PhD Students

Jack McIlquham

Jack first came to CSIRO in 2019 as a project scientist for the Sensing and Sorting program within CSIRO Mineral Resources. His role as a lab technician and atomic physicist involved a combination of fundamental x-ray theory and experimentation, prototype analyser development for mineral and elemental identification, and on-going maintenance of analysers deployed in the field. Jack is currently a PhD student working on a joint project between UNSW and CSIRO on the potential application of machine learning to these areas, with a specific interest in quantifying the underlying spectra produced by various spectroscopy techniques. Jack also helps run the Machine Learning for Physical Systems co-learning group with Dan MacKinlay and Richard Scalzo.

Molly has worked with CSIRO as a student since 2018, first as a summer student, then as an honours student and now as a PhD candidate. Her work focuses on developing novel X-ray sensors and techniques for exploration, sensing and sorting for terrestrial and space applications. Her PhD focuses on the development of Inverse X-ray Fluorescence (IXRF) which is a new way of measuring the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) of materials and hopes to provide improvements over the traditional XRF methods used in industry for exploration, sensing and sorting. She has just completed an internship with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where she investigated a new X-ray source with a focus on using it for quantitative analysis in space. Other interests include science communication and community engagement. Throughout her undergraduate degrees, she worked with the University of Wollongong as part of their STEM Ambassador program, designing and delivering STEM workshops for primary and high school children. She also worked at UOW’s Science Space, a hands-on science museum. At CSIRO she has worked with the communications team to help develop websites and write articles.

Marcus is a PhD candidate studying with CSIRO and UNSW. Marcus works as a part of the X-ray Systems Team, developing X-ray technologies to provide accurate mineralogical analysis for mineral processing industries. Marcus holds a Bachelor of Engineering in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of New South Wales, and his current research involves the design of compact XRD systems for extraterrestrial mineral analysis. Marcus is interested in using Monte-Carlo physics simulations to model X-ray analysis systems and using outputs to inform the design of real-world prototype analysers.