Université PSL Opens a Satellite Office in Australia
On February 27, PSL is opening a permanent representative office at the Australian National University (ANU). The event comes on the eve of the Joint Science and Technology Meeting (JSTM) in Canberra, an intergovernmental forum that will focus on high-priority scientific collaborations between France and Australia. A Université PSL delegation will be attending the JSTM alongside France’s Minister of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, Frédérique Vidal.
A permanent PSL satellite office at the ANU
As part of its campaign to broaden its international relations, PSL has decided to open its first permanent representative office worldwide in Australia. The university aims to strengthen a partnership with the ANU in research and academic instruction that dates back to March 2017.
On Wednesday, February 27, Observatoire de Paris-PSL President Claude Catala, representing PSL President Alain Fuchs, will join with Brian Paul Schmidt, Nobel laureate in physics and Vice Chancellor and President of the ANU, to formally mark the opening of this satellite site. The office will have a twofold mission: it will serve as PSL’s institutional liaison, working in close cooperation with representatives from the ANU’s colleges and research institutes, and it will play an advisory role in expanding programs and exchanges in Australia.
Damien Gratadour, lecturer, astronomer and researcher at the Observatoire de Paris-PSL, will become the office’s director in March 2019. Mr. Gratadour will oversee the agreements signed between PSL and the ANU and thereby serve as the primary contact person for facilitating and ensuring consistency among the projects already under way in a variety of disciplinary fields, including astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and social science as well as future disciplines, both at the ANU and at Australia’s other institutions of higher education and research.
The Observatoire de Paris-PSL at the Space and Astronomy Workshop
The Observatoire de Paris-PSL, which has already launched multiple collaborations with Australian universities on an array of topics related to space technology, will be taking part in the Space and Astronomy Workshop. Observatoire de Paris-PSL President Claude Catala will be a co-moderator of the workshop, together with a representative from the CNES (the French space agency) and two research professors from Australian universities. The event will tackle a host of issues including space technology and earth observation as well as high angular resolution astronomy, radio astronomy and exobiology – all fields in which French-Australian collaborations have assumed a highly prominent role, notably as part of agreements signed between PSL and the ANU. The workshop is intended to help participants identify priority areas for expanded research through those collaborations.