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STEM FOR THE REAL WORLD

QUT Science and Engineering

CRICOS No: 00213J

STEM FOR THE REAL WORLD

QUT Science and Engineering

CRICOS No: 00213J ULTIMATE CAREERS 2018 I 3

CUSTOM PUBLISHED by The Tangello Group Pty Ltd on behalf of Australia's Science Channel, The Science Exchange, 55 Exchange Place, Adelaide SA 5000. PUBLISHER Lucinda Mitchell - [email protected] EDITOR Karen McGhee -

[email protected] ART DIRECTOR Maree Lockhart ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Darren Dawkins - [email protected] WRITERS Karen McGhee, Bec Crew, Kate Arneman, Hannah James, Cristy Burne, Ivy Shih AUSTRALIA’S SCIENCE CHANNEL HEAD OF PUBLISHING Bill Condie TO ORDER print copies/view digital edition go to: uc.australiascience.tv

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5 MEMORABLE MOMENTS Recent advances and events you really should know about.

8 INSPIRATIONFairness For All: Dr Francesca Maclean, an engineer with a passion for equality, is on a mission to show that diversity in STEM isn’t just an issue for girls.

10 THE BIG PICTUREHow Big Data Is Affecting Your Health: The information revolution is creating amazing new career opportunities in the medical and health sectors.

18 STUDY ADVICE Your STEM Fit: See where your strengths could take you.

20 FUTURE PROOFReach For The Stars: Australia is finally getting its own national space agency. Find out what that will mean for careers in space.

24 SHAKEDOWNReal-World Robotics: What can robots do for you? We delve into what’s already possible in the world of robotics and what’s likely in the future.

31 REALITY CHECKKickstart Your Startup: Come behind the scenes for some first-hand advice from the entrepreneurs who began three successful Aussie startups.

Cover image © LaCozza/Adobe Stock

CONTENTS

31 KICKSTART

YOUR STARTUPSwimwear, virtual reality and

surfing are at the heart of three successful Aussie startups.

ULTIMATE CAREERS

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UC2018_fp adverts.indd 3 23/3/18 10:53 am

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ULTIMATE CAREERS 2018 I 5

THE WORLD’S MOST powerful rocket ever was launched last year from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Named Falcon Heavy and built by Space X, the private aerospace manufacturer founded by engineer and tech giant Elon Musk, the rocket thundered away from Earth with an unusual payload. Concrete and steel blocks often do the heavy lifting on these sorts of test flights. Instead, Falcon Heavy carried one of Mr Musk’s old sports cars and sent it out on a trajectory towards Mars. “I love the thought of a car drifting endlessly through space and perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future,” Mr Musk tweeted. Falcon Heavy has been designed to one day carry people. But this time it carried ‘Starman’, a mannequin wearing a spacesuit and seated in the car’s driver’s seat.

IT’S A TRULY historic

moment in medicine: the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the use of the world’s first digital drug. Known as Abilify Mycite, it’s more of a sensory technology,

designed to monitor what’s going on in our bodies, rather than being absorbed into our blood streams like most traditional drugs. But, it’s as small as a grain of sugar, and just like other drugs, we pop it into our mouths and

swallow it. Abilify Mycite has been developed by California-based company Proteus Digital Health and will function as an ingestible sensor to help doctors and patients track medications taken for mental illnesses, including

BRITISH ORIGINS

HE’S KNOWN AS Cheddar Man and he’s given us our best idea yet of what people from western Europe and Britain would have looked like 10,000 years ago. . . and it’s a long way from the fair-skinned

inhabitants many people expected. Cheddar Man, Britain’s oldest complete human skeleton

(right), was found about a century ago in a cave in the village of Cheddar, in South West England. He was one of the first-known settlers to come to Britain from Europe at the end of the last Ice Age and it’s always been assumed he must have had fair skin and hair signifying his European heritage. But after London Natural History Museum researchers extracted his DNA and analysed the genome it contained they announced this year that although Cheddar Man was probably blue-eyed he most likely had very dark brown to black skin and dark curly hair (left).

So where did Cheddar Man come from? His ancestors probably came from Africa and reached Britain via the Middle East.

schizophrenia. It will do this by sending a message to a patch worn by the patient that will then forward a message to a smart phone. For more on this development see page 12.

MEMORABLE MOMENTS IN STEM RECENT ADVANCES AND EVENTS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WITH

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FIGHTING SKIN CANCERABOUT 2000 PEOPLE will die in Australia this year from the deadliest form of skin cancer, melanoma. It’s a disease where survival increases dramatically if it’s detected early. So the development by Queensland researchers of an online tool for people to assess their risk of developing melanoma is welcome news. The test, from the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, is based on data collected from more than 40,000 people. It identifies a person’s likelihood of developing melanoma in the next few years based on a series of risk factors. These include age and gender, hair and skin colour, use of sunscreen and the number of moles you had at 21. The test is about 70 per cent accurate but the researchers are planning to get that figure up to 100 per cent with the addition of a blood test they hope to soon develop. Find the test here: qimrberghofer.edu.au/melanomariskpredictor

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NO, THAT DOESN’T mean that penguin numbers are

exploding and the southern hemisphere will soon be

overrun by the flightless little birds. What’s happened is that previous calculations made by

researchers of East Antarctica’s Adelie penguin numbers have

been revised significantly upwards. It comes after

evidence that past population estimates have counted only

half the Adelies on the planet. According to Australian

Antarctic Division seabird ecologist,

Dr Louise Emmerson, past estimates have counted

only breeding pairs and failed to acknowledge non-breeding

birds. Their numbers, when considered properly,

add 3.6 million to the population.

LATE LAST YEAR, the NOAA – the main US-based climate watch organisation –

issued its 12th Arctic Report Card. . . and, not surprisingly, it wasn’t an uplifting read (see arctic.noaa.gov/Report-Card/Report-Card-2017). Among the many disturbing outcomes noted by the report: Arctic permafrost is thawing faster than ever; the Arctic’s annual temperature in 2017 was the second highest on record; sea ice is melting at the fastest rate in 1500 years; and summer temperatures are rising rapidly in most Arctic seas.

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...and at the other end of the planet SCIENTISTS CAN’T SAY for sure if it’s due to climate change but a massive new iceberg broke off from an ice shelf on the east coast of the Antarctic Peninsula in the middle of last year. Known as A68 and with a surface area of 5800sq.km (about 5 times the size of Hong Kong) it’s the third biggest iceberg ever recorded. It weighs more than an estimated one trillion tonnes and holds about twice the freshwater used each year in the US. Although global warming may increase the calving (birth) of icebergs, it’s a natural phenomenon, with the cracks that led to this most recent event being evident in the Larsen C Ice Shelf (left) that produced it from at least the 1980s. What will happen to A68? It will float about in the Southern Ocean for many decades to come, producing smaller icebergs before then eventually melting away.

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IMAGINE IF YOUR contact lenses could be used as health monitors,

literally keeping an eye on levels of substances in your body such as blood sugar? That’s one of the main uses being suggested for tiny transparent sensors developed by researchers at Oregon State University (OSU). “We have fully transparent sensors that are working,” said Greg Herman, an OSU professor of chemical engineering who is working on the project. “What we want to do next is fully develop the communication aspect, and we want to use the entire contact lens as real estate for sensing and communications electronics.” He added that an array of sensors could be integrated into contact lens to test for a variety of compounds and functions such as detecting stress hormones and uric acid or pressure sensing for glaucoma.

LENS MONITORS

Image: Benjamin Jones, USGS

A collapsed block of ice-rich permafrost along Drew Point, Alaska

Penguin Population

Doubles

Just Like Home



THIS ONE SOUNDS like it’s from an episode of Dr Who or Star Trek or maybe it could have been in one of the Harry Potter books. But it comes straight from the real-life nanotechnology labs of Ohio State University. There, researchers have come up with a device that can heal with just a touch. It uses a new technology called Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT) and comes equipped with a tiny (we’re talking nanoscale) electrical

device that can reprogram skin cells to repair other sorts of cells. It’s being developed to restore

injured, ageing or damaged tissue, including blood vessels and nerves. So far it’s only been used in mice and pigs but the promise it’s showing is extraordinary.

Nerve cells produced using the new technology were shown to help brain-injured mice recover from stroke.

