What a great week we had at the TMOS 2022 Meta Together Conference!

TMOS launched in 2020, and in the last week of November, we gathered in-person as a whole group (almost!) for the very first time. The five TMOS nodes, along with collaborators from around the country and the world, came together for three days of science and socialising at the beautiful Bridgeport Hotel in Murray Bridge, SA.
For many of us, this was our first opportunity to meet face-to-face with people we have been working with over Zoom and email for the past few years.

Welcome

It was so exciting to see so many TMOS people in one place as everyone arrived and registered. We had lots of fun goodies to give away, including t-shirts, pins, tote bags, and even holographic drink bottles.
On our first night, we were honoured to have a Welcome to Country smoking ceremony from Harley Hall of the Ngarrindjeri People, who taught us about one of the oldest instruments on earth, the yiḏaki, or, didgeridoo, and about the healing properties of smoke.

The Conference

We had lots of great talks throughout the three days of the conference. We heard from international speakers, had panel discussions on working with industry and on careers after PhD, participated in collaborations on our flagship programs in holograms and in wearable sensors, learned more about the TMOS Outreach program, and heard presentations from many of our own TMOS researchers. These discussions and collaborations were just the beginning, and we can’t wait to see all the great work that will come out of the relationships that have been formed here.

Centre Director Dragomir Neshev gave the opening remarks to kick off the conference. We heard from several international speakers. We also heard from several of our own TMOS researchers. Everyone worked together in our Flagship Collaboration sessions. We gained some great insight in our panel discussions. Outreach Coordinator Camilla Gazzana talked about what Outreach means for TMOS. We all got to try our hand at the Outreach activities that the team has been bringing to primary schools throughout the year.

It’s not all work…

Science is fun, but we also made lots of time to relax and socialise with our colleagues. We enjoyed some friendly competition at Trivia Night. And on the last night of the conference, we celebrated the many achievements of our hard-working and truly talented team with the Inaugural TMOS Annual Awards Gala. Congratulations to all our award winners! (See the full list of winners below.)

Congratulations Shiyu Wei, Student of the Year 2022. Congratulations Jihua Zhang, ECR of the Year 2022. Congratulations to our many award winners!

The inaugural Awards Gala was an exciting way to close out the conference and celebrate our team’s many achievements throughout the past year. We couldn’t have pulled this conference off without all the hard work from our Professional Team.

Congratulations to all our award winners!

• Best ECR/Student Conference Poster 2022: Ying Zhi Cheong, RMIT
• Best ECR/Student Conference Speaker 2022: Neuton Li, ANU
• Cross-Node Exchange Award Winners: Fedor Kovalev, ANU and Yang Yu, ANU
• Meta Together Conference Engagement: Andrei Komar, ANU
• Science Communications Award: Suvankar Sen, RMIT
• Outreach Award: Wendy Lee, UoM
• Education Award: John Scott, UTS
• IDEA Award: Marcus Cai, ANU
• Industry Award: Rocio Camacho Morales, ANU
• Business Team Member of the Year Award: Greg Dennis, RMIT
• Most Valuable Player: Marcus Cai
• Leadership Award: Lukas Wesemann, UoM
• Student of the Year 2022: Shiyu Wei, ANU
• ECR of the Year 2022: Jihua Zhang, ANU