Congratulations to our School members who have received 2020 Dean of Science Staff Excellence Awards!

The award winners were announced this morning during a virtual School meeting hosted by Dean of Science Professor Emma Johnston and Head of School Professor Bruce Henry. See below for the prize-winners, and the reasons they were selected for an award. 
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Adelle Coster - Dean of Science Stand Out Award
During the year, Deputy Head of School (Academic) Adelle showed warrior-like energy in deploying online resources to staff, monitoring online teaching quality, and keeping staff up to date on all of the necessary teaching protocols and duties in the virtual world. She led a huge team effort which enabled a rapid transition to online learning and teaching in the School. 

Gary Froyland – Research Excellence Award
Gary gave a keynote presentation at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics’ International Conference on Mathematics of Planet Earth in August 2020 and was also elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2020 – "a richly deserved Fellowship", said Professor Johnston. 

Jonathan Kress, Joshua Capel, Sean Gardiner, Laure Helme-Guizon, Daniel Mansfield and Alessandro Ottazzi – Education Excellence Award
Director of First Year Jonathan Kress and his team led one of the biggest teaching operations on campus: the delivery of first year mathematics to more than 5,000 students, coordinating more than 50 lecture hours per week, and more than 500 tutorial hours per week. This is likely to be larger than any other program in the university. His team worked tirelessly to keep this operation going in an online environment and they did not just meet requirements, they introduced online initiatives that improved the learning experience.

Anita Liebenau – Early Career Excellence Award
Anita’s outstanding research in Combinatorics, which is supported by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award and an ARC Discovery Project grant, has been further recognised with invitations to leading research institutions internationally. In 2020, Anita gave online presentations at the prestigious Banff Institute in Canada and as a plenary speaker at the 8th Polish Combinatorial Conference. She also drove the development of the Science Sustainability Travel Policy.

Suzie Scandurra – Excellence in an Operational Role Award
School Manager Suzie has demonstrated outstanding leadership in managing changing policies related to a wide array of issues, but specifically travel spending and working from home. Suzie saved the university a huge amount in the budget with minimal disruption to staff. 

Susannah Waters – Communication Impact Award
Publicity and Communications Manager Susannah has worked tirelessly to maintain a School community spirit which has been incredibly important this year. She’s done that in a virtual world by constantly updating web news items, hosting virtual morning and afternoon teas, and organising online materials for students to replace our annual Advanced Mathematics Day event.

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A very big congratulations to our staff members for their outstanding contributions in 2020! 

Pictured, L-R, from top row:
Joshua Capel; Adelle Coster; Gary Froyland;
Sean Gardiner; Laure Helme-Guizon; Jonathan Kress;
Anita Liebenau; Daniel Mansfield; Alessandro Ottazzi;
Suzie Scandurra; Susannah Waters.