Chance of a lifetime to spend time at famous US museums

Published Sunday, 07 May, 2017 at 08:11 AM

Minister for Innovation, Science and the Digital Economy and Minister for Small Business
The Honourable Leeanne Enoch

Two Queensland researchers have been awarded the opportunity of a lifetime to spend time at the world famous Smithsonian Institution in the United States.

Science Minister Leeanne Enoch said Dr Ashley Field from the Queensland Herbarium, and Dr Donna Hancox from QUT were this year’s Queensland-Smithsonian Fellows.

Ms Enoch said the Government-funded Queensland-Smithsonian Fellowship program gave Queensland researchers the opportunity to collaborate with leading researchers at the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex, with 19 museums, nine research centres and more than 140 affiliate museums around the world.

“The fellowships are up to $25,000 each and pay for travel and accommodation expenses in the United States,” Ms Enoch said.

“The fellowship program has been running since 2001 and researchers who have been through the program come back to Queensland with strong links to their counterparts in the United States and a wealth of knowledge they share with their colleagues back home.”

One of Queensland’s foremost authorities on Australian ferns and lycophytes, Dr Field is a senior botanist at the Queensland Herbarium.

Based at the Australian Tropical Herbarium at James Cook University in Cairns, Dr Field will spend time at the United States National Herbarium at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington DC.

The United States National Herbarium is one of the world’s largest repositories of botanical specimens, with approximately five million global specimens, 90,000 types and 250,000 ferns and lycophytes.

Dr Field said it also housed collections of Australian and Oceanian specimens, including species presumed to be extinct in Australia and not represented in Australian collections.

“I plan to examine type collections of all Australian ferns and lycophytes in the US to progress my research on the classification and description of Queensland species,” Dr Field said.

“This will help us to determine the threatened status of some Queensland species of ferns and lycophytes, and whether or not historical specimens of species that are presumed to be extinct, were actually collected from Queensland.”

Dr Field will have access to the latest techniques building the fern tree of life utilising Next Generation DNA sequencing, which he will use to complete a detailed scientific publication on identifying Australian ferns.

Dr Hancox, from QUT’s School of Creative Practice, will spend time at the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum in New York.

Her focus is to develop regional arts programs that reflect the lived experiences and the everyday creativity of regional and remote communities.

“We sometimes fall down in Queensland in delivering arts programs to regional areas that resonate with those communities,” Dr Hancox said.

“The Cooper Hewitt has a great deal of experience in working with communities in developing arts programs and arts policies that increase civic participation and are reflective of local community life.

“My aim is to learn from what the Cooper Hewitt does successfully and bring those approaches and processes back to Queensland so we can look at developing similar regional arts frameworks here.”

ENDS

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