Healing with TNT

Image courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

IT’S ONE OF those primary school facts that remain with you for life – there are seven continents.But we should probably make that eight and add a continent named Zealandia to the list.

That revelation came last year when scientists announced that, after decades of research and analysing evidence from geoscientific data, Zealandia has all the defining features of a continent.

COUNTING CONTINENTS Roughly the same size as India, it would have made up about 5 per cent of the great southern supercontinent known as Gondwana, which included Australia and Antarctica and began to break up about 252 million years ago. The proposed new continent is located in the southwest Pacific Ocean and is now almost entirely submerged, which is probably why most of us haven’t noticed it.

CERVICAL CANCER FAREWELLAUSTRALIA IS SET to become the first country to eradicate the deadly disease cervical cancer. At the heart of that prediction is the extraordinary success of a vaccine, first developed during the 2000s by a team at Queensland University led by Professor Ian Frazer, against the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV, which is transmitted during sex, has been identified as the cause of most cervical cancer cases. Eradicating the deadly disease was raised as a likely reality this year following a successful global clinical trial of a new and improved version of the vaccine. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women and annually causes about 266,000 deaths worldwide. A free National HPV Vaccination Program to protect teenage girls was introduced in Australia in 2007 and was expanded to include boys from 2013.

BANISHING TOOTH DECAYBRITISH SCIENTISTS MAY have come up with a new and very promising way to fix holes in your teeth. And if it works the way they think it will, it could spell an end to fillings. A team of Dental Institute researchers at Kings College London found that the drug tideglusib, which is currently being trialled for use against the disease Alzheimer’s, stimulates stem cells found in the pulps of teeth. These stem cells, in turn, generate new dentine, which is usually found in small quantities beneath tooth enamel and that is known to naturally protect teeth.

ASTRONOMERS ARE ALWAYS on the lookout for new planets capable of supporting life and they think they may have found one to add to that rather short list. It’s a rocky Earth-like planet known as

LHS 1140 b and it’s about 1.4 times the size of our own home. It’s orbiting a red dwarf, the most common type of star. And it’s believed to be in orbit just the right distance from this star to make it well-placed in a habitable zone: not too close to its star but not too far away either. One drawback,

or perhaps it’s a good thing (in case it supports some sort of hostile alien life!): LHS 1140 b is almost 40 light years away from us.

Slug Superglue THE VERY ADHESIVE mucous created by a European slug

species, known as the dusky arion, has inspired the creation of a powerful new adhesive that could replace

stiches and staples used in surgery. Researchers from Harvard and McGill universities have reported that

the sticky substance is biocompatible and binds to tissues even when they’re wet. Why does the

slug need such powerful mucous? To literally glue itself in place when threatened by a predator.

Just Like Home



THIS ONE SOUNDS like it’s from an episode of Dr Who or Star Trek or maybe it could have been in one of the Harry Potter books. But it comes straight from the real-life nanotechnology labs of Ohio State University. There, researchers have come up with a device that can heal with just a touch. It uses a new technology called Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT) and comes equipped with a tiny (we’re talking nanoscale) electrical

device that can reprogram skin cells to repair other sorts of cells. It’s being developed to restore

injured, ageing or damaged tissue, including blood vessels and nerves. So far it’s only been used in mice and pigs but the promise it’s showing is extraordinary.

Nerve cells produced using the new technology were shown to help brain-injured mice recover from stroke.

Healing with TNT

Image courtesy of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

IT’S ONE OF those primary school facts that remain with you for life – there are seven continents.But we should probably make that eight and add a continent named Zealandia to the list.

That revelation came last year when scientists announced that, after decades of research and analysing evidence from geoscientific data, Zealandia has all the defining features of a continent.

COUNTING CONTINENTS Roughly the same size as India, it would have made up about 5 per cent of the great southern supercontinent known as Gondwana, which included Australia and Antarctica and began to break up about 252 million years ago. The proposed new continent is located in the southwest Pacific Ocean and is now almost entirely submerged, which is probably why most of us haven’t noticed it.

CERVICAL CANCER FAREWELLAUSTRALIA IS SET to become the first country to eradicate the deadly disease cervical cancer. At the heart of that prediction is the extraordinary success of a vaccine, first developed during the 2000s by a team at Queensland University led by Professor Ian Frazer, against the human papillomavirus (HPV). HPV, which is transmitted during sex, has been identified as the cause of most cervical cancer cases. Eradicating the deadly disease was raised as a likely reality this year following a successful global clinical trial of a new and improved version of the vaccine. Cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer in women and annually causes about 266,000 deaths worldwide. A free National HPV Vaccination Program to protect teenage girls was introduced in Australia in 2007 and was expanded to include boys from 2013.

BANISHING TOOTH DECAYBRITISH SCIENTISTS MAY have come up with a new and very promising way to fix holes in your teeth. And if it works the way they think it will, it could spell an end to fillings. A team of Dental Institute researchers at Kings College London found that the drug tideglusib, which is currently being trialled for use against the disease Alzheimer’s, stimulates stem cells found in the pulps of teeth. These stem cells, in turn, generate new dentine, which is usually found in small quantities beneath tooth enamel and that is known to naturally protect teeth.

ASTRONOMERS ARE ALWAYS on the lookout for new planets capable of supporting life and they think they may have found one to add to that rather short list. It’s a rocky Earth-like planet known as

LHS 1140 b and it’s about 1.4 times the size of our own home. It’s orbiting a red dwarf, the most common type of star. And it’s believed to be in orbit just the right distance from this star to make it well-placed in a habitable zone: not too close to its star but not too far away either. One drawback,

or perhaps it’s a good thing (in case it supports some sort of hostile alien life!): LHS 1140 b is almost 40 light years away from us.

Slug Superglue THE VERY ADHESIVE mucous created by a European slug

species, known as the dusky arion, has inspired the creation of a powerful new adhesive that could replace

stiches and staples used in surgery. Researchers from Harvard and McGill universities have reported that

the sticky substance is biocompatible and binds to tissues even when they’re wet. Why does the

slug need such powerful mucous? To literally glue itself in place when threatened by a predator.

INSPIRATION


Francesca Maclean: To be honest, I never really had an interest in engineering growing up. It wasn’t until I was doing my uni applications that my dad suggested it, because he’d made sure I had enrolled in maths and science subjects all the way through to Year 12. In Year 10, I didn’t want to continue with chemistry, because I’d had a bad experience with a teacher, but my dad made me continue, and now I have a degree in chemistry!

It’s not a very romantic story; it’s not like I became an engineer because I’d always wanted to fix things and understand how they work. But I think those sorts of stories are the exception, not the rule. If we look at how we socialise young girls compared to boys in terms of the types of toys and books they get, and the movies and role models they see – I grew up thinking I was ‘supposed’ to be a teacher or a lawyer. And talking to a lot of women who also ended up in engineering, it’s a similar story – we just sort of found our way there. And I think that’s a big shame, because our discipline could do with a lot more diversity.

UC: What was your experience doing engineering at university?

FM: I moved from Darwin to the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra when I was 17 to complete a Bachelor of Engineering/Bachelor of Science degree. I chose ANU because they had a Research and Development program, and I ended up loving research. Unfortunately, I got kicked out of that program because I didn’t have the high-distinction average it required! That was a huge blow to my ego, but university is hard, particularly for students who move away from home. It’s taken me a while to happily tell people that story, but I use it as a really good example to show that, despite what happened, I still graduated with first class honours, I still went on to do my PhD and I ended up teaching in that program.

So, I would tell my students that it’s not the end of the world if you can’t keep up. It felt like it for me at the time, but there are lots of other ways you can do what you want to do. You just have to

think outside the box and not be constrained by systems. It was a really valuable lesson for me.

UC: What was it like combining biology, chemistry and engineering for your PhD research?

FM: My field is called tissue engineering, or regenerative medicine, and what I was doing was designing materials that could mimic the structure of the brain, and altering those materials to control the damage that occurs after traumatic injury. It was a challenge, but I really enjoyed it, I think because it was a combination of understanding the theory, but also being able to make the actual materials in the lab. I was doing the dissections to grow the cells that I’d put into my materials and I’d be imaging the materials myself, so I was going from start to finish through the entire system.

