Centre researcher wins UWA Aspire Award
Centre researcher Ben McAllister, from The University of Western Australia and Swinburne University of Technology, has been awarded a Business Events Aspire Award.
Business Events Perth, funded by the State Government through Tourism Western Australia, has been running the awards program for 23 years, sponsoring hundreds of local academics and researchers to attend international conference in their discipline, to further their development and profile Western Australia on the international stage.
Dr Ben McAllister, is one of the key researchers behind The ORGAN Experiment, hosted at UWA’s Quantum Technologies and Dark Matter Laboratory.
The experiment is Australia’s first major contribution to dark matter detection, as scientists search for a tiny particle called an ‘axion’, which could explain the nature of mysterious missing matter, one of the universe’s biggest mysteries.
According to the UWA website, Dr McAllister said he is looking forward to sharing the research being conducted in WA with the international physics community.
“The conference I’m planning to attend is the Patras Workshop on Axions, WIMPs and WISPs, one of the most well-regarded international workshops in the kind of dark matter research we conduct at UWA,” Dr McAllister said.
“If we were to discover the nature of dark matter it would be paradigm shifting and a huge discovery in terms of our understanding of the universe, but it’s not work that any one person does.
“Like any great discovery it’s a collaborative effort, with many researchers both locally and internationally contributing to a grand endeavour. I want to highlight the great team at UWA working on ORGAN, particularly my colleagues Aaron Quiskamp and Michael Tobar.”
UWA Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Tim Colmer said Dr McAllister was doing some really exciting research.
“It’s fantastic that Ben has the opportunity to go to this conference because that’s where you develop some great relationships and interact with other experts who’ve come up with new ideas,” Professor Colmer said.
“We’re delighted to partner with Business Events Perth through the Aspire Awards, enabling our researchers to meet and hear from leaders in their field, build partnerships and develop collaborative networks to share good practice, acquire knowledge and learn about innovation.
“It provides the opportunity to showcase our research strengths and allows our researchers and academics to broaden their networks and horizons, not only to benefit their own research area, but for the wider WA community.”