CSIRO Alumni newsletter - Oct 2025
Welcome to the October 2025 CSIRO Alumni network newsletter.
In this month's newsletter you can read about our latest research news, upcoming events and courses, volunteer to share career tips with our CERC Fellows, encourage PhD students to apply for our physics scholarship and stay in touch with the alumni network.
Powering the future: critical minerals explained
Critical minerals are not just buzz words. They are essential for modern life and supply chains could be disrupted. We dig into Australia's critical minerals list and explain why.
New blood test could streamline Alzheimer's diagnosis and treatment access
Australian scientists have developed simpler, less invasive ways to detect Alzheimer's, potentially helping more patients access emerging treatments.
Save the date!
Our annual CSIRO Alumni Scholarship in Physics award ceremony will be held at Lindfield on Wednesday 25 February. Invitations will be sent out nearer the date.
Help grow our alumni network
We now have over 5,200 members but we know that there are many more former colleagues out there. Help us build the alumni network and forward this newsletter on or share the link to alumni registration.
Many presentations and seminars are now being held online – so you can attend from the comfort of your own home. Our alumni calendar lists both CSIRO and external events, so you can find out about a wide range of events.
Promote your own events
To help connect alumni with one another, we encourage you to list your own events on our website. Let us know if you are organising, presenting or attending events and we can help promote it to the alumni network – please email alumni@csiro.au
We feature a range of alumni stories on our website celebrating the achievements of our members. We encourage members to get in touch and send in their stories of trials and tribulations – all in the name of scientific research!
So, if you have received an award, written a book or have any stories that you'd like to share with the alumni network, please email alumni@csiro.au
Share career advice with our CERC Fellows
We invite former CERC Fellows to join a panel of alumni and share their experiences and expertise with our current researchers.
The panel will be made up of four CSIRO Alumni with the aim of giving our CERC Fellows some insight into roles outside the organization and career options. We welcome any advice, pointers and tips. Each panellist will speak for a few minutes about their career journey, and this will be followed by a Q&A session.
Please contact alumni@csiro.au if you would be interested in joining one of our future events.
On a sadder note, if you would like to let the alumni network know about the passing of one of our members, please email us and we can post a notice to the news page and also feature an obituary within our stories section.
We invite alumni members to add their own tributes, so please contact alumni@csiro.au if you would like to share your memories of them.
Vale Dr Graham Bruce Allison
Graham was Chief of the CSIRO Division of Water Resources from 1988 to 1997. After CSIRO he was a consultant to Land and Water Australia and a Board member of the SA Water Corporation and Kangaroo Island Natural Resources Management Board.
He was internationally recognised for his contributions to groundwater hydrology, landscape and river salinisation, arid zone hydrology and isotope hydrology. He published more than 100 research papers, book chapters and conference papers. In the mid-1980s he initiated studies on the possible progress of salinisation of the Murray Darling Basin (MDB). This work had a major impact of the management of the MDB.
Vale Lin Berkmann
Dr James Skerritt has written a lovely tribute to Lin:
Lin spent many years working at the Animal Production Group at CSIRO in Floreat Park. However, her real passion was her horses and cattle. Especially her horse stud, Faberge Downs, which with her wry wit she used to describe as thoroughbred mongrels.
Being ahead of her time, and in the spirit of the great modern European breeds, she looked worldwide for proven sporting genetics to introduce to her stud. It was one of Lin’s most treasured achievements to have a horse she bred, be ridden at Gawla, by the great West Australian rider Annabelle Taylor. In later times her horses were much sought after in the middle east, as endurance mounts, with Sheik Al Maktoum being counted amongst the patrons of her stud. This led to greater infusions of Arabs into the Faberge Downs lines, although there were still significant (and very big) sport horse types when Lin ceased breeding.
Lin's encyclopaedic knowledge of various stallion lines, and her eye for a good horse, were something she could discuss for hours to anyone that was interested. Uncharacteristically for someone of her generation, she was also miles ahead of her time in being a very skilled and gentle handler of horses.
We are hiring – please feel free to share these opportunities with anyone who might be interested
Multiple Mechanical and Electrical technical and trades roles – Australia Telescope National Facility
With over 200 staff, we operate several radio astronomy observatories and data archives collectively known as the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), the only facility of its kind in the southern hemisphere. Our technology development program is the cornerstone of the ATNF and is an internationally recognised source of innovative radio astronomy instrumentation. The ATNF has been involved with the international SKA project from its inception, and our ATNF locations, telescopes and engineering expertise are in an excellent position to support and extend the science goals of the SKA telescopes over the next decade.
CSIRO has several roles across 3 of our Observatories, located at Parkes – NSW, Narrabri – NSW and Murchison – WA.
We thought our members would be interested in reading the following articles that have been recently featured on our CSIRO Alumni news pages.
The Computer History of Australia
A timeline driven history of computing in Australia starting from CSIR MARK1 (CSIRAC) and ending with Quantum Computing. The series is focused on Australian achievements but with context of what was happening around the world.
The men behind rise of CSIRO's climate modelling program
It is 53 years since the CSIRO Division of Atmospheric Research decided to prioritise an atmospheric monitoring programme designed to extend knowledge of the chemical composition of the background atmosphere and to conduct research into if and why it might be changing. Back then in 1972, a joint venture between CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) known as the Australian Numerical Meteorological Research Centre (ANMRC) was focussed on developing a global model for use in weather forecasts.
Six fascinating CSIRO projects you didn't know about
How well do you know CSIRO? Get a glimpse into some of the impact science in these six examples and find out more about what your former colleagues are doing to change the world.