I also ended up being quite good at the lab skills you need, like dissecting a mouse brain the size of your little fingernail, and I think if you’re good at things, you should continue doing them!

UC: Tell me about your experience being a young woman doing a PhD in STEM.

FM: Completing a PhD is always hard, even if you’re the brightest student with the best supervisors. Partway through mine, I started reading about what other women had said about their experiences, and a lot of my own experiences made sense, particularly those related to how academic environments are not really designed for women to succeed.

I was working in a building with no female academics, in a research area without a single female academic in the eight years I’d been there. It was like, “is this environment designed for people like me?”. I couldn’t see anyone around me whose career path I could identify with. I got fed up and ended up on a committee for access and equality, and I took that as permission to do whatever I wanted to in the space because no one else was doing anything. My friend, Emily Campbell, was an undergrad in her final year at the time, and she trying to set up a mentoring program, so we teamed up and made Fifty50 at ANU in 2015.

Fairness for all

With a passion for equality, Dr Francesca Maclean is an engineer on a mission to show students that diversity in STEM isn’t just an issue for girls – it’s something everyone should care about. As co-founder of Fifty50, a student-run organisation that provides work experience and mentoring at university, Francesca is changing the conversation about what girls are ‘supposed’ to be when they grow up. She spoke with Ultimate Career’s Bec Crew.

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Ultimate Careers: Where did your interest in engineering come from?



UC: What was your vision for Fifty50?

FM: I remember coming up with this idea of a – it sounds terrible now – gender equity leadership council in the college, and I told Emily I needed someone to help me do it. We were sitting in a cafe and finalising our presentation for the information session and we came up with the name Fifty50, because that’s what we wanted in terms of equality. There wasn’t the knowledge back then about how gender is not binary, it’s a spectrum, but we use it as a representation of gender equity.

Fifty50 has evolved a lot since we first started. It was just Emily and I in the beginning, and then in six months we’d recruited a team of 30. We started off delivering a female mentoring program, which has now been extended to include all genders, because we figured that if we wanted an inclusive outcome, then we needed an inclusive approach.

So, while recognising there are a lot of issues that affect predominantly female-identifying people in STEM, I think we need to make sure that everyone is a part of the conversation, to avoid it being only a ‘women’s issue’. Imagine how much more we could achieve if it wasn’t just women fighting the battle!

We wanted to make sure every student has access to a supportive environment at university where they’re matched up with a senior mentor, and also have the opportunity to connect with a vertical network of people who have already gone through the things they’re preparing to face.

UC: What’s on the horizon for Fifty50?

FM: We went from a first-year mentoring program to also running a career development program, which was sponsored by the Department of

Defence last year. It’s really about

making sure our STEM students are skilled in grant

applications and interviews, and in maintaining an online

presence, while also making sure their career pathways

are visible. When I graduated

with my degree, I still didn’t understand what engineers actually did, or what consultants did, and that’s what I ended up doing for my career! I had no visibility of that when I was a student, and I think we owe it to the younger generation

to give them a more balanced view of what

they could do in the future.A key part of Fifty50 is

that it’s about student-driven momentum towards change.

I think that’s a really powerful aspect of Fifty50. Another really

good thing is that we have a community that is about 85 per cent female members

and, while we’re looking at whether we should have more male targets for engagement, what we’re doing is providing these female students with the opportunity to work in a professional organisation where they can gain invaluable experience that will make them so competitive when they finish university.

It’s also bringing them into an environment where they can feel supported and empowered to do something that will make a positive change in their world.

I transitioned out of being an executive last year, and that’s been a journey, but I’ve come to the realisation that Fifty50 is for students, by students. I’m really impressed with how it’s growing, and the performance of all of our team members. We were Engineers Australia’s best student group in gender diversity last year, which was huge recognition for us, given we were only two years old, so we’re doing really well!

Fairness for all

≈



UC: What was your vision for Fifty50?

FM: I remember coming up with this idea of a – it sounds terrible now – gender equity leadership council in the college, and I told Emily I needed someone to help me do it. We were sitting in a cafe and finalising our presentation for the information session and we came up with the name Fifty50, because that’s what we wanted in terms of equality. There wasn’t the knowledge back then about how gender is not binary, it’s a spectrum, but we use it as a representation of gender equity.

Fifty50 has evolved a lot since we first started. It was just Emily and I in the beginning, and then in six months we’d recruited a team of 30. We started off delivering a female mentoring program, which has now been extended to include all genders, because we figured that if we wanted an inclusive outcome, then we needed an inclusive approach.

So, while recognising there are a lot of issues that affect predominantly female-identifying people in STEM, I think we need to make sure that everyone is a part of the conversation, to avoid it being only a ‘women’s issue’. Imagine how much more we could achieve if it wasn’t just women fighting the battle!

We wanted to make sure every student has access to a supportive environment at university where they’re matched up with a senior mentor, and also have the opportunity to connect with a vertical network of people who have already gone through the things they’re preparing to face.

UC: What’s on the horizon for Fifty50?

FM: We went from a first-year mentoring program to also running a career development program, which was sponsored by the Department of

Defence last year. It’s really about

making sure our STEM students are skilled in grant

applications and interviews, and in maintaining an online

presence, while also making sure their career pathways

are visible. When I graduated

with my degree, I still didn’t understand what engineers actually did, or what consultants did, and that’s what I ended up doing for my career! I had no visibility of that when I was a student, and I think we owe it to the younger generation

to give them a more balanced view of what

they could do in the future.A key part of Fifty50 is

that it’s about student-driven momentum towards change.

I think that’s a really powerful aspect of Fifty50. Another really

good thing is that we have a community that is about 85 per cent female members

and, while we’re looking at whether we should have more male targets for engagement, what we’re doing is providing these female students with the opportunity to work in a professional organisation where they can gain invaluable experience that will make them so competitive when they finish university.

It’s also bringing them into an environment where they can feel supported and empowered to do something that will make a positive change in their world.

I transitioned out of being an executive last year, and that’s been a journey, but I’ve come to the realisation that Fifty50 is for students, by students. I’m really impressed with how it’s growing, and the performance of all of our team members. We were Engineers Australia’s best student group in gender diversity last year, which was huge recognition for us, given we were only two years old, so we’re doing really well!

Fairness for all

≈

THE BIG PICTURE


How big data is affecting your health!

THE BIG PICTURE


How big data is affecting your health!



ATA. IT SEEMS we just can’t get enough of the stuff! The global datasphere – a term for all data created,

captured and replicated on our planet in any given year – is expanding exponentially. Experts predict it will reach 180 zettabytes (that’s 180 trillion gigabytes) by

2025. Think of the difference in size between a Chupa Chups and a ten-pin bowling ball. In relative terms that’s the difference between the amount of data generated in 2016 and the 2025 forecast.

It’s only since 2000 that our digital existence has really taken off, with the ability to store data in the cloud made possible by wireless broadband and fast networks, and devices such as smartphones giving us instant access to information, social media and entertainment wherever we are.

Amidst the zettabytes, all kinds of data about our health is flowing in. There’s medical data generated when we’re treated by health professionals and data from participants in health and medical research. And then there’s health-related data collected as we go about our lives on everything from our activity levels to our mental health. This comes from the devices we carry (smartphones), wear (fitness trackers, patches) and, increasingly, swallow or have implanted in our bodies (see Incredible sensors, p12).

Trawling social media for treasure“They’re addicted to their phones.” “Social media is making teenagers more depressed and anxious.” “It’s destroying a generation!” Sound familiar? When we hear parents or media commentators talk about how young people use social media, the focus is almost exclusively on negative associations, like bullying, online predators and poorer social skills in ‘the real world’. The true impact of growing up in a digital world is a little more complicated.

There’s no denying there is a dark side to social media that can be harmful to the health of people with certain vulnerabilities. Online groups that promote eating disorders are just one example. But it’s not all bad! Studies have found that for young people with mental illness, using moderated social networking sites has benefits such as increased self-esteem and more supportive relationships.

Social media can also play an important and positive role in managing chronic, or ongoing, health conditions like long-term pain. Online forums, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are data goldmines for health informatics researchers like Dr Mark Merolli, Academic Director of Digital Health at Swinburne University.

“We know that there are more and more people turning to social media as a platform to manage their healthcare. But they are often quite rich sources of where people comment and log their health activity as well, in online support groups, et cetera,” he explains.

