Nominations are now invited for the ANSTO Australian Synchrotron Stephen Wilkins Thesis Medal.
This medal is awarded annually to the PhD student at an Australian or New Zealand University who is judged to have completed the most outstanding thesis of the past two years whose work was undertaken at and acknowledges the Australian Synchrotron, or whose work acknowledges and was undertaken under the auspices of the International Synchrotron Access Program (ISAP).
The 2025 ANSTO Australian Synchrotron Stephen Wilkins Medal, will be awarded to the candidate producing the most outstanding thesis and whose degree was awarded, but not necessarily conferred, after the 30th June 2023. The awardee will receive a monetary prize of $3,000 funded by a bequest from the Wilkins family and by ANSTO to support career development.
The prize was established in honour of Prof. Stephen Wilkins, who was a stalwart of X-ray and synchrotron research in Australia. Stephen was a CSIRO scientist for more than 35 years and made many pioneering contributions in the field of X-ray science.
He made key contributions in the field of X-ray crystallography and was the lead author of a seminal study on X-ray phase contrast imaging that was published in the journal Nature. This study has formed the basis of imaging and computed tomography capabilities at synchrotron facilities all around the world, including at the Australian Synchrotron’s Imaging and Medical Beamline and Microcomputed Tomography beamline.
In the early 1980s, as one of the first enthusiastic proponents of synchrotron radiation in Australia, Stephen Wilkins demonstrated how important this new tool would be to all the scientific disciplines. He was influential in the establishment of the Australian National Beamline Facility in Japan in the early 1990s, as well as in supporting the case for the establishment of the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne in the early 2000s.
