Director's Preface

THIS REPORT is the official account to the government funding body, the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs (DETYA), of GEMOC's achievements and activities for 1999.  GEMOC also uses this Report to give an overview of our 1999 activities to our collaborators, the mineral exploration industry, the technology manufacturing sector, the scientific community, undergraduate and postgraduate students and other stakeholders.

GEMOC entered its second stage in 1999 (after commencing in January, 1996) having used the first three years to establish the optimum staff mix within the resource constraints, put in place new infrastructure and achieve our ambitious goals of generating funding additional to the Key Centre grant to carry out the GEMOC Programs (including the Research Program) as set out in our strategic plan.

GEMOC has again been very visible nationally and internationally through 1999 with 50 presentations at 18 conferences and 71 peer-reviewed publications.  The international postgraduate program remains vigorous, international collaboration is increasing and an increasing number of international visitors are undertaking collaborative projects during visits of 3-6 months. Postgraduate commencements are healthy and undergraduate teaching goals are being achieved.

 It is difficult to choose highlights from the many achievements, but these include the following (as well as the Research Highlights in this Report):
 

  • Rondi Davies was the first GEMOC PhD to graduate at Macquarie in September, 1999 and seven more theses have been submitted for examination in the past year.

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  • 1999 was a multi-collector year: the Technology Development Program exceeded all expectations with exciting new developments including in situ Re-Os dating of mantle sulfides, in situanalysis of Lu-Hf isotopic compositions of zircons for tracking crust-mantle interaction in magmas and in situHf isotope analyses combined with U-Pb dating of zircons for defining "event signatures" of tectonic domains.

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  • Increased industry interaction has been of major importance in developing new conceptual approaches and in the funding of collaborative research projects.

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    At Macquarie, the Geology and Geophysics Area within the School of Earth Sciences (which also included Physical and Human Geography), became the independent Department of Earth and Planetary Scienceswithin the Division of Life and Environmental Sciences in the College of Science and Technology as a consequence of major restructuring of the academic units. Following a request by DETYA's Review Committee, GEMOC negotiated a new agreement on its role in the Department and University with the Department Head, the Head of the College and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research). GEMOC continues to benefit from the strong support of the Vice-Chancellor and the University Executive.

    The next two years of GEMOC will build on the strong platform established so far and we anticipate additional ground-breaking research and technology developments and frontline science, continued increase in industry support and interaction, sustained teaching outcomes, a high level of international collaboration (ongoing and new) and the realisation of our strategic plan to maintain funding to GEMOC after the Commonwealth funding ceases.
     

    Suzanne Y. O'Reilly

    Annual Report 1999

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