Mark’s research looks at how people interact with health-related digital technology and what motivates them to do so. “I’ve always felt that if we had a better understanding of why and how people engage with technology, we might be able to better tailor digital

Kate Arneman looks into how the information revolution gripping the planet is creating amazing new career opportunities in the medical and health sectors.

Image © aleutie / Adobe Stock

THE BIG PICTURE


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Wondering what the ‘right’ way to say ‘data’ is? Da-tuh, day-tuh or daa-tuh? It all depends on who you are and where you live. North American English speakers use the pronunciation that rhymes with how Aussies say ‘batter’. In Australian English, you’ll hear day-tuh (rhymes with ‘later’) and daa-tuh (rhymes with ‘father’). The Macquarie Dictionary (the Australian authority on all things wordy) gives both pronunciations the thumbs up.

RIGHT NOW, PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE IS AS VALUABLE AS YOUR DEGREEEmployers are seeking more from graduates. That’s why Bond University students benefit from small class sizes with personalised attention from clinicians and academics, unparalleled access to state-of-the-art facilities, industry networking and placement opportunities — all from their first semester.

Our students are immersed in extensive placements early on, to ensure they are career ready when they graduate.

Our degrees in medicine, biomedical science and allied health are national leaders for educational experience. Our Bachelor of Biomedical Science program is rated highest in Australia for Educational Experience, Teaching Quality, Learner Engagement, Learning Resources, Student Support and Skill Development*. Accelerate your career in health by completing both a bachelor’s degree and master’s specialisation in just four years — ask us how.

bond.edu.au/hsm

CRICOS Provider Code 00017B

*Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT), 2017 MB

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health solutions and interventions and technologies to people,” he says. “And, if we can better tailor them, we can have a better chance at improving people’s health outcomes because we’re following a more evidence-based approach.”

Incredible sensorsFrom wearables to ingestibles to implantables: the next wave of innovative data-generating devices is going to transform healthcare at every stage – from diagnosis to treatment, rehabilitation and self-management.

Imagine you’re one of many Australians who has a gut disorder, like irritable bowel syndrome or undiagnosed colon cancer. At the moment, the only way for your doctor to find out for sure what’s going on in your gut is through invasive tests and surgeries. But what about if, instead of the indignity of providing poo samples or having the interior of your colon closely examined, you simply had to swallow a capsule the size of a vitamin pill? Luckily for hypothetical you, researchers from Monash University have not only imagined but developed and tested an ingestible sensor that detects and measures gases in the stomach in real time, sending the data to a smartphone. Not only is this a lot less embarrassing and uncomfortable than the alternatives, it’s a more accurate diagnostic tool. The capsule’s inventors hope the device will be available to the public by 2020.

Another ingestible tech breakthrough is the first ‘digital’ pill containing a sensor the size of a grain of sand (see p5). This medication, used to treat schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses, was approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration in November 2017. When it dissolves in the stomach, a tiny sensor inside the pill is activated on contact with stomach acids. It then sends a signal to another sensor in an adhesive patch worn externally on the person’s stomach, with the ID number of the pill. The wearable sensor detects whether the wearer is sitting, moving or standing when they take their medication, then sends this information to a smartphone app via Bluetooth. In response,

the app asks the person to rate their mood. If they choose to, patients can make this data available to their doctors or caregivers via an online platform.

Also in the works: a biodegradable implantable pressure sensor for monitoring chronic lung disease and brain swelling. And then there’s a ‘cancer detection system’ that consists of implantable nanotube sensors and a device worn on the wrist that sends infrared light to the sensors and analyses what is reflected back.

The genomic promise While implantable sensors give us access to valuable data about how well our bodies are functioning, geneticists are getting better and faster at extracting and analysing the data that’s naturally ‘embedded’ in every cell of our bodies. Each of us has a unique set of genetic information called a genome, which is needed to build our bodies and allow us to grow and develop. The instructions for this huge and complex project are known as our genetic code, which is contained in a long molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid).

Genes are small sections of DNA, containing instructions for particular characteristics, like your height and eye colour. Everyone’s DNA has a combination of four substances: adenine (A), thymine (T), cytosine (C) and guanine (G), which are variations of a type of molecule called a nucleotide. What makes everyone unique is the order – or sequence – in which the four nucleotides are arranged, forming a one-off code. If you read that code out, saying one letter every second for 24 hours a

day, it would take a hundred years to get to the end of the 3.2 billion nucleotides in one human being!

Given the size and complexity of what they were dealing with, scientists were pretty chuffed when in 2003 they completed the sequencing of the human genome for the first time – even if it had taken them more than a decade

to do it and cost US$3 billion. Far more exciting than the achievement itself were the possibilities it offered in terms of understanding, treating and, ultimately, preventing diseases with a genetic basis.

In February 2018, Rady Children’s Institute for Genomic Medicine in San Diego, US, set a new Guinness World Record by sequencing a whole genome in 19 hours. This Institute is known for providing ultra-rapid diagnosis – considered to

be five days or less – of rare genetic conditions. A group of Australian researchers are pioneering a similarly speedy service, made possible by next generation sequencing (NGS) techniques

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uc.australiascience.tvTHE BIG PICTURE

Interested in a career that involves big data and health, and researching courses that can take you there? You’ll need a few key definitions to make sense of the many technical terms you’ll encounter.

BIG DATA: data that is collected or combined in such large quantities that it cannot be stored, analysed or used by traditional methods

BIOINFORMATICS: focuses on getting meaning out of the vast amounts of digital information produced by genetic sequencing and related technologies

BIOSTATISTICS: the application of statistics to scientific research in health-related fields, like medicine and public health

DATA MINING: a process used to explore already existing large data sets for patterns and relationships; uses tools drawn from statistics, machine learning and database systems

HEALTH INFORMATICS: covers the collection, analysis and movement of health information and data to support health care

Huh?

Case Study: Patient Modelling Associate Professor Blanca Gallego Luxan (at right) heads up the Health Analytics lab at Macquarie University’s Australian Institute of Health Innovation. She’s previously used her skills to model climate systems, the spread of disease in the community and more. But she’s now focused on what makes hospitals tick. Her team uses data analysis to better understand patterns of patient safety in hospitals, and computational modelling to create predictive tools that support medical staff when making decisions about their patients.

“You have to look, not just at the mathematics, but also at the complexity of the human behaviour, human computer interaction; you need to understand the medical setting. That’s why it’s so multidisciplinary, this research,” Blanca says.

In her view, that’s one of the perks of the job, “You work with all types of people. I’ve worked with doctors, with nurses, with psychologists, with physicists, with mathematicians, with engineers, with computer scientists.”

Health informatics researcher at Melbourne University Dr Mark Merolli began his career in health as a physiotherapist 12 years ago. The first iPhone was yet to be released and healthcare was almost exclusively offline.

He did have the occasional dedicated patient who would track their symptoms in a physical notebook and bring that to appointments in the clinic. “The odd savvy person might have had a print-out from Microsoft Excel,” he recalls, laughing. “Fast forward a few years and I did find it quite fascinating that people would come in having googled stuff, having watched videos on YouTube or asked questions to their friends on Facebook.”

In a relatively short space of time, he witnessed some big changes in how his patients interacted with him. “[Initially] patients would come in seeing you as the font of all knowledge and turning to you for professional advice wanting to know, ‘What’s wrong with me? How do I fix it?’,” Mark says.

“There really was this shift in, A, the level of preparedness and information that people had before they came to the physio and, B, their expectations of what that relationship would be, in the sense that they were starting to want to take a more active role. The impact of that technology on patients impacted me - it was something I really took notice of.”

that allow the simultaneous sequencing of many or all

genes in a genome, compared to traditional genetic testing of one gene

at a time. As part of the Acute Care Genomics study, 250 babies in intensive care units around the country who are thought to have rare genetic conditions will have their genomes sequenced with the hope of identifying what is causing their symptoms.

“Time is absolutely precious when providing care to sick babies and children in intensive care units,” says co-leader of the study, Associate Professor Zornitza Stark (below). “At the moment, turnaround times for genomic results can be up to six months, which is far too slow to help families and clinicians caring for children in intensive care,” explains Zornitza, a geneticist with Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. “We have already seen the benefits of early rare disease diagnosis locally, and will be extending testing across much of Australia, while providing clinical results in as little as five days.”

