Professor Monro is currently an Australian Research Council (ARC) Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellow, Director of the Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS) and Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics (CNBP) at the University of Adelaide. IPAS pursues a transdisciplinary research agenda, bringing together physics, chemistry and biology to create knowledge and disruptive new technologies, and solve problems for health, defence, the environment, food and wine.
In November 2014 Tanya will take up a new position as Deputy Vice Chancellor Research at the University of South Australia.
Tanya is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (FAA), the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE) and the Australian Institute of Physics (FAIP). She is a member of the AAS National Committee for Physics, and a member of the SA Premier’s Science & Industry Council (PSIC) and the South Australian Economic Development Board (EDB). Tanya is also an inaugural Bragg Fellow of the Royal Institution of Australia (RiAus). Tanya was awarded the Australian Academy of Sciences Pawsey Medal for 2012. In 2011 Tanya was awarded South Australia’s “Australian of the Year” and the Scopus Young Researcher of the Year. In 2010 she was named South Australian Scientist of the Year and Telstra Business Women of the Year (in the Community & Government category). In 2008 she won the Prime Minister’s Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year.
Tanya obtained her PhD in physics in 1998 from The University of Sydney, for which she was awarded the Bragg Gold Medal for the best Physics PhD in Australia. In 2000, she received a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at the Optoelectronics Research Centre at the University of Southampton in the UK. She came to the University of Adelaide in 2005 as inaugural Chair of Photonics. She has published over 500 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and raised approximately $140M for research. She serves on international, national and state committees and boards on matters of science and research policy and science evaluation and assessment.