, such as applied mathematics, physics, chemical engineering, and
biology. “I believe his greatest contribution has been based on a unique ability
to guide and cajole colleagues and students in a number of complementary
disciplines, focusing on a common problem, so that the answers produced are much
more than the sum of the parts,” says William Jones, a consultant for the
chemical processing industry.
“He encourages research
collaborations amongst scientists, even in instances where he, or his
university, would not be directly involved, nor be ‘beneficiaries’ of the
research. This is quite unique in the world academic arena,” says Russell
Crawford a former Healy Ph.D student and now Dean of the Faculty of Life and
Social Sciences at Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn.
An outstanding feature of
Healy’s legacy is a student conference in colloid and surface science, held
every two years, which he and Bob Hunter of the
University of Sydney established nearly 40 years ago to help young
researchers network with their peers. A testament to its success, aside from its
longevity, is the fact that it has been emulated elsewhere around the world,
including Europe, the United States and Japan. “I can name many excellent
Japanese scientists who benefited from research collaboration and personal
association with the Healy [academic] family,” says Toyoki Kunitake, of the
University of Kitakyushu/ RIKEN, Japan.
Healy is renowned for fostering
a nurturing environment and creating opportunities for his students, such as
encouraging them to get a taste of overseas experience during their candidature.
In fact, an award bearing his name was established at the University of
Melbourne to fund a student to travel to an overseas conference or research
centre. He is also credited with bringing back to Australia’s shores some of the
finest minds in the field.
He has guided people across
academia, government laboratories and industry, thus extending his mentoring
beyond traditional boundaries. “In today’s world, Tom’s interest and enthusiasm
for forging strong collaborative links with industry might be seen as nothing
unusual, but in the 1960’s and 1970’s his approach was groundbreaking and
innovative,” says Brian Kavanagh, of the Water Corporation of West Australia,
who was mentored by Healy during his undergraduate studies and throughout his
career.
“Tom is the benchmark from
which I rate all mentors,” says Drummond, a sentiment echoed by all of Healy’s
nominators. This year’s winners of Nature’s Australasia awards set a gold
standard in mentoring excellence. It is a pity that only two prizes could be
awarded -- the quality of all the other nominees was outstanding.
Photographs
 |
|
 |
| Photo 1: Winners Rachel
Webster and Tom Healy with Dr Philip
Campbell, Editor-in-chief of Nature. |
|
Photo 2: Winners Rachel Webster and Tom
Healy with Dr Philip Campbell, Editor-in-chief of Nature. |
Photographs by Les O’Rourke | 
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