Until very recently, most families of children with rare genetic conditions faced a long, exhausting and expensive road to diagnosis, full of hospital stays, invasive tests and uncertainties. The standard procedure has been to create a short list of genes that might be causing the problem and carry out traditional genetic testing on each gene, one at a time. Only then, if no answers had been found, would NGS testing be considered. An earlier study carried out by Zornitza and her team found that using NGS sooner rather than later could reduce the cost of each diagnosis by $9000, and save families years of waiting.

Although there is currently no treatment for most rare conditions, a diagnosis helps medical staff to deliver better care and in some cases prevent complications that can develop from the original condition.

Zornitza, who finished her medical degree two years before the Human Genome Project came to a close, says she had no way of knowing how far the field would advance during her career. “Not in a million years could I have imagined that today I would be sitting in the clinic ordering a patient’s whole genome as a medical test,” she says. “It’s a very, very exciting area that is just going to explode. It’s going to have multiple applications in medicine and there are just so many opportunities in this field.”

Researchers like Zornitza work in large multidisciplinary teams to be able to deal with the complexity of the data they use.“There are many opportunities at the moment for bioinformaticians in particular, laboratory scientists that are interested in genomics and genetic counsellors and also medical geneticists,” she says. “It can suit a variety of interests ranging from how much you want to deal with data versus also dealing with patients and families.”


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Case Study: The Empowered

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THE BIG PICTURE


What, exactly, is big data?There’s no universally agreed upon definition for big data. But generally, it refers to data that is so vast and so disorganised that traditional methods of storing and managing it just won’t cut it. (Sorry Excel, but this is way out of your league!) Ninety per cent of all digital data is unstructured and data scientists are in high demand to make sense of these

massive messy data sets. Drawing on techniques from

computer science, mathematics and statistics, they’re using what they find to answer curly questions and solve all sorts of problems.

The Centre for Big Data Research in Health at UNSW has a definition for health data science. It’s “the science and art of generating data-driven solutions through

comprehension of complex real-world health problems, employing critical thinking and analytics to derive knowledge from (big) data.”

Data science can tackle real-world problems at the level of the healthcare system, such as hospital overcrowding, all the way down to the level of the individual, when it comes to preventing disease, for example.

Case Study: What’s in a name? In 2015, Melbourne-based couple Kate and Tim McMahon were given the life-altering news by clinical geneticist Dr Zornitza Stark that their three-year-old daughter, Olivia (right), had a genetic condition called Kleefstra Syndrome.

Children with the Kleefstra Syndrome experience seizures and heart problems and have delayed physical development and intellectual disabilities along with a range of other symptoms. There are only around 400 known cases of Kleefstra Syndrome worldwide.

“I’m sure for a lot of parents it would be the worst moment of their lives,” Kate says. “But for us it was such a celebratory moment, obviously with a lot of mixed feelings, but…it had been three years of uncertainty.”

The diagnosis was made possible by next generation genome sequencing techniques, which identified a mutation (change) in a gene associated with Kleefstra Syndrome. Most cases of the disease are caused by a gene deletion, which means the gene is missing from the person’s genome. This deletion can be picked up relatively early in the diagnostic process using traditional genetic tests. But mutations can be far trickier to pinpoint, and it takes longer to do so.

“[It’s as] if you were looking at a book and there was a stray full stop in the middle of a sentence. And that full stop just happened to be in the gene which would result in Kleefstra Syndrome,” is how Kate describes it. Understanding the genetics behind her daughter’s condition made a difference on many levels.

“It helped me a lot with acceptance to know that this is who Olivia is. It’s just as if she had

red hair or she was really tall – Kleefstra is literally part of her DNA and that’s who we need to support and recognise,” says Kate. “We want to help her as much as possible but that’s who she is.”

Before the diagnosis, when people would ask what was wrong with Olivia, Kate would jokingly say she had ‘Olivia Syndrome’. It was life-changing to discover that there were other families going through similar challenges, including two in Victoria. “Through our own networks and Facebook (there’s an amazing Kleefstra parents Facebook group) we’ve been able to learn a lot about what our future might look like with Olivia,” Kate says. “That’s been really empowering because even though not all of it is positive at least we’re better prepared. We know what we might be able to expect and we can make future plans based on that.”

One of the biggest decisions for the McMahons following the diagnosis was to have another child. “We were able to get tested ourselves. That meant that we knew that Olivia’s syndrome, which is Kleefstra Syndrome, was just a random lottery ‘win’ for her. And it wasn’t something that we’ve passed on to her. So that meant that we could consider expanding our family naturally.” And that’s exactly what they did. Olivia now has a little brother called William.

“It’s been amazing for Olivia too to have that sibling experience because she’s learning so much from him every single day. They’ve got such a beautiful relationship and it’s a real joy as a parent to see that.” The couple invited Dr Stark to William’s baptism as a guest of honour. “We made note, in front of the congregation, that without her he wouldn’t have been there. Everyone gave her a round of applause,” Kate says, laughing. “That was a really special moment for us to acknowledge publicly the impact that she’d had directly on our lives. And the proof was in our arms, with William.”

For more on Olivia’s story: youtube.com/watch?v=-tFWaJKSYyY


STUDY ADVICE


Your STEM Fit See where your strengths could take you.

Science (Biology + Chemistry + Physics)

Earth and Environmental Sciences

Maths

Engineering

Computer Science

Business

Agriculture

Medical

Psychology

YEAR 11/12 SU

BJECTS

DEG

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SCIENCE Biology Chemistry Earth and Environmental Science/Geology Nutrition Physics Scientific Studies

LITERACY History English English Literature Philosophy Society and Culture

BODY Health Nutrition Outdoor Studies Psychology Child Studies Physical Education

CREATIVE Information Technology Design and Technologies Art

NUMERACY Accounting Business and Enterprise Economics General Maths Specialist Maths Tourism Food and Hospitality Maths Methods Geography

Architecture



DEG

REES

CAREERS

Science (Biology + Chemistry + Physics) - Bachelor of Science (Honours)

(Marine Biology and Aquaculture)- Bachelor of Science (Biological Sciences) - Bachelor of Science (EcoChemistry)- Bachelor of Science (Laser Physics and Technology)

Earth and Environmental Sciences - Bachelor of Science (Ecotourism)- Bachelor of Surveying and Spatial Sciences- Bachelor of Natural Environment and

Wilderness Studies- Bachelor of Science (Animal Behaviour)

Maths - Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences

Engineering - Bachelor of Engineering (Honours)

(Civil and Project Management)- Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) (Honours)- Bachelor of Engineering (Civil and Infrastructure)

(Honours)- Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics)

Computer Science - Bachelor of Information Technology- Bachelor of Computer Science (Professional)

with a major in Cybersecurity- Bachelor of Computer Science

(Simulation and Serious Games)

Architecture - Bachelor of Architectural Studies

Business - Bachelor of Business (Global)- Bachelor of Commerce (BCom)- Bachelor of Aviation and Piloting/

Bachelor of Business with a major in Finance- Bachelor of Actuarial Studies

Agriculture - Bachelor of Agricultural Science- Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology

Medical - Bachelor of Pharmacy- Bachelor of Science

(Food Technology and Nutrition)- Bachelor of Exercise Physiology- Bachelor of Genetics

Psychology - Bachelor of Social Work- Bachelor of Behavioural Science

(Psychology) - Bachelor of Criminal Justice

Psychology - Reg Psychologist - autism specific intervention services –

Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect)- Health and Wellbeing Consultant – Matchworks- Website performance analyst – betting agency- Social worker – Local Government

Medical - Sports development manager – rugby club- Performance nutritionist elite sports –

Dutch Olympic Committee- Orthodontic dental nurse – dental hospital

Agriculture - Horticultural Engagement Officer – CSIRO- Technical Sales Representative – Food Division SA- Health, Safety and Environment Advisor – mining company- Agricultural technician – primary industries departments

Business - Demand planner – construction company- Community development support officer – charity- Conference and events co-ordinator – hotel and spa chain- Project control analyst – GE Oil & Gas

Architecture - Architectural technologist – estate agents- Conservation specialist – construction company- Planning officer – local council

