Location and Venue | Accommodation | Conference Dinner
Diversity| About | Organising Committee | History
Scientific Program Day 1 | Scientific Program Day 2 | Scientific Program Day 3
Poster Presentations
Welcome to Country| Speakers| Scientific Committee
Abstracts | Key Dates | Prizes
We are pleased to announce that the 2019 Australian Institute of Physics Summer Meeting will be held on 3rd – 6th December 2019 at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.

The AIP summer meeting was established in 2017 as the biennial meeting of the physics community in Australia. The AIP summer meeting takes place in odd-numbered years and focusses on the recent trends and developments of Australian physics research.

The AIP Summer Meeting is equally targeted at professional scientists, academics, post-doctoral researchers and PhD students. By comparison, the AIP Congress takes place in even-numbered years and features many keynote and plenary talks given by overseas speakers, with participation by ~ 800 delegates.
We look forward to welcoming you to Melbourne in December 2019.
Location and Venue
Venue
The main campus of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University is located in Melbourne CBD next to the Victoria State Library.
The conference will take place in Building 80, The Swanston Academic Building on Swanston Street.

Location
Access to Swanston Street is via foot or tram. Tram lines 1, 3, 3a, 5, 6, 16, 64, 67, 72 all stop at the RMIT tram stop. Tramline map.
The closest train station is Melbourne Central. Train times can be found at Public Transport Victoria. To travel in Melbourne you will need a Myki card. More details here.
Transfers from the airport are available using the SkyBus. Tickets can be bought at the airport or purchased online.

Accommodation
A range of accommodation options can be found in and around Melbourne.
Below are a selection of accommodation options close to the conference venue.
Accommodation | Address | Distance from venue |
Brady Hotel | 30 Little La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000 | 170 m |
City Edge on Elizabeth | 99 A’Beckett St, Melbourne VIC 3000 | 220 m |
Ibis Melbourne Central | Level 4/399 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne VIC 3000 | 600 m |
Rydges Melbourne | 186 Exhibition St, Melbourne VIC 3000 | 1 km |

Conference Dinner
18:30 – 21:30 Thursday 5th December 2019
The conference dinner for the AIP Summer Meeting 2019 will take place at Zinc Fed Square.
The dress code is business or smart. No jeans, T-shirts, thongs, miniskirts.

Address: ZINC Federation Square, Swanston St & Flinders Street, Melbourne VIC 3000
Access: The restaurant is located 220 metres from the Flinders Street Railway Station / Tram stop. Access is via the riverside walkway.

Our aim is to facilitate an inclusive Meeting that encourages the free exchange of ideas and welcomes all voices in a respectful atmosphere. We invite participation from people of all races, ethnicities, genders, religions, nationalities, ages, sexual orientations and abilities.
Diversity
As organisers, we are working to try to provide a balanced and diverse program. You can help us build a better, more inclusive summer meeting by forwarding our Call for Abstracts throughout your network, and by sending along your suggestions for presenters and participants that might help to diversify the Meeting.
For the AIP Summer Meeting 2019, we have clear goals for gender diversity with the aim of having a good percentage of oral presentations made by women.
Statistics
The following statistics refer to presenters only.
GENDER
Keynote | Invited | Speaker | Poster | Totals | |
Female | 3 (60%) | 7 (37%) | 20 (20%) | 5 (15%) | 35 (23%) |
Male | 2 | 12 | 78 | 28 | 120 |
Totals | 5 | 19 | 98 | 33 | 155 |
COUNTRY
Keynote | Invited | Speaker | Poster | Totals | |
Australia | 4 | 16 | 96 | 33 | 149 |
Austria | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Germany | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
New Zealand | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
USA | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 |
Totals | 5 | 18 | 98 | 33 | 155 |
CAREER STAGE
Keynote | Invited | Speaker | Poster | Totals | |
Career | 5 | 13 | 15 | 1 | 34 |
ECR | 0 | 4 | 20 | 1 | 25 |
Retired | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Student | 0 | 2 | 62 | 31 | 95 |
Totals | 5 | 19 | 98 | 33 | 155 |
About
The Australian Institute of Physics is an organisation dedicated to promoting the role of Physics in research, education, industry and the community.
In even-numbered years the AIP Congress welcomes physicists from across Australia and worldwide to a gathering of 500 – 1000 delegates.
In odd-numbered years the AIP Summer Meeting is held to showcase the work done by the physics community in Australia.
Organising Committee
Conference Chair

RMIT University
Committee Members

University of Melbourne

Monash University

Australian Synchrotron
History
Previously, the AIP Summer Meeting has been held in the following locations;
Year | Organiser | Location | Chair |
2019 | RMIT University | Melbourne | Gail Iles |
2017 | University of New South Wales | Sydney | Sven Rogge |
Scientific Program Day 1
Scientific Program Day 2
Scientific Program Day 3
Poster Presentations

