Atrad Pty Ltd

Many congratulations to the newest PhD in Finland Dr Emranul Sarkar. An insightful defence of his thesis against Iain in the role of opponent.

Many thanks to Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory for hosting, we have thoroughly enjoyed visiting and participating in your traditions.

Huge congratulations to Dr Emranul Sarkar on the outstanding defense of the thesis! 🍾🥳 From the left opponent Professor Iain Reid, Emranul Sharkar and custos Docent Thomas Ulich.

Photo: Arto Vaarala

We congratulate Maisie on achieving first class honours in Physics this year. Maisie worked with Bron on micro-Doppler detections of microbats, using several ATRAD radars of various frequencies. Maisie was able to correlate radar echoes with acoustic detections, which are the current standard in identifying microbat species and behaviour. Congratulations Maisie, we look forward to watching what you achieve next!

Get to know Adelaide’s microbats Microbats are one of the most common native mammals in metropolitan Adelaide. But what are these little creatures, and why are they so important?

We’re in Canberra this week, and keen to catch up with our colleagues in SDA/STM.

We’re currently attending the AOGS-AGU conference, held at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. If you’re here, please get in touch either via the conference app or usual methods!

We're working on some new and interesting projects, like teaming up with the COtL mesonet to help with their field work. The mesonet consists of 114 meteorological stations across arable South Australia, primarily used to detect hazardous spray drift conditions www.cotl.com.au
Pictured are Damon Grace, COtL GM, and Iain Reid, ATRAD ED

ATRAD will close today for 2024, re-opening 6 January 2025. We have lots of exciting new projects brewing so stay tuned! Wishing everyone a happy holiday season.

We congratulate Teegan and Lucy on their recent completion of the honours year in Physics. Teegan looked at a comparitive study of meteors on the BP meteor radar against the currently reconfigured ST interferometer, while Lucy looked at radar detections of Adelaide's microbats, including coincident detections with current best practice acoustic sounders. Both projects were supported by ATRAD in collaboration with the University of Adelaide. Congratulations Teegan and Lucy, we look forward to watching what you achieve next!

Easing our way back into the conference circuit post Covid, we attended the 16th International Workshop on Technical and Scientific Aspects of MST Radar and Lidar ( / ) back in September, held at the Universität Rostock and organised by Leibniz-Institut für Atmosphärenphysik - IAP. Last week we attended the 2024 Australian Space Domain Awareness and Space Traffic Management Conference ( ) hosted by UNSW Canberra Space. Both meetings were fantastic, full of new learnings, great discussions, re-connecting with colleagues and making new ones. We're looking forward to the 2025 conference scene.

📷 Leibniz-Institut für Atmosphärenphysik - IAP & UNSW Canberra Space

Lest We Forget

We are greatly saddened to learn of the untimely passing of our colleague and friend Robert Dragoljevic. Robert worked at ATRAD as a technician for 11 years. He left in 2022 to pursue other ventures but remained in touch and was a frequent visitor. We will miss his quick wit, infectious smile and love of coffee. Vale Robert.