UNSW Canberra Associate Professor Sondoss Elsawah has received the 2022 Dorothy Green Award. The Dorothy Green Award recognises outstanding research by women at UNSW Canberra.
UNSW Canberra Associate Professor Sondoss Elsawah has received the 2022 Dorothy Green Award.
The Dorothy Green Award recognises outstanding research by women at UNSW Canberra.
A/Prof. Elsawah is the Director of the University’s Capability Systems Centre (CSC). She has a rich background in research in the field of participatory and model-based problem solving, and its enabling fields, such as systems thinking and operations research.
Under her leadership, the CSC’s systems thinking and modelling program has become a world-class systems modelling capability.
A/Prof. Elsawah supports early career academics inside and outside UNSW and has led CSC through high-impact collaborative projects that positioned UNSW as a trusted scientific partner for the Australian Government on critical strategic matters.
This was recently demonstrated when CSC was approached by Defence to mobilise and lead a research team to support evidence-based decision making for the Australian, UK and US trilateral security pact, AUKUS.
A/Prof. Elsawah thanked her family, friends, colleagues and mentors and made special mention of her mother, who she thanked for giving her a wonderful education.
She said the significance of the Award was not simply about the recognising the achievements of one academic, and that it was an opportunity to share “a moment of remembrance”, “a moment of celebration” and “a moment of reflection”.
A/Prof. Elsawah said it was a time to remember the life of Dorothy Green, an academic, a scholar, a critic, a writer, a poet, and an educator at UNSW Canberra.
“One lesson that I learnt from her was that despite all the challenges and hardships she had to endure, Dorothy Green drew resilience from her strong sense of purpose and her confidence in the quality of work she brought to the world,” she said.
A/Prof. Elsawah said it was also a time to celebrate the achievements of the women who have been awarded, applied for, or been inspired by the Dorothy Green legacy, and the women who supported them on their leadership journeys.
Finally, A/Prof. Elsawah invited her colleagues to reflect on the work that still must be done to carry on the legacy and empower women in academia.
“I am most honoured and humbled to be one link in the chain that is the lineage of the great women who came before, and those who are yet to come,” A/Prof. Elsawah said.