Computer Science - STEM promoter – higher education institution- Cyberspace communication officer – Defence Force- Technical solutions manager – IBM

Engineering - Packaging engineer – pharmaceutical company- Nuclear engineer – nuclear medicine research facility- Electronics engineer – hospital- Analyst – JP Morgan

Science/ Earth and Environmental Sciences - Mammal keeper – Bristol Zoo- Account manager – L’Oreal- Engineering graduate scheme – textile manufacturer- Publishing editor – Royal Society of Chemistry- Environmental officer – airport- Geotechnologist – engineering consultancy

Maths - Forensic technology associate – Deloitte- Actuary – PwC- Trainee quantity surveyor – Bells- Consumer insight manager – publishing company



DEG

REES

CAREERS

Science (Biology + Chemistry + Physics) - Bachelor of Science (Honours)

(Marine Biology and Aquaculture)- Bachelor of Science (Biological Sciences) - Bachelor of Science (EcoChemistry)- Bachelor of Science (Laser Physics and Technology)

Earth and Environmental Sciences - Bachelor of Science (Ecotourism)- Bachelor of Surveying and Spatial Sciences- Bachelor of Natural Environment and

Wilderness Studies- Bachelor of Science (Animal Behaviour)

Maths - Bachelor of Mathematical Sciences

Engineering - Bachelor of Engineering (Honours)

(Civil and Project Management)- Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) (Honours)- Bachelor of Engineering (Civil and Infrastructure)

(Honours)- Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics)

Computer Science - Bachelor of Information Technology- Bachelor of Computer Science (Professional)

with a major in Cybersecurity- Bachelor of Computer Science

(Simulation and Serious Games)

Architecture - Bachelor of Architectural Studies

Business - Bachelor of Business (Global)- Bachelor of Commerce (BCom)- Bachelor of Aviation and Piloting/

Bachelor of Business with a major in Finance- Bachelor of Actuarial Studies

Agriculture - Bachelor of Agricultural Science- Bachelor of Viticulture and Oenology

Medical - Bachelor of Pharmacy- Bachelor of Science

(Food Technology and Nutrition)- Bachelor of Exercise Physiology- Bachelor of Genetics

Psychology - Bachelor of Social Work- Bachelor of Behavioural Science

(Psychology) - Bachelor of Criminal Justice

Psychology - Reg Psychologist - autism specific intervention services –

Autism Spectrum Australia (Aspect)- Health and Wellbeing Consultant – Matchworks- Website performance analyst – betting agency- Social worker – Local Government

Medical - Sports development manager – rugby club- Performance nutritionist elite sports –

Dutch Olympic Committee- Orthodontic dental nurse – dental hospital

Agriculture - Horticultural Engagement Officer – CSIRO- Technical Sales Representative – Food Division SA- Health, Safety and Environment Advisor – mining company- Agricultural technician – primary industries departments

Business - Demand planner – construction company- Community development support officer – charity- Conference and events co-ordinator – hotel and spa chain- Project control analyst – GE Oil & Gas

Architecture - Architectural technologist – estate agents- Conservation specialist – construction company- Planning officer – local council

Computer Science - STEM promoter – higher education institution- Cyberspace communication officer – Defence Force- Technical solutions manager – IBM

Engineering - Packaging engineer – pharmaceutical company- Nuclear engineer – nuclear medicine research facility- Electronics engineer – hospital- Analyst – JP Morgan

Science/ Earth and Environmental Sciences - Mammal keeper – Bristol Zoo- Account manager – L’Oreal- Engineering graduate scheme – textile manufacturer- Publishing editor – Royal Society of Chemistry- Environmental officer – airport- Geotechnologist – engineering consultancy

Maths - Forensic technology associate – Deloitte- Actuary – PwC- Trainee quantity surveyor – Bells- Consumer insight manager – publishing company

FUTURE PROOF


Australia is finally getting its own national space agency. Hannah James looks at what that will mean for careers in space.

REACH FOR THE STARS

FUTURE PROOF


Australia is finally getting its own national space agency. Hannah James looks at what that will mean for careers in space.

REACH FOR THE STARS



REACH FOR THE STARS

This image from NASA Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Peony nebula star, a blazing ball of gas that shines with the equivalent light of 3.2 million suns. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Potsdam Univ.

O THE SKIES we must go!” said Flavia Tata Nardini, CEO of the Aussie space start-up Fleet Space Technologies, as she dramatically added her voice to the call for an Australian space agency.

Space, Flavia believes, is where we’ll see the 21st-century version of the Industrial Revolution – that 18th- and 19th-century manufacturing phenomenon that led to everything from indoor toilets to iPhones. And Australia, she emphatically believes, needs to be in on the action.

When Minister for Jobs and Innovation, Michaelia Cash, announced the creation of a new Australian space agency last September, her words weren’t quite as inspiring as those of Flavia. But, at last, they meant the dream of working in space was alive again in Australia.

SPACE BOOMOur new national space agency is riding the wave of what James Gilmour of Gilmour Space Technologies is calling a “space renaissance”. He should know: the company he and his brother Adam founded in 2012 recently signed a historic agreement with NASA that will see the American space agency help them develop and build a water-extracting Mars rover.

“[This renaissance] is led by guys like Elon Musk, Richard Branson, James Cameron, Jeff Bezos,” James says. “These are successful businessmen putting in their own money to start a new space-race economy.”

So, it’s perfect timing for a new national space agency seeking to expand Australia’s slice of the $420 billion global space industry.

“In the early days we were the third country in the world to launch a satellite from our own soil,” says co-director of the Centre for Australian Space Education, Olivia Samardzic. “It’s a shame we lost our way. But now the government has seen there’s not just a science and engineering future in space but an economic future, too.”

Glen Nagle of the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, which transmits commands from science teams out to robotic spacecraft across the solar system as part of NASA’s Deep Space Network, agrees.

“There’s an ever-expanding space industry in Australia,” he says. “We have an industry that’s exporting its head off with billions of dollars of technologies and services. Opportunities are opening up that are going to require people to work for them.”

And that’s the key with the new space agency. “Part of the reason for a space agency is to unify all the space activities,” believes Australian astronomer Fred Watson, “but – and I suspect this is where it’s going to impact on school-leavers – it should be an overarching space agency that will nurture all the small startups, meaning there are openings in these companies for bright young science and engineering students.”

He continues: “If it’s set up well, there will also be cadetships, STEM fellowships, and they’ll try to encourage female students. But the key is going to be the startups. I do hope commercial support by the government will translate into jobs for young people, who are the ones coming up with the great ideas.”

AGENCY DETAILS We don’t know any of this for sure yet, because the government review setting out the plans for the new agency weren’t due to be released until the end of March.

Flavia is on the expert reference group producing the report. “The agency has a big role to play in making sure this is not just an industry exercise, but an inspiration,” she says. “It’s going to be a massive change so I’m quite excited about what’s going to happen for STEM students.”

More details won’t be available until the review is released. What we do know, though, is that the agency will help keep highly sophisticated jobs within this country, reversing the brain drain that saw Australia lose top space legends such as astronaut Andy Thomas and geologist Abigail Allwood to the US. Andy, who flew into space four times for NASA, has been a staunch supporter of an Australian space agency and Abigail is leading NASA’s 2020 rover mission.

The new Australian space agency will also strengthen space–related ties with other countries, paving the way for collaborations that aren’t possible at present.

“T

DEGREES OF DIFFICULTYThe traditional paths to careers in space have always been engineering and computer science. “We’ve got to build the technology and infrastructure we need,” says Glen Nagle from the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, which is one of NASA’s three tracking stations providing ongoing radio contact with spacecraft exploring our Solar System. “So mechanical, structural, electrical and aerospace engineering are key, because we’ve got to build the instruments, the telescopes, the rockets, the building that holds the rockets.”

It’s computer programming that makes it all work. “Fleet is run by my software engineers. Everything we do is so digital,”

says Flavia, about her company Fleet Space Technologies.

Additionally, maths has always been a basic building block for careers in space. (“If we ever contact aliens,” Glen Nagle points out, “the only common language we’ll have is mathematics.”) Although if it’s not your strong point, take heart: Flavia says she was “terrible” at maths in high school and yet, “Here I am!”

