The 2017 AIP Lecture Series will be delivered by Dr Helen Maynard-Casely.

Helen Maynard-Casely is a Planetary Scientist based at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO) where she uses the neutrons and synchrotron x-rays to investigate the materials that make up our solar system.  She has a PhD in high-pressure physics from the University of Edinburgh and has been lucky enough to have collected data in facilities all over the world, blowing up a few diamonds along the way.  Always keen to tell anyone who’ll listen about planetary science, she writes a column ‘The Tides of Venus’ for The Conversation and tweets @Helen_E_MC.

Helen’s talk “Journeying to the centres of the planets” takes us on a journey, not just to visit the planets of our solar system, but to get to know them more intimately though understanding their varied and downright dangerous insides.  We’ve yet to actually dive under the clouds of the gas giants, crack through the ice of the dwarf planets or drill into the rocks of the terrestrial planets – so how do we know what lies beneath planetary surfaces?

An additional regional lecture will be delivered in Mount Isa in 2017 by Dr Sean Powell. Sean Powell’s research experience is in theoretical and computational modelling of particle dynamics and diffusion and MRI characterisation of diffusion in complex pore spaces. In addition, Sean has industry experience in computer software and hardware engineering, 3D visualisation systems, and solar thermal energy research. Presently, he leads the biofabrication research team within the Biofabrication and Tissue Morphology research group at the Queensland University of Technology. His quantitative and problem solving skills as a physicist complement those of the multi-disciplinary team of biologists, organic chemists, clinicians and medical engineers. He is also passionate about learning and teaching and lectures undergraduate physics at all year levels from introductory to advanced.

This year’s AIP youth lecture tour will promote physics to senior high school students and science teachers in a selection of regional centres throughout Queensland.

Commencing in August, Dr Helen Maynard-Casely and Dr Sean Powell will present their lectures in major centres across Queensland.

Scroll down to see if they are coming to a school near you!