Professional Development & Mentoring

In CAASTRO, we are committed to providing Professional Development opportunities to our staff and students. We also offer to support school and university students who are looking for mentorship or who feel disadvantaged in their career choice. Our culturally diverse team and our female researchers will be inspiring role models to share their experiences.

Left: CAASTRO Chief Investigators Prof Matthew Bailes (r.) and Prof Steven Tingay (not in picture) provided
career advice to junior staff members of the CAASTRO node at Curtin University. From left: Dr Cath Trott, Dr Steven Tremblay, Dr Ramesh Bhat, Dr Stephen Ord, Dr Jean-Pierre Macquart.
Right: We organised a tour of the NASA Tracking Station in Tinbinbilla, the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, for our ANU members and our visitors (Chris Cassella / ScienceAlert, Destin & Tara Sandlin / “SmarterEveryDay”, and Jake Hughes / University of Cardiff). Members from right: Dr Fang Yuan, Ben McKinley, Dr Andre Offringa, Dr Christian Wolf.

We also have a dedicated Mentoring Program within CAASTRO, where we make sure that our junior members – students and postdocs – benefit from the experience, knowledge, and advice from our successful senior staff.

Our members during the Mentoring Session at the 2012 CAASTRO Annual Retreat at Cervantes in Western Australia.

High School teachers and university lecturers, in particular, will appreciate the wealth of CAASTRO video material as a valuable resource for their own training purposes or for showcasing to their students.
For instance, Career Advice videos of our Theme Leaders Prof Stuart Wyithe (Evolving; University of Melbourne), Prof Matthew Bailes (Dynamic; Swinburne University of Technology), and Prof Brian Schmidt (Dark; ANU).

CAASTRO is also a proud co-sponsor of the annual “Women in Astronomy” workshop of the Astronomical Society Australia (ASA). Numerous CAASTRO members attend every year and often give presentations. CAASTRO Director Prof Bryan Gaensler’s slides from the 2011 workshop can be accessed here. 

Workshop participants of the ASA ‘Women in Astronomy’ workshops in Sydney, May 2011 (above) and in Melbourne, October 2012 (right).