PRESIDENT'S NOTES
20 February 2002
Dear Colleague,
The new government has presented us with a challenge by acting so quickly to determine research priorities and allocating so much of last year’s Backing Australia’s Ability money to them. If nothing else, the exercise will demonstrate once again that progress in priority areas depends on good basic science. We must make sure that the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, knows our views and follows a more considered process before he sets more priorities.
Best wishes,
Brian D O Anderson
PRIORITY SETTING
The Academy’s Secretary (Science Policy), Michael Barber, has prepared a position statement on priority setting in science and innovation. This emphasises that, while the Academy supports priorities for Australian research, these must be established through a broad consultative process and must carry the support of the scientific community.
The position statement is available from the Academy’s website at www.science.org.au/media/arcfunding2.htm.
PRIVACY OF GENETIC INFORMATION
The Academy has responded to the issues paper on protection of human genetic information released by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the Australian Health Ethics Committee. The Academy argued that privacy is not the most important issue when it comes to handling medical information that is relevant to improving the health of the community.
The comments on the issues paper are available on the Academy’s website at www.science.org.au/media/ahec.htm.
EXTERNAL EARNINGS TARGETS
The Chief Scientist, Robin Batterham, has been reviewing the policy of external earnings targets for government science organisations. In a submission to the review, Michael Barber has argued that external earnings are not good indicators of the organisations’ research performance.
The submission is available at www.science.org.au/media/earnings.htm.
MEETING WITH OPPOSITION
The Foreign Secretary, Kurt Lambeck, along with Bob Williamson and Bob Crompton, met the Opposition spokesman for science and research, Senator Kim Carr, in January. The meeting was fruitful, with Senator Carr looking forward to further dialogue with the Academy.
HONOURS
Congratulations to Geoffrey Opat, from the University of Melbourne, and John Swan, formerly of Monash University, on becoming Officers of the Order of Australia.
The 2002 Australian Legends stamp issue features five prominent Australian medical scientists Peter Doherty, Donald Metcalf, Nancy Millis, Sir Gustav Nossal and Fiona Stanley who have each made lifesaving scientific discoveries in the areas of microbiology, immunology, cancer research, child health and indigenous health. Congratulations to each of them.
And I'm very pleased to report that I have just been elected to the US National Academy of Engineering as a Foreign Associate (www.nae.edu/nae/naehome.nsf/(weblinks)/MKEZ-57DJ3S?OpenDocument).
EXCHANGE PROGRAMS
The six-monthly meeting between the Academy and the new Department of Education, Science and Training will be held on 8 March 2002, to discuss the exchange programs managed by the Academy on behalf of the Commonwealth. The Academy’s Foreign Secretary, Kurt Lambeck, will attend the meeting, together with the Foreign Secretary of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, Peter Cook.
CLIMATE SYSTEM MODELLING WORKSHOP
On 14-15 February a workshop was held in the Shine Dome to develop a national approach to climate system modelling. This was the first workshop in a series of planned meetings designed to provide a national forum for assessing the state of climate systems modelling in Australia. It will be the first step in reaching a consensus on the key objectives and on the ways to maintain an effective network of scientists across government agencies and universities working on climate modelling. The meeting was organised by Michael Manton, Chair of the CLIVAR (Climate Variability) Sub-Committee.
SCIENCE AT THE SHINE DOME, 1-3 MAY 2002
The Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, will be our guest speaker at the annual general meeting dinner, to be held at the National Museum on Thursday, 2 May.
The program for the three days is available at www.science.org.au/sats/.
NATIONAL COMMITTEE RESTRUCTURING
The day before the start of Science at the Shine Dome, Tuesday 30 April, the Chairs of the Academy’s National Committees will meet to discuss the structure of the committees and other issues.
COUNCIL VACANCY
The Academy Council has invited David Kemp, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, to fill the vacancy that will be created by Bob Porter becoming Secretary (Biological Sciences) in May and giving up his position as an ordinary member of Council.
ACADEMY REPRESENTATION
Elspeth McLachlan, a Council member from the University of New South Wales, will represent the Academy at the Polish Academy of Sciences conference on ‘Conflict of interest and its significance in science and medicine’, in Warsaw in April.
BODEN CONFERENCE
The next Boden Research Conference to be supported by the Academy is entitled 'Artificial photosynthesis - powering the future'.
The conference will be organised by Professor Christa Critchey, Department of Botany, University of Queensland (mailto:c.critchley@botany.uq.edu.au), and will be held between 5 and 7 February 2003 at the Carrington Hotel, Katoomba.
CLIMATE REPORT
The Bureau of Meteorology has thanked the Academy for its help in publishing the report, ‘Climate activities in Australia 2001: Australian participation in international scientific climate programs’. The report was published in November 2001.
DISTRIBUTION OF ELECTORAL BOUNDARIES
Council noted with concern the reaction of some Fellows regarding the redistribution of Electoral Boundaries. Council noted that EXCOM recommended that the proposal for redistribution of Sectional Committees on the Biological Side should be implemented in time for elections in 2003. On the Physical Sciences Side, it was recommended that Council should not resile from its decision to create a new Sectional Committee in Computer Sciences, Information and Communications Technology and Electrical Engineering. Given the concerns among some in the Fellowship about proposals to merge Sectional Committees 1 and 2, the status quo for these Committees should be retained for the moment, except that Computer Science would be removed from Sectional Committee 1 and Electrical Engineering from Sectional Committee 5.
In a year or two, Council should look once again at the structure of Sectional Committees and could perhaps consider a model of Electoral Colleges. Council noted that according to the Bye-Laws, Chapter II8b: "in resolving upon its recommendations, the Council shall have regard to, amongst other things, the desirability of maintaining a just distribution of the membership of the Academy over the various branches of natural science."
Council resolved to report its decision to the Sectional Committees briefing scheduled for Thursday, 7 February 2002, to report its decision to the Fellowship as a whole in the President's Note and at the AGM in May 2002.
OFFICE BEARERS
President, Professor Brian Anderson
phone (02) 6125 8667, fax (02) 6125 8688, mailto:brian.anderson@anu.edu.au
Secretary (Physical Sciences), Professor Bruce McKellar
phone (03) 9344 5122, mailto:b.mckellar@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Secretary (Biological Sciences), Professor John Young
phone (02) 9351 4600, mailto:johny@physiol.usyd.edu.au
Secretary (Science Policy), Professor Michael Barber
phone (08) 9380 2460, mailto:mbarber@acs.uwa.edu.au
Foreign Secretary, Professor Kurt Lambeck
phone (02) 6125 5161, mailto:kurt.lambeck@anu.edu.au
Treasurer, Professor Ian McDougall
phone (02) 6125 4136, mailto:Ian.McDougall@anu.edu.au