As in any industry, work experience is also crucial. “Take any chance you get to meet or talk to engineers or scientists or anyone who works in the field,” Glen advises.

THINK LATERALLYThe creation of Australia’s own space agency will change the way we think about the path to careers in space, Fred Watson believes.

“I’m a great fan of students not neglecting the languages – and if we become international players in the world of space, having a language under your belt becomes even more important,” he says.

“Start with Mandarin, because the Chinese have a space agency that’s doing marvellous things,” Fred recommends. “But it’s whatever appeals to you to the extent you can become reasonably fluent in it.”

And that’s not all. “Space is about students having talents and skills in every area,” Glen Nagle adds. “When I talk to students about careers, at first they think it’s all about astronauts, rocket scientists and maybe astronomers. But space exploration involves doctors, nurses, veterinarians, farmers, engineers, teachers, meteorologists, geologists,

biologists, physicists, chemists, mathematicians, science communicators, politicians – they’re the ones who give us money – and even poets, authors and songwriters – how many songs have been written about space?”

Quite aside from artistic pursuits, Australia’s space industry is already making significant strides ahead. “The work we do is making history every minute of the day,” Glen says, “and I don’t think we have a single visitor [at the Deep Space Communications Complex] who doesn’t think it’s amazing that Australia does this stuff. It’s so inspiring.”

Fred Watson is certainly inspired. What’s his ultimate dream for the new space agency? “Maybe we can get another Elon Musk out of it,” he ponders, “or even another Einstein.”

FUTURE PROOF

FRED WATSON: “Aim high – the sky’s the limit. Some students, particularly girls, might think space isn’t for them, that it’s only for highly special people. Just go for it.”

FLAVIA TATA NARDINI: “Get in contact with me, come and look at Fleet. Get exposed to these opportunities, get into the real world as fast as you can.”

GLEN NAGLE: “Get the basics: engineering, maths, computers. Then get your bachelor’s, get your PhD, and get whatever work experience you can in the meantime. Whatever your skills, there’s a job for you in space.”

OLIVIA SAMARDZIC: “Identify female role models: not just Marie Curie but, say,

AN UNCONVENTIONAL PATH Traditional STEM studies are useful for careers in space, but are not always essential.

Adam Gilmour began his career in finance with financial services company Citibank and his brother

James worked in marketing for Dell. But in 2012 they co-founded Gilmour Space Technologies, a Gold Coast-based

startup that’s working on a Mars rover with NASA. “Passion can be sometimes seven-tenths of the law,” James says of their

unconventional paths.“It’s exciting to be involved in a company that’s doing some very cool things.”

And you could even work with him: his role includes facilitating university projects within the company. “Part of my mission is to inspire the next generation – our future employees,” James explains. And his favourite attribute in students? “Common sense is more valuable than almost anything,” he says. With that, James has got to run: “I’m off to do a static test fire of our hybrid rocket engine at a secret test site,” he explains. Just another day at the (space) office.

TOP ADVICE FROM SPACE SUCCESS STORIES

Push your problem-solving skills to the max with an engineering degree.

WHEN OLIVIA HUTCHINSON was in Year 11, her physics teacher suggested engineering as a career option. And after a couple of days at an engineering camp for high school students, where she met qualified engineers and did some fun engineering-related activities, Olivia was hooked. “I loved the concept of problem-solving and using maths and physics to do it,” she explains.

At Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Olivia threw herself into a four-year degree in mechanical engineering (with a bonus six-months on exchange at a university in Denmark). She is enthusiastic about QUT’s emphasis on working in groups and problem-solving with other students, which led to friendships that continue today and

equipped her with skills that are critical to her current job as a systems engineer at aerospace company Boeing Defence Australia.

Another highlight of her uni experiences was being part of a group called GEMS (Girls Making Statements in Engineering). In a field of study where females are greatly outnumbered by their male counterparts, GEMS is there to support, mentor and empower women. Her advice to girls considering engineering as a career is “go for it!”

“It is such a rewarding degree and career and we need more women because we need more diversity in teams,” she says. “Projects succeed when they have a diverse team because you have different ways of thinking, different ways of communicating.”

womento make

the world go roundWANTED:

1st Uni of QLD thrid grad profile.indd 1 29/03/2018 12:51:41 PM


“DON’T GET YOUR DRESS DIRTY.”

“GIVE THAT DRILL TO YOUR BROTHER.”

“THIS SPACE PROJECT HAS GOTTEN OUT OF HAND.”

Those sorts of misguided messages are what science-loving girls face every day, according to a video by US telecommunications company Verizon.

“Every single thing I saw in that video I’ve had said to me multiple times,” agrees Olivia Samardzic of the Centre for Australian Space Education.

But thanks to one visionary primary-school teacher, none of that put her off becoming a physicist. “He did a session on space science,” Olivia recalls. “It was very low-tech – he brought

in an old washing-machine box and we built the inside of a space capsule in it, drawing on all the dials and so on. Sitting in that box I really felt I was inside a space capsule. So I knew I wanted to be a physicist when I was in grade five.”

After completing her PhD in experimental atomic physics, she co-founded the South Australian Space School to encourage students into STEM degrees and careers. “It varies year to year, but across the 21 years the Space School has been running, our gender balance has been 48 per cent girls, 52 per cent boys,” Olivia says. “Girls are just as interested in making their rocket fly as boys.”

But they’re not advancing in STEM careers at anywhere near

the same rate, and part of the reason, Olivia believes, is those same discouraging messages that she faced.

“A physics teacher once told me off for getting the highest mark in his exam,” she says. “But we need a diverse workforce that’s STEM-literate, because you get the best benefits from the greatest diversity.

“Things from the Hidden Figures movie [which explored resistance to women scientists in the early days of space exploration] still happen to women in science today – we’re marginalised, not listened to.”

The solution? “Getting more women into STEM,” Olivia says simply. “What I do is so awesome, and more women should be able to do it, too.”

SPACE STARTUPS ARE BOOMING DOWN UNDER

A WOMAN’S PLACE ...IS IN SPACE

our Australian of the Year, Michelle Simmons [a UNSW quantum physics professor]. And enjoy it: I’ve had so much joy in my career from the science I’ve done.”

JAMES GILMOUR: “Set goals and dream big. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be resupplying the moon or Mars, asteroid mining, removing space junk – let’s even talk about manned missions.”

FLEET SPACE TECHNOLOGIES, based in South Australia, is sending nanosatellites into space with Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets to connect devices with the Internet of Things.

NEUMANN SPACE, in Adelaide, has built a new ion engine that the company says can send a probe to Mars and back on a single fuel rod.

CUBERIDER is Sydney-based and provides kits to schools that allow students to code and design experiments that eventually get sent to the International Space Station.

DELTA-V Is a business accelerator that specifically works with Australia’s new space companies. It’s a startup for startups!

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Hands-on research experience can open your eyes to opportunities you never knew existed.

REBECCA AINSCOUGH LIKES to keep her horizons wide. Technically, the Queensland University of Technology graduate has an honours degree in Biology/Biological Sciences, but there’s more to that than meets the eye.

During her studies, she’s had the freedom to indulge her love of chemistry as well as biology, and to get involved in the groundbreaking field of bioinformatics, where maths, statistics, computer science and biology all come together.

Taking part in QUT’s Vacation Research Experience Scheme early in her degree opened up a range of opportunities for Rebecca. “It led

to my research assistant job, which gave so much more experience and helped me understand the fields that I was working in a lot more,” she says. “It also made me much more employable when I graduated.”

Currently, Rebecca continues to work as a research assistant at QUT along with her day job as a laboratory technician with food company Parmalat, where she tests dairy products to ensure they’re safe for human consumption.

Next stop? Cambridge University in the UK, where Rebecca will undertake a PhD on the bacteria found in the lungs of patients with cystic fibrosis, and look for new ways to treat them.

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What can robots do for you? Cristy Burne delves into what’s already possible in the world of robotics and what’s likely in the future.

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ROBOTS AREN’T JUST for taking over the world. They can defuse bombs, rescue children, help take out your appendix, chat for hours about AFL...There are baby seal robots for hugging, dog robots for playing fetch, wearable exoskeleton robots for pretending to be the Hulk, even telepresence robots for attending your school lessons when you’re home sick. (Yay!) And that’s just what’s possible today.

