At the Centre for Dark Matter Particle Physics, we are committed to fostering a culture where everyone feels valued, respected, and empowered to thrive and reach their full potential. Centre members strive to treat everyone in an unbiased and inclusive manner, and to remove barriers of disadvantage, for all of its members and the wider community.
Equity, diversity, and inclusion issues are wide ranging and include age, living location, gender, gender orientation, sexuality, religion, indigenous status, non-English speaking background, race, disability, mental and physical health, pregnancy, parenting and other responsibilities related to care of dependants.
The research groups in the physical sciences should reflect the diversity of the community. This Centre is a leader in physics research. Therefore, the Centre has made commitments to help under-represented and disadvantaged groups to overcome barriers and to promote equality of opportunity.
EDI Commitments
EDI Committee
Chair: Theresa Fruth
Deputy Chair: Jade McKenzie
Maaz is a PhD candidate in Theoretical Physics at the University of Melbourne. His research focuses on axion models and physics beyond the Standard Model, particularly questions related to the strong CP problem and flavour symmetries. Alongside his academic work, he is an active member of the university’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) Committee.
Emma Paterson is a PhD student at the University of Western Australia working under the supervision of Dr Jeremy Bourhill.
Haylea Purnell is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide working under the supervision of Prof Paul Jackson.
Amrita is a PhD student at Swinburne University, working with Prof. Darren Croton and Prof. Karl Glazebrook. Her research area includes N-body simulation, semi-analytic galaxy model, and JWST.
Sharry is a PhD student at the University of Sydney under the supervision of Dr. Theresa Fruth. Her area of research is Dark Matter direct detection in SABRE."
Theresa is part of the SABRE South collaboration, where she is leading the PMT working group. She continues to work on the LZ experiment, while also addressing challenges for a next generation liquid xenon detector within the XLZD consortium.
Jade is the Database Administrator for the Centre and the SABRE South Experiment
Dr Jeremy Bourhill has rejoined the team at the Quantum Technologies and Dark Matter (QDM) Laboratory, UWA, as a Research Asosciate after working for IMT Atlandique in Brest, France.
Dr Michaela Froehlich has a PhD in chemistry and significant experience in radiochemistry. She worked ever since in a multidisciplinary field and specialised on chemical isolation of rare isotopes from environmental matrices measured by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry.
Dr Zuzana Slavkovska’s area of research is in SABRE experimental backgrounds: simulations and measurements of the cosmogenic radiobackgrounds in NaI(Tl), measurements of the intrinsic backgrounds in the crystal powder, and veto liquid scintillator characterization and background measurements.
EDI Administration
Aline is the Centre Administrator and also provides support to the Centre Director. She is located at the University of Melbourne.
Anita Vecchies is the Centre’s Chief Operating Officer. She has worked in research administration at the University of Melbourne since 2008, with extensive experience in large, collaborative Australian Research Council and government grant schemes.