The Ken and Julie Michael Prizes recognise the outstanding achievements of our graduate students at both ICRAR nodes.
The winners for 2019 are Mengyao Xue from ICRAR-Curtin and Fei Qin from ICRAR-UWA.
Mengyao Xue (ICRAR-Curtin) and Dr Ken Michael.
Mengyao has made important steps in the study of pulsars with the MWA, conducting the first low-frequency MWA pulsar census using the high time-resolution VCS mode of the instrument, and characterising the polarisation performance of the telescope in tied array mode. Her work (which has resulted in two lead author publications and two more co-authored papers) has provided new insights into pulsar emission properties and the Galactic pulsar population, and will feed into future plans for low-frequency pulsar studies with the SKA.
Chris Tallentire MLA and Fei Qin (ICRAR-UWA).
Fei’s body of work includes three first-author papers which describe tests of cosmology using large optical and radio surveys of galaxies. These studies pave the way for more precise measurements using future surveys such as WALLABY and TAIPAN. The studies are a powerful combination of observational data, simulations and theory, and utilise measurements of subtle deviations from universal expansion to test General Relativity and measure parameters that are fundamental in characterising the current Lambda Cold Dark Matter paradigm.
Congratulations to both the winners and their supervisors, and to all the applicants for their achievements. Thanks to Dr Ken Michael for his generous support for this Prize, first awarded in 2017 to Chenoa Tremblay and Tristan Reynolds, and in 2018 to Ahmed Elagali and Sam McSweeney.
