The Centre’s mission is to encourage a confident democratic ownership of modern science nationally and internationally by increasing science awareness in the community, fostering public dialogue about science, and improving the communication skills of scientists.

From an administrative perspective CPAS sits within the ANU College of Science. In practice CPAS people also work closely with the ANU College of Health and Medicine.

The roots of CPAS started to grow in the 1980s, when two ANU academics - physicist Dr Mike Gore (now Professor), the founder of Australia's National Science and Technology Centre, Questacon, and biologist Professor Chris Bryant, then ANU Dean of Science - started up a Graduate Certificate in Science Communication program.

CPAS is part of a growing network of science communicators. It has links with communication programs in universities across Australia, Europe and the Americas and with science centres on all continents including Asia and Africa.

The lecturers and tutors as well as administrative staff in CPAS recognise that 2020 was an extraordinary year. We have had time to reflect, to hear from you, to plan and to innovate. With this, we wanted to lay out our approach to teaching for 2021, driven by our focus on you as students.