If you work in science you get used to acronyms. If you don’t they can be tough.

The acronym in the title – ICRAR – stands for the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research which was founded in September 2009. It played an integral role in the development of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA – another acronym!), the world’s largest radio telescope and an amazingly huge scientific endeavour.

This internationally renowned, multi-disciplinary research centre for science, engineering and data intensive astronomy also loves telling everyone about their work and the wonders of the universe. One way they decided to do this was to host a monologue competition as part of National Science Week 2020. 

I was honoured to be one of the judges and also to read the winning entry for the Best monologue based on an ICRAR researcher: Black Holes and Coffee written by Nigel Luck.

You know I love to mix science into writing and performance – it was the topic of my PhD – so this competition was a perfect fit for me.

Thanks to Claire at Claire Bowen Management for inviting me to be part of this, who  along with Kevin Vinsen, devised the idea for the competition.

And thanks to ICRAR for the great work you do and for letting us have such fun with science! Next time I look up at the night sky, I’ll have so much more to contemplate 🙂