Set yourself up with the right skills, and you can create the possibilities for tomorrow.

What is a robot?What does that term ‘robot’ actually mean? Is it C-3PO, the humanoid Star Wars character with expressive eyes and shiny skin? What about the app-enabled droid BB-9E, with a mean streak

and spooky lights? Maybe it’s the adorable Disney creation WALL-E, with shovel hands and a passion for polystyrene? Perhaps it’s the Scarlett Johansson look-alike known as Mark 1 and created in the garage of Hong Kong robotics wunderkind Ricky Ma using a 3D printer!

There’s a lot of debate over what counts as a robot. Perhaps it’s simplest to say that a robot is a programmable device that can do some or all of the following:• walk, fly, swim, glide, rotate or

otherwise move around • sense environmental states

or phenomena, like light, radioactivity or bad smells

• follow instructions, like “Vacuum this floor!”

• work towards a goal, like “Bring me chocolate”

Robots are expert at using inputs (what you program them to do, and what they sense in their environment) to produce plans for how to achieve a goal (like protect Master Luke, clean up Earth, hold a fascinating conversation).

And because robots are powered by super-fast computers, they’re able to come up with loads of plans, choose the best, then start on that while working on new-and-improved plans… all before you can say, “Hello everybody. I am Sophia.” (Haven’t met Sophia yet? Google her and prepare to spin out.)

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iiiccctttbbbo ooo oorrr sssWhy are robots so useful?Listen up: Robots are useful because they always pay attention. Hello…did you get that?

Robots are also uber-accurate. When you say “stinking hot”, they say “44.7 degrees.” And when you cut along the dotted line, they slice to within fractions of a millimetre.

But, they don’t need coffee, lunch breaks, oxygen or sleep. And they don’t go crazy from doing the same incredibly

monotonous thing day after day, week after week, year after year.

Robots hardly ever make miscreants misteaks mistakes. And if they do, it’s usually because of human error.

Robots can often do things faster and better, and that means they’re good for business. Check out e-commerce giant Amazon.com, which employs thousands of robots in their packing and distribution warehouses. These allow Amazon to pack in mere minutes what used to take an hour.

Dirty, dull, dangerous and disgusting When you say “robot”, some people say, “OMG they’re going to take all our jobs.”

Others, like economists at one of the world’s biggest accounting firms Deloitte, say the technology is a “great job-creating machine.”

But how you look at robotics depends on what sort of jobs you’re thinking of. Most of the jobs robots are being designed to do are boring, risky, unhealthy

or all three. Take a look at your List Of Things I’d Rather Not Do. I bet there’s a robot for everything on it. And if there isn’t, you can probably invent one.

Think of robots as room-cleaners, sewer-inspectors, machines for lugging molten aluminium, crop and power-line inspectors or the perfect travellers for one-way trips to Mars. (Okay, so maybe that last one is on another list of mine.)

SHAKEDOWN


Ever wanted your own butler? Then why not try giving orders to a helpful humanoid known as a SanBot, created by Qihan Technology, a robotics and AI company based in Shenzhen, China.

Sanbot’s first generation robot is nicknamed Elf: he can sing, dance and remind you to take your medicine, just like Santa’s Elf, but with 3D-cameras, infrared sensors, a touch screen heart and subwoofers in its guts. Sanbot Elf is already working security at airports, serving customers at hotels and hosting TV shows.

Gen2 is SanBot Nano, your ordinary everyday around-the-house butler-bot. It’s as tall as your baby brother, comes with a cute cartoon face, voice recognition and 50-plus sensors that give it super-human awareness. You can ask it to turn on your favourite tune, order pizza, update your fitness stats…and more. Oh, and it charges its own battery, without being asked.

Need more muscle? Try the SanBot Max, launched in January this year. It’s your typical all-terrain butler, a couple of inches shorter than Kourtney Kardashian but able to tow 75kg. It also knows 26 languages and can cover around five metres per second; perfect for when you’re in a foreign country and need a really big pizza, really fast. It’s also useful in hotels, shops, nursing homes, and when you need a lift to the fridge.

You know you want your own Sanbot and, when you put it on your Christmas list, try telling your parents it’s educational! Distributing the robot here is Advanced Robotics Australia, Melbourne-based specialists integrating robotics and manufacturing.

The company’s managing director, Chris Scott, says robots like Sanbot provide loads of opportunities for savvy coders. “It’s like having a super-charged iPad with wheels, then giving it a degree of autonomy and the ability to communicate,” Chris says. “Tailoring the capabilities of these robots comes down to the skill of the programmer. How do you want it to interact with its environment? What do you want

it to communicate? What information do you want it to capture?”

Chris predicts collaborative robots,

called cobots, are the next big thing. “Cobots can collaborate safely with humans in a human space, like a factory floor,” he says. “There’s significant opportunity for robotics in the future. People are looking to automate, which opens up opportunities in programming, mechatronics, engineering...”

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RISE OF THE ROBOTS SUPPORT INDUSTRY

What’s a CNC machine?Want to build a prototype or experiment with a new design? You’ll need a Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machine — and a way to control it. CNC machines are a precision cutting tool that can follow programmed instructions. They range in price from just hundreds of dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars. “Whatever we see or use these days has been machined on a CNC machine,” Jatinder explains. “Most start-ups who need to make anything just go out and buy a little CNC machine.”

SANBOT...BRING PIZZA!

Jatinder Grewal was studying mechatronics at the University of Sydney when he made the jump from student to entrepreneur. He was a member of the uni’s team for the student-design competition Formula SAE and had designed the wireless system monitoring the car while on the racetrack.

Then a team member dropped his name to a mining company looking for an answer to a robotics- technical issue relating to CNC machines [see box] that they were stuck on. “They asked me, ‘Can this be done in two months?’ and I was like, ‘I can do it in a week’,” says Jatinder, who was already improving robotic CNC machine systems in his garage.

He’d experienced first-hand the hassles of using a PC to control these machines and had begun nutting out a better way to control them: “I researched a lot on YouTube; I’d ask questions about how to do things.” He ended up designing a real-time CNC controller, called the MASSO controller, and launched his own company, Hind Technology, which specialises in robotic control technology.

Last year, MASSO CNC controllers were shipped to more than 40 countries. “I have clients making wooden parts, cutting marble for shelving, making jewellery, making drones…You have something in your mind, and you can literally machine that in minutes. Every day I see a new application,” says Jatinder, who believes that to get started in robotics you need passion. “I’ve been building stuff since I was a kid. You need to have that drive and for the rest, well, you’ve got the internet so you can learn anything. My friends say, ‘Mate, you didn’t even pass maths, how can you make this stuff?’ But once you see how this stuff works, once you start liking that stuff, you’re self-driven.”

FAST FACTWhat’s the difference between a robot and an online bot, like a chatbot or Twitterbot? A robot needs to have some sort of body. Online bots are just algorithms or clever bits of code.

Collaborative robots, called cobots, are the next big thing.


uc.australiascience.tvSHAKEDOWN

Robotics and agriculture already go hand-in-hand, says Salah Sukkarieh (left), a global expert on field robotics systems.

“There are robot platforms that can automatically work in horticulture, grazing livestock and grain farms,” he explains. “They can detect weeds automatically and eradicate them, as well as pests. They can also use very sophisticated AI [artificial intelligence] techniques to determine the health of the plants and animals.”

In the future, Salah says, robots will play an even greater role: “There will be large farms

that are fully autonomous…and small farms with little robots to help farmers with the difficult and boring tasks.”

He adds that the influence of robotics is growing. “Robotics,” he says, “is everywhere, from agriculture to aviation, mining to space exploration.” To get into the area, Salah recommends a focus on technical skills in mathematics and science, as well as having soft skills in communication and problem-solving.

Salah Sukkarieh is Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the University of Sydney and Director of Research and Innovation at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

INTO THE FUTURE, BRICK-BY-BRICK Mark Pivac is Chief Technology Officer at Fastbrick Robotics (FBR), inventors of the bricklaying robot. “The Hadrian X will unpack bricks, cut them, put grooves in them and put glue on them, and then place them very accurately into a wall structure, layer by layer, all according to a CAD house plan,” he explains.

FBR already employs about 100 people, including engineers, programmers, assembly technicians, computer numerