ACEMS IMPACT VIA SPONSORSHIP

ACEMS scholarships for the National Mathematics Summer School, 11-18 January 2020, Melbourne, Australia

The National Mathematics Summer School (NMSS) is a two-week residential school that runs each January in Canberra. It attracts approximately 75 students, most of whom are about to begin their last year of secondary education. Students come from all over the country and are selected by their respective state mathematics teacher associations.

The 52nd NMSS ran from 11 to 18 January under rather exceptional circumstances. Due to the bushfire and smoke situation in Canberra at the time, NMSS was cancelled at ANU less than 48 hours before it was due to commence, then resurrected as a one-week program at The University of Melbourne. Despite the drastic change in circumstances, the school ran successfully, and the funding provided by ACEMS played a role in the school's success.

The $10,000 funding received from ACEMS was used to award scholarships to eleven attendees of the 2020 NMSS. The ACEMS scholarships helped to diversify the demographic of students attending NMSS 2020. In particular, the ACEMS scholarships allowed students, who might otherwise find the cost prohibitively expensive, to attend. This helped to expose these students to mathematics beyond the school curriculum.

Australian Science Communicators (ASC) Eleventh National Conference 2020, 16-19 February 2020, Melbourne, Australia

ACEMS joined seven other ARC Centres of Excellence in sponsoring the Networking event at the Australian Science Communicators Conference in 2020. The conference was held at Monash University in February. Around 200 science communication professionals from around the country joined some members of the media and political leaders for the weeklong conference. The ACEMS logo was displayed on the main slides throughout the conference. The networking event was held on the last evening of the conference. The sponsorship gave ACEMS, and the other Centres of Excellence, the chance to introduce themselves to all the attendees. The joint sponsorship was led by the communications professionals at each Centre. It was another example of the group collaborating to promote the important work being done by Centres of Excellence, both individually and as a whole.

The Laborastory show, 11 March 2020, Melbourne, Australia

The Laborastory is a science storytelling event in Melbourne that comes to tell the stories of science – the heroes, the egos, the breakthroughs and the mistakes of genius. Each Laborastory event brings together five scientists from different fields to tell the remarkable stories of the heroes of their field. Each story is just ten short minutes. They tell the tales of the tragedies and triumphs of the men and women who made science their passion, and left legacies of groundbreaking discoveries that inspire the scientists of today.

Laborastory March 2020 was the first event, after a one year hiatus, in a new venue (Howler, in Brunswick). The coronavirus pandemic was beginning to make news (spare rolls of toilet paper were given out as a prize during the night), but the seriousness of the crisis was not yet apparent (the State of Disaster in Victoria was declared within a fortnight). Despite the break and the new space and the emerging health crisis the crowd was large and as enthusiastic as always.

Laborastory audiences really are among the best you can get, always ready to laugh and encourage the more junior speakers. Five speakers (1 clinical geneticist, 2 PhDs and 1 honours student from Melbourne Uni, and one microbiologist/children's book author) spoke on their science heros, including: Rick Guidotti, fashion photographer who started shooting fashion shots of kids with albinism and other conditions that affect their physical appearance; Daniel Kahneman, an economist and a psychologist who showed that intuition is not always right; Anne Treisman, psycholgist, who famously demonstrated that where your visual attention goes completely shapes your experience of the world (AKA the monkey business illusion); Fred Sanger, two-time winner of Nobel Prize for chemistry; and Gunther von Hagen, the anatomist who pioneered plastinated cadavers for world exhibitions, and has bequeathed his own body for this purpose, on the condition his wife performs the procedure. The evening was engaging, funny and informative, and Sam Mills (MC on the night) received positive feedback from members of the audience, with multiple people asking how they could arrange to do a talk. The speakers themselves were also very happy with the outcome, and glad they had done it.