Wednesday 4th December 2019
17:00 – 19:00
Kaleide Theatre Foyer (Building 8, Level 2)
ID | Presenter | Abstract title |
---|---|---|
CM-1 | Jamie Booth | Optical Properties of Perovskites with Large Spin-Orbit Coupling from First Principles |
CM-2 | Tyler Gardener | Unconventional superconducting states on the honeycomb lattice |
CM-3 | Alexander Nguyen | Achieving Aluminum Liftoff for Fabricating a Spin Hall Effect Device |
CM-4 | Mason Paxevanos | High Frequency Vibrational Energy Harvesting Using [011] Mn-PMN-PZT Relaxor Ferroelectric Single Crystals |
CM-5 | Roberto Munoz | Causal state analysis of blinking quantum dots |
CM-6 | Amani Alruwaili | Structure and dynamics in charged colloidal suspensions |
CM-7 | Samir Eldemrdash | The colloidal properties of detonation nanodiamonds in water |
CM-8 | Antony Jones | Large scale defects for pinning modification of YBCO thin films |
CM-9 | Zhaojin Liu | Single Crystal Diamond Thin Film for Dosimeter Applications |
CM10 | Nicholas Collins | Surface Defect Effects for Deterministic Doping in Diamond |
CM11 | Alex Healey | Comparison of different methods of spin defect creation in diamond for quantum microscopy |
CM12 | Harish Vallury | The Promise of Superconducting Boron Doped CVD Diamond Devices Fabricated by Ion Beam Techniques |
CM13 | Sam Scholten | Cryogenic widefield nitrogen-vacancy microscopy – set-up and application |
CM14 | Emma Gill | Growth Mechanisms and Interfacial Properties of Iron Nanoparticles Electrodeposited to Carbon Nanotubes |
CM15 | Ryan Parker | Erbium and defect luminescence in SiC nano-pillars |
CM16 | Liam Thomas | Towards a scalable silicon based quantum computer |
QC-1 | Graeme Berk | Resource Theories of Multi-Time Processes: A Window Into Non-Markovianity |
QC-2 | Aidan Dang | Tensor Networks for Quantum Circuit Simulation |
QC-3 | Pedro Figueroa Romero | Typicality and equilibration on general quantum processes |
QC-4 | Taylor Kearney | Measuring the Complexity of Open Quantum Dynamics |
QC-5 | Alexander Jakob | Deterministic Implantation of Donor Qubits in Si with Nanometer Precision |
QC-6 | Zehai Pang | Heavy-Molecule Ion Implantation for Qubit Architectures in Silicon |
QC-7 | Amanda Seedhouse | Readout of Silicon Spin Qubits Beyond the Singlet-Triplet Blockade |
QC-8 | Gregory White | Efficient drift-robust improvement of two-qubit entangling gates |
PP-1 | Md. Shahinur Rahman | Investigation of Viton O-ring performance for the SABRE dark matter experiment |
SP-1 | Nicholas Florent | Ferrofluid-based electrospray thrusters in nanosatellites for short-range, lightweight propulsion |
ED-1 | Aesha Bhansali | Measuring Students’ Emotional Engagement with Physics Lectures |
AMO1 | Patrick Adams | Spectroptychography of Iron Oxide/CNT Composite Materials for Battery Technologies |
AMO2 | Paul Jnr Di Pasquale | Structural Distortions in Fluorescence EXAFS Due To Spectral Flattening |
AMO3 | Samira Falahatdoost | Photoinduced Zeta Potential Changes of Semiconducting Nanoparticles |
AMO4 | Trey Guest | Evaluation of an Undulator Soft X-ray Beamline for the Study of 6.x nm Interference Lithography |
AMO5 | Abbas Hussein | Bose Einstein condensates of metastable Helium loaded into an optical lattice |
Welcome to Country
At the opening ceremony, Mr Gheran Steel will conduct the Welcome to Country to open the conference.

Gheran Steel
Boonwurrung Traditional Land Owner
Gheran has been the CEO of the Boon Wurrung Foundation Ltd since 2012. During this time, he has been heavily involved in the consultation, negotiations and implementations of Cultural Heritage Management Plans under the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act, Indigenous Land Use Agreements and the development of Reconciliation Action Plans and engagement policies for both private and government organisations, as well as local councils.
Gheran’s key focus is on restoring the language, customs and history of the Boonwurrung peoples through sharing his knowledge with the wider Australian community.
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we hold our conference. We respectfully acknowledge their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. We also acknowledge the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.
Speakers
Plenary Speaker

The University of Texas at Austin
Allan H. MacDonald was born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada, where he spent his early years. He was educated in Canada, earning his B.Sc. degree from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish in 1973. He earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Toronto in 1974 and 1978.
He spent several years as a member of the research staff of the National Research Council of Canada before becoming a faculty member at Indiana University in the U.S., where he spent over a decade. In 2000 he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Sid W. Richardson Chair in Physics.
Professor MacDonald’s contributions to the theory of condensed matter physics have spanned many topics, including electronic structure theory, the quantum Hall effect, magnetism, and superconductivity. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and was awarded the Herzberg Medal (1987), the Buckley Prize in Condensed Matter Physics (2007), and the Ernst Mach Honorary Medal (2012).
In 2011 he predicted that a small rotation to a “magic” relative orientation angle would covert graphene bilayers from weakly interacting Fermi liquids to tunable strongly correlated electronic states. A rapidly expanding field (twistronics) with an impressive range of potential applications has grown from this observation.
Keynote Speakers

Swinburne University of Technology
Virginia Kilborn is Professor in Astrophysics, and Dean of Science at Swinburne University of Technology. Her field of scientific expertise is in radio astronomy, and she works on galaxy evolution by tracing the gas content of galaxies. Virginia obtained her PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Melbourne, and worked at Jodrell Bank observatory in the UK before heading back to Australia to take up a position at Swinburne University in 2003.
Virginia is immediate past president of the Astronomical Society of Australia.

University of New South Wales
Sven Rogge researches quantum electronics, at the School of Physics. Sven works on quantum computation in silicon at the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology. In a team of enthusiastic researches we work on gaining atomistic insights into the interactions of quantum objects, like atoms and qubits, with their environment. This allows us to manipulate quantum information and minimise decoherence. Before joining UNSW in 2011 Sven worked at the Kavli Institute for Quantum Nano Science at Delft University and Stanford University. Sven is the Vice-President of the Australian Institute of Physics.

Australian National University
Christine Charles is Professor and Head of the Space Plasma, Power and Propulsion laboratory at the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. She works on experimental expanding plasmas applied to space science (solar wind and aurorae) and space propulsion (i.e., Helicon plasma thruster for space debris mitigation & Pocket Rocket electrothermal thruster for nano-satellites such as ‘CubeSats’). She was recently awarded the 2015 Women in Industry Excellence in Engineering. She has published over 200 articles in various international peer-reviewed journals and her scientific output has been recognised by her Fellowship of the American Physical Society in 2013 and her Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science in 2015. She actively popularises her science on ABC Catalyst, Discovery Channel, radio and public lectures and she was a TEDx Canberra speaker in 2014.

Macquarie University.
Professor Deb Kane holds a Personal Chair in Physics at Macquarie University, Sydney. She received a BSc (Hons) degree in physics from University of Otago, NZ, and her PhD degree from St Andrews University, Scotland. Her current research interests include photonics dynamical systems, quantifying complexity, the optics and optical properties of certain spider webs and silks, quantitative microscopy and nanoscopy, and laser materials processing. She is a Fellow of the Optical Society. She was the AIP Women in Physics Lecturer and medallist in 2006. She chaired the IUPAP Commission on Laser Physics and Photonics (2015-2017). Deb is a member of the National Committee of Physics and the Management Committee of the Australian Nanotechnology Network, and is the Accreditation Manager of the AIP.
Scientific Committee

Astrophysics
A/Prof Glenn Kacprzak Swinburne University of Technology

Biophysics
Dr Connie Darmanin La Trobe University

Condensed Matter
Prof Jared Cole RMIT University

Medical Physics
Dr Suzie Sheehy University of Melbourne

Optics
A/Prof Meera Parish Monash University

Particle Physics
Dr Matthew Dolan University of Melbourne

Quantum Computing
Dr Charles Hill University of Melbourne

Space Physics
Dr Alina Donea Monash University
Abstracts
The abstract book is available here. The book is 176 pages long therefore please consider the environment before printing. The book will not be provided in printed form at the conference.
Abstract submissions are for oral or poster presentations in the following topics:
- Astronomy & Astrophysics
- Biophysics
- Condensed Matter
- Atomic, Molecular, Optical Physics
- Medical Physics, Radiation physics, Accelerator physics
- Particle & Nuclear Physics
- Physics Education
- Quantum Computing
- Space Physics and Space Instrumentation
Oral Presentations
Invited talks are allocated a 30-minute slot comprising a 25-minute talk + 5 minutes for questions.
Ordinary talks are allocated a 15-minute slot comprising a 12-minute talk + 3 minutes for questions.
Speaker guidelines can be found here.
The presentation screens in the RMIT lecture theatres and seminar rooms are compatible with both 4:3 and 16:9 (widescreen) aspect ratio slides.
- Laptop connectors: HDMI and VGA are available.
- USB ports: no USBs can be connected to RMIT computers.
- Audio: available, including wireless handheld microphones and wireless lapel microphones if needed.
- Movies: we recommend testing any animations (e.g. from MATLAB output or similar) embedded within slides before the conference.
Posters
Please ensure your poster is A0 size (594 x 841 mm) and portrait orientation. This is to ensure all posters fit on the poster boards available.
Key Dates
Abstract submission closes | 18th September 2019 |
Notification of acceptance | 4th October 2019 |
Early-bird registration closes | 18th October 2019 |
Registration closes | 16th November 2019 |
Other relevant conferences
In order to assist your travel planning we are including the dates of other conferences which will be of interest to physicists. If you wish to have your conference added please contact the organising committee.
Conference | Location | Dates |
ANSTO User Meeting | Macquarie University, NSW | 2-3 Dec 2019 |
IONS KOALA 2019 (Optics) | Dunedin, New Zealand | 2-6 Dec 2019 |
TeVPA 2019 (Particle Physics) | University of Sydney, NSW | 2-6 Dec 2019 |
ANZCOP (Optics) | RMIT University, VIC | 8-12 Dec 2019 |
FLEET Workshop | Lorne, VIC | 8-11 Dec 2019 |
AGU Fall Meeting (Geophysics) | San Francisco, USA | 9-13 Dec 2019 |
Prizes

Friday 6th December 2019
3:00 – 3:30 pm
Swanston Academic Building, Main Lecture Theatre (Building 80, Level 2, Room 7)
Prizes were awarded to students and Early-Career Researchers at the closing ceremony of the AIP Summer Meeting 2019.
Oral Presentation Prize Winners
Early Career Researchers
First | Jackson Smith | RMIT University | Condensed Matter |
Second | Melanie Stamp | University of Melbourne | Biophysics |
Third | Rafael Alexander | University of New Mexico | Quantum Computing |
Students
First | Lucy Strang | University of Melbourne | Astrophysics |
Second | Frank Zhang | University of Melbourne | Medical Physics |
Third | Thomas Dixon | UNSW | Physics Education |
Poster Prize Winners
First | Roberto Munoz | Monash University | Condensed Matter |
Second | Amanda Seedhouse | UNSW | Quantum Computing |
Third | Abbas Hussein | ANU | Atomic, Molecular, Optical |
Oral Presentation Judges
- Dr Glenn Kacprzak, Swinburne University
- Dr Julie Karel, Monash University
- Dr Paul Dyke, Swinburne University
- A/Professor Martin Sevior, University of Melbourne
- Dr Charles Hill, University of Melbourne
- Dr Stephan Rachel, University of Melbourne
- Professor Virginia Kilborn, Swinburne University
- Professor Brian Abbey, La Trobe University
- Professor Jared Cole, RMIT University
- A/Professor Peter Skands, Monash University
- Dr Anton Tadich, Australian Synchrotron
- Professor Sven Rogge, UNSW
- Dr Sean Hodgman, ANU
- A/Professor Jennifer MacLeod, Queensland University of Technology
- Dr Nicolas Menicucci, RMIT
- Dr Gilles Buchs, Silicon Quantum Computing Pty Ltd
Poster Session Judges
- Professor David Jamieson, University of Melbourne
- A/Professor Tamar Greaves, RMIT
- Dr Qiang Sun, RMIT
- Professor Jodie Bradby, ANU and President of the AIP
Thank you to all the judges who took time out of the conference to assess the work of the upcoming talent in physics.
Registration
Registration | AIP Members | Non Members |
---|---|---|
Early bird | $ 250 | $ 350 |
Full | $ 350 | $ 450 |
ECR | $ 150 | $ 250 |
Retiree | $ 150 | $ 250 |
Students | $ 100 | $ 130 |
Single Day | $ 125 | $ 225 |
Important Information:
Registration provides access to all sessions and covers all meals, including the conference dinner.
Early bird pricing ends October 18th 2019.
All prices are in Australian dollars and include GST.
Register here (links to external site)
Sponsors

Wednesday 3rd – Friday 6th December 2019
10:30am – 5:00pm
Swanston Academic Building (Building 80, Level 3, Room 6)
Gold Sponsors / Exhibitors
Silver Sponsors

Bronze Sponsors




Job Fair

Tuesday 3rd December 2019
13:30 – 15:00
RMIT Storey Hall foyer (Building 16, Level 5)
We invite undergraduates, postgraduates and Early Career Researchers to attend the Physics Jobfair at RMIT, before the main conference starts.
You should bring several copies of your CV with you and any business cards you have. Be prepared to introduce yourself and your research in a few short sentences. Visit as many of the industry booths as possible and have a list of questions ready to ask. Dress smartly, as though you were attending an interview – first impressions count!