The Shared Laser Facility run by Flinders University has been awarded $600,000 through the Australian Research Council Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme.

Innovation Minister Senator Kim Carr announced funding for the pool of lasers, which will support the research of 20 research groups and 30 PhD students across Australia, yesterday.

Facility leader and Executive Dean of Flinders Faculty of Science and Engineering, Professor Warren Lawrence said the funding will allow the Facility to build on 15 years of collaboration with researchers at the Universities of Sydney, Western Australia and Wollongong and the Curtin University of Technology in providing access to expensive state-of-the-art lasers.

“We plan to expand the Facility to include new members and researchers,” Professor Lawrance said.

“We also plan to replace several 10-15 year-old lasers that have been made obsolete. These new lasers will enable access to new wavelength regions and facilitate complex multi-laser experiments in a wide variety of Australian Research Council supported projects, including astrochemistry, reaction dynamics, materials chemistry, and photovoltaics,” he said.

“We are delighted to receive this funding for new lasers which will significantly enhance the capability and capacity of this research, enabling research objectives to be accelerated and exceeded.”

Flinders University is also a partner in four LIEF projects, administered by the University of Adelaide, for: a high-performance microprobe analyser; high-performance computing; a plant phenotyping facility; and advanced instrumentation for the analysis of highly complex systems; plus another with the University of Queensland for digital humanities practice in Australian literary studies, AustLit Phase 4.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor David Day said: “This is a very pleasing result. Flinders looks forward to submitting more proposals in future LIEF funding rounds.”