John C Warner becomes a distinguished professor in chemistry at Monash U. Professor Warner is co-founded of the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry.

Martin Westwell (Flinders U) joins the board of the Australian Council of Education Leaders. He researches learning at the university and is also CEO of the South Australian Certificate of Education.

Ten Australian PhD candidates and post doc researchers in physics are invited to this year’s Lindau meeting of Nobel Prize winning physicists, two more than last year. The Australian Academy of Science nominates candidates, who are selected by the Lindau organisers to rub photons with the great. This year’s delegation is:Katie Sizeland, ANSTO. Fiona Panther, ANU. Eliezer Estrecho and Matthew Reeves, both from the ARC centre for future low-energy electronics. Nora Tischler, Griffith University. Melanie Hampel, Monash U. Sarah Walden, QUT. Hareem Khan, RMIT. Claire Edmunds, Uni Sydney. Samuel Hinton, Uni Queensland.

Andre Luiten, John Harnett and Martin O’Connor from the University of Adelaide have won two innovation awards at the Avalon Airshow, via their Cryoclock company. Their sapphire clocks are ultra-accurate in measuring time, vital for the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar. The team also won the defence science category at last year’s Eureka Prizes.  Mathew Tettlow’s Inovar Technologies won space innovation award for its nano-satellite platform. Innovar is based at the University of Adelaide’s ThincLab. Also at Avalon, Jimmy Toton (RMIT) and Graham Bell (Monash U) both won young innovator awards for using three-D printing in precision manufacturing.