You can view the full leadership committees and member profiles on our website here.
In 2022 we saw a refresh and restructure of our Executive Board. We welcomed Jared Cole and Wallace Wong on to the Committee and farewelled Salvy Russo and Dane McCamey who had been on the Committee since the beginning of the Centre. We also restructured the portfolios to better represent the strategic objectives of the Centre and create a more streamlined model. The new structure introduced the portfolios of Science, People, Industry and Education.
Through the restructure of the Executive Committee, Jared Cole – Deputy Director for Science, succeeded the role of Chair of the Science Committee from Tim Schmidt who had held the role since the Committee was created in 2019. In late 2022 the Science Committee also undertook a change in leadership of some of the Centre platforms. Trevor Smith succeeded Dane McCamey as leader of Platform 2.1 – Control of Excitons, Asaph Widmer-Cooper took on the role of platform leader for 2.2 – Excitons at Interfaces and a new platform of 2.4 - Rapid Materials Discovery was formed under the leadership of Udo Bach. Finally, our new Chief Investigator James Hutchison took on the role of platform leader for 3.3 – Light Emitting Devices, replacing Girish Lakhwani.
All Centres go through different phases of their life and what expertise they require from an advisory board, and Exciton Science is no exception. In 2021 some changes were made to bring in the expertise of Dr Gerry Wilson, formerly of CSIRO, as the Board Chair, and Prof. Moira O’Bryan, Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Melbourne. In 2022 we expanded the Board’s reach and were lucky to recruit Victoria’s Lead Scientist, Dr Amanda Caples, to our board. Complemented by our International Scientific Advisory Committee Chair Prof. Elsa Reichmanis, who will be replaced by Prof. Kakkudiyil George Thomas in 2023, the Board provides highly valued oversight and advice to inform the operations and strategy of our Centre.
One of the recommendations from our Mid Term Review in 2021 was to form an Industry Advisory Committee. This was to be complemented by a broader strategy to identify and leverage our relationships with industry and to capitalise on our technological discoveries by forming broader collaborations with industry partners who could benefit from the Centre’s research. In early 2022 we reorganised our governance structure and implemented the new committee. We identified the strategic objectives we wanted to achieve and brought in a contingent of people from across the energy and materials sectors, including from private Australian and international industry, from large multi-nationals and small enterprises, energy sector networks, and from the public sector. We are proud to now include as members in our Centre: Harold Yap - Woodside Energy, Victor Rosenberg - ClearVue PV, Nicola Morris – formerly of ARENA and now Universities Australia, Dr Scott Watkins – Kyun-In-Synthetic, and Prof. Michael Breer – Melbourne Energy Institute.
The Centre’s ISAC membership has been stable since 2019 under the leadership of Prof. Elsa Reichmanis. We welcomed two new members in 2021/22 to increase our representation in Europe and the greater Asian region, with Prof. Jochen Feldmann (LMU, Germany) and Prof. Kakkudiyil George Thomas (IISER, India) joining the Committee. The ISAC has added significant value to our scientific journey, particularly throughout COVID-19, and provided much needed international perspectives and guidance to enhance our research credibility internationally. Each year we task the Committee with reviewing our extensive research platforms and ask them to provide guidance on the suitability of our research directions and outcomes. We acknowledge that this is an onerous job and thank them for all the time they invest in the Centre. In 2023 Prof. Thomas takes over as Chair of the Committee. We look forward to his vast experience and knowledge in the areas of photoscience and nanomaterials, and welcome his assistance as we prepare to host the Asian Photochemisty Conference in Melbourne in November 2023.