News Lou Vance Elected as a Member of The World Academy | Australian Ceramic Society - Press Release | |
| Lou Vance Elected as a Member of The World Academy of Ceramics | July 5th, 2007 |
It is with pleasure that we announce Lou Vance’s election as an Academician in the prestigious World Academy of Ceramics, where he joins around 250 of the world’s leading ceramists. The other Academicians from Australia are Richard Hannink, Mike Murray, Keith Reeve and Mike Swain. The World Academy of Ceramics (WAC) was founded in 1987. It constitutes a centre for the international community directed towards promoting progress in the field of ceramics and fostering a better understanding of the social impact and cultural interactions of ceramic science, technology, history and art. It is a voluntary, non-profit organization of collective and individual Supporting Members concerned with the welfare of the ceramics sector. Professional Members of WAC (Academicians) are individuals who have made a noteworthy contribution to the advancement of ceramics internationally. Appointment as an Academician rewards personal merit in the candidate’s field and is subject to rigorous evaluation procedures to ensure top quality. Election procedures take account of both geographical and specialty distribution. Academicians, who serve in an honorary capacity, are eligible to join the Advisory Board and the Committees which assist the Council in defining WAC activities. The Academy’s headquarters are in Faenza, Italy, and its website is at http://www.waceramics.org Dr Vance is an internationally known specialist in the science and design of ceramic materials for the immobilisation of nuclear wastes of many different types. From his Doctorate major in Physics, he began a research career specialising in solid state studies of the physics and chemistry of many different inorganic materials, mainly minerals. From the outset of his research career in 1968 he has published prolifically internationally and his publications list totals over 270. He added radiation damage to his research interests in 1972 and “tailored ceramics” for nuclear waste immobilisation in 1979. He has researched this theme at three major institutions, namely Pennsylvania State University, Atomic Energy of Canada and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), giving him an exceptionally broad international perspective of the topic. At ANSTO he has made a major contribution to the development of a wide range of synthetic titanate (“Synroc”) ceramics for immobilising various types of nuclear wastes. As a Team Leader there, he mobilised and led around 30 person-years of R&D per annum from 1991 to 2005. He has subsequently maintained connection with the field, while becoming more engaged with research into cementitious materials. Each new step in waste form design has been backed by rigorous solid-state research. He has played a major role in publicising these developments at many international conferences with, notably, 43 papers presented at Scientific Basis for Nuclear Waste Management Symposia alone. He is therefore very well-known internationally in this field, and regularly receives invitations to present papers, join Organising and Advisory Committees and chair Sessions. As to practical applications, he was Principal Investigator for collaborative research between ANSTO and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory from 1994 to 2000 on surplus plutonium immobilisation in a modification of Synroc, and he has been involved in nuclear waste immobilisation research with British agencies since 2001. He has also been deeply involved with collaboration with Russian, French and Japanese nuclear agencies at various times. His rigorous research, extensive publications and frequent international conference attendance have been instrumental in ANSTO being recognised as a world centre for ceramic nuclear waste form development. Other honours and appointments:
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