Past Events › Victoria

To foster and recognise excellence in Victoria’s early-career scientists, the Royal Society of Victoria has established four prestigious competitive prizes open to Victorian students in their final year of doctoral candidature, in all areas of the Biomedical & Health Sciences, Biological Sciences (Non-human), Earth Sciences and Physical Sciences. Following an assessment of applications across the four categories, we will select eight PhD finalists to present their work to us during National [...]

Enormous changes and transitions are already upon us, and we find ourselves unprepared. This summer’s devastating bushfires and the unprecedented disruption to industries and the business of government here in Victoria during the COVID-19 pandemic have given us a disquieting insight to the sustained uncertainty we’ll be facing under a rapidly changing climate in the decades to come. Under these new conditions, referring to what happened in the past will [...]

A joint event with Let’s Torque Join us for the Let’s Torque Grand Final! Featuring this year’s finest undergraduate science communicators, who have honed their presentations to provide us with short, sharp, engaging tales from the bleeding edge of human knowledge. Our presenters will compete for First Prize, Second Prize and the People’s Choice prize on the big night. To accommodate COVID-19 restrictions, Grand Finalists will have their presentations pre-recorded, then [...]

The advent of Artificial Intelligence came with promises to overcome the human limitations of speed, processing and information storage, opening up a whole new world of possibilities for how we live and how we work. However, AI has yet to deliver on those promises and now faces ethical and moral dilemmas never encountered before. With COVID-19 now shaking the fabric of every society without discrimination on the basis of gender, race [...]

Introspection is something of a feature of our lives in 2020; never mind the trajectory of the global pandemic and the fate of the planet, how did we each, individually start out from our distant personal origins to arrive at this curious point in time and space? So we’ve asked four scholars, scientists and seekers of a better world: What’s keeping you off the streets, and up at night? The [...]

Dr Samantha Grover Lecturer, Environmental Chemistry, RMIT University A joint presentation with Soil Science Australia What if we could reverse climate change, increase biodiversity and feed everyone? Does that sound like a win-win-win scenario for people and the planet? Join Dr Samantha Grover as she explores the possibilities of soil carbon. From microbial processes to global policy settings, she will discuss how carbon moves from the atmosphere into soils, how land [...]

Dr Nisa Salim’s research focuses on novel designs, materials and scalable formulations for the production of multifunctional materials inspired by nature, a promising approach to help solve human challenges. The research underpins the molecular level understanding of the structure of these materials and how these are translated into functionalities at the macro level. In a recent discovery, Nisa’s team created ‘hair-like’ fibres that are extremely light weight, yet strong and can [...]