Announcing the inaugural recipients of the awards, Federal Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr said the scholarships encourage young researchers to do postgraduate study or post doctoral training and he had no doubt they will play an important role in Australian and global science.

Having just received a PhD from the Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas, Dr Bi-Qing’s postdoctoral research will use the new Australian SKA Pathfinder telescope (ASKAP), currently under construction by CSIRO in the Murchison region of Western Australia, to study the interaction of the Magellanic Clouds (our nearest extragalactic neighbours) with the halo of Earth’s Milky Way galaxy.

This system provides the closest and best laboratory for understanding how galaxy interaction influences the overall evolution of galaxies.

ASKAP will make fundamental advances because it was designed to be the fastest radio telescope in the world prior to the SKA, which means that it can perform surveys of huge areas of sky at high resolution and good sensitivity.

The brightness of many parts of the Magellanic System means that this project can begin by using the six-telescope Boolardy Experimental Test Array (BETA), which will begin to collect data in 2012 and well before the full ASKAP facility is due to be completed.

This project will assist in the science commissioning of ASKAP, which will build Australia’s case for hosting the Euro 1.6B Square Kilometre Array.

Among the research aims, the project will test the new iVEC High Performance Computing facilities at Murdoch and UWA and help prepare the way for receiving data from the final ASKAP facility.

The award is funded through the Science and Industry Endowment Fund (SIEF) which encourages collaborative research that brings together organisations capable of working together on solutions to national challenges.