The Chancellor's column

June 2008

The search for the next Vice-Chancellor

Our Vice-Chancellor, Professor Richard Larkins, is leading the University from strength to strength. However, consistent with his advice to Council when he accepted his appointment in 2003, Professor Larkins will retire as Vice-Chancellor at the conclusion of his term on June 30 2009.

Council has now begun the process of looking for the next Vice-Chancellor. The process began with a consultation phase, during which the Deputy Chancellors and I met with more than a dozen University stakeholder groups. Separately, I met with all my fellow Council members. During these meetings, the range of attributes that the next Vice-Chancellor will ideally possess were canvassed. The consultation phase was a time-consuming process, but well worth it. The results of these discussions guided and informed my recommendations to Council.

Council has now approved the next phase, which is to establish a Selection Committee that will run the search and appointment process. The Selection Committee is charged with making a recommendation to Council before the end of the year. The search will be international, but of course will be inclusive of Australia and indeed Monash University.

Council has the responsibility to appoint the Vice-Chancellor, therefore the Selection Committee will be comprised of Council members. The only exception is one that should be good news to you. This is, to the extent that we need to bolster a particular skill set on the Selection Committee we will invite a prominent member of Monash’s alumni to participate.

While Council, through its Selection Committee, is busying itself with this task, Council is fully supportive of Professor Larkins' leadership of the University. As Chancellor, I look forward to Professor Larkins continuing to manage the University in its entirety till the day he hands over to his successor.

Atoms revealed

Scientific advances depend critically on advances in scientific instrumentation. Of all the classes of scientific instruments ever invented, the one that has had the most profound impact is the microscope and its imaging sibling, the telescope. Images of molecules and galaxies, of brains and planets, provide uniquely valuable insights into structure and function. These images invariably contribute to our present-day understanding and set the stage for the next generation of questions, inventions and knowledge accumulation.

In April my wife and I were privileged to visit the newly completed Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy, a core imaging facility that supports over 200 Monash University researchers and other scientists. Recruited by Associate Professor Joanne Etheridge, the enthusiastic Director, the staff at the Centre conduct world-class research programmes centred on microscopy, as well as train the scientists, undergraduates and graduates who require microscopy as part of their extensive suite of research projects.

A light microscope collects images by focussing ordinary light onto the sample. An electron microscope focuses a beam of electrons onto the sample. The electrons have a much smaller “wavelength” than the photons in the light beam, so they can be used to look at much smaller objects. Whereas light is limited to looking at objects about a tenth of a micron (one millionth of a metre) in diameter, a beam of electrons can look at objects 10,000 times smaller. This means that an electron microscope can take pictures of individual atoms. For those of you who don’t think in microns, it is worth noting that a virus is of the order of a tenth of a micron in diameter, a bacterium is of the order of one micron in diameter and a brain cell is of the order of ten microns in diameter.

It isn’t easy to steer a beam of electrons onto a sample. The newest electron microscope at the Centre is so complex that engineers from the Dutch manufacturer are spending four months on site to assemble, test and align it. This substantial effort seems appropriate for a microscope that formally goes by the name, “300 kilo-electron-volt double-aberration corrected Titan transmission electron microscope”.

Carrying a list price of $10 million, this extraordinary microscope will allow researchers to examine the arrangement of atoms in materials being designed for use in light-weight cars, bio-degradable plastics, super-fast computer chips and artificial hips, as just a few examples. In one image we saw of a metal, the well-ordered atoms that make up the bulk of the metal were lined up in rows like oranges at the grocery store, but the few hundred atoms that comprised a defect appeared to sit higher than the others, like plums lined up in the wrong direction perched cheekily on top of the oranges.

To prevent electrical interference, the microscope is housed in a carbon-steel cladded room. To prevent mechanical interference, it sits on a one-metre thick concrete floor that is mechanically isolated from the rest of the building. Ordinary air conditioning would cause unacceptable vibrations, so the room temperature is closely controlled by radiators on the ceiling. Mercifully, a large duct allows a very slow flow of air into the room for the sake of the hard working researchers who run the equipment. To further prevent mechanical interference, although the building is a two-story building there are no rooms above the microscope labs. If you are looking for a quiet place to study, this is it.

Besides the numerous mechanically and electrically isolated rooms (some occupied and some waiting wistfully for an electron microscope to appear in future) there are many sample preparation rooms. Like painting a house, the quality of the job is entirely dependent on the preparation. Like running a business, the quality is enhanced by focussing on areas of expertise. For this reason, the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy concentrates on non-biological samples. The preparation techniques and imaging requirements for biological and non-biological samples are very different.

The staff at the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy are the best in the world, drawn from labs at Monash, elsewhere in Australia, the UK, Japan, Switzerland, China and the US. There might be many things they share in common, but the one that struck me is that they all smile as they work. As well they should. It is not everybody who gets to work with expensive video games at the leading edge of research technology. We met a researcher on exchange from China studying the crystal structure of vanadium oxide, a component of batteries that might one day store solar and wind electricity. We met another from Cambridge who is studying nanometre-scale rods of copper in aluminium sheets. We met others who are studying the materials that will be used in layers just five atoms thick in microprocessors that will power the next generation of computers.

Dark the rooms may be, but the science inside is brilliant, helping Monash University to illuminate the mysteries of the atomic world.

Dr Alan Finkel AM (BE 1976, PhD 1981)
Chancellor
Monash University