Profile

Tanya Monro

After I finished my HSC I received scholarship offers at two different universities. I had to choose which one I would take up. I finally made my decision by ringing up the co-ordinators of each course and asking them about the different options available, what they taught and what they could offer. I chose the University of Sydney because they offer advanced classes. This meant I could take options that would extend me.

The advanced options and Talented Student Program in Science are great. I participated in the Talented Student program in my second year, and we had the opportunity to design a physics experiment for the first year lab. We thought up the idea, made the equipment and then tried to work out how best to teach the students. In my third year I undertook a research project which involved computer modelling.

I didn't find it difficult to make friends when I got to Uni because in the Science practicals, students have to interact with other students in order to complete their experiments. The practicals are usually around 3 hours long. An undergraduate science degree has quite a lot of contact hours, around 20-24 hours a week. I was lucky to obtain a scholarship from Comalco for my undergraduate degree — they offer eight scholarships a year to women studying science or engineering.

I went on to complete a PhD which encompassed theoretical, computational and experimental aspects. I was supported by three scholarships: an Australian Postgraduate Award, an ATERB scholarship, and the Australian Photonics CRC Women's scholarship. My project involved investigating the idea of using a beam of light to self-write a permanent waveguide inside a piece of glass. As well as being an interesting research problem, which has not been previously studied, I hoped that this work might lead to some useful applications in the telecommunications industry. Because self-writing is such a new area of research, it has been possible to make significant progress both theoretically and experimentally, which makes it an exciting and rewarding field.

Tanya was awarded her BSc in 1995 and PhD in 1998. She went to a research position in the UK.

In late 1999 she returned briefly to the University to be awarded the 1998 Bragg Gold Medal for "the most outstanding Ph.D. thesis in physics at an Australian institution in 1998", by the Australian Institute of Physics. Professor John Pilbrow, President of the AIP, said during the ceremony that Dr Monro's thesis "was the best written thesis I've read in recent years", a sentiment reflected in the comments of the Bragg Medal judges, who commended Tanya on the clarity of her work. Tanya scored a double first with this award — she is the first person in NSW and the first woman to be awarded the Bragg Gold Medal since its inception in 1992.

In 2005 Tanya returned to Australia to take up a position as DSTO Professor in Photonics at the University of Adelaide.