ABSTRACT:
New classes of optical fibres are rapidly emerging that allow fibres to be used well beyond their established role in data transmission and into applications in a various areas including sensing, biology, medicine, defence and optical data processing. These developments have been enabled by research in a diverse range of fields including physics, materials science, process engineering and fluid mechanics. Professor Tanya Monro will review recent progress in application of the novel optical fibres. Some highlights will include fibres with world-record nonlinearity and the first fluorescence-based in-fibre biosensors.

SPEAKER PROFILE:
Professor Tanya Monro completed her undergraduate degree (BSc (Hons)) and PhD within the School of Physics at the University of Sydney. Her PhD work on self-written waveguides was awarded the 1998 Bragg Gold Medal for the best PhD thesis by a student from an Australian University. She then took up a postdoctoral research position at the Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) at the University of Southampton in the UK. In 2000, Tanya was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the ORC, where she worked until the end of 2004 leading research in the areas of holey optical fibres and soft glasses. A year later Tanya returned to Australia to take up the inaugural DSTO Centre of Expertise in Photonics (CoEP) Chair of Photonics and directorship within the School of Chemistry & Physics at the University of Adelaide. In two years she has built the centre into a team of 20 researchers. She has published more than 200 papers and is a member of the SA Premier's Science and Research. In 2006 she was awarded the Cosmos Magazine inaugural "Bright Sparks" award. 'Optoelectronics is an exciting field to work in. Many of the new and fundamental concepts you work on can be realized and tested within a university environment, and then tailored for real world applications' says Professor Monro.

The Australian Institute of Physics International Women in Physics Lecture Series was instituted to celebrate the contribution of women to advances in physics. Under this scheme, a woman who has made a significant contribution in a field of physics will give a series of lectures around Australia, including a Public Lecture arranged by each participating branch of the AIP. The Lecture will be of interest to a non-specialist physics audience and is expected to increase awareness among students and their families of the possibilities offered by continuing to study physics.

SCHOOLS LECTURES
will be held in Hobart at The Undercroft, Elizabeth College, at noon on Tuesday 9th October and in Launceston at Launceston College at 1.30 pm on Wednesday 10th October

FURTHER INFORMATION
is available from Dr. John Humble, ph. (03) 6226 2396 e-mail: John.Humble@utas.edu.au or Dr Elizabeth Chelkowska, ph. (03) 6226 2725, e-mail: Elizabeth.Chelkowska@utas.edu.au.  The School of Mathematics and Physics is co-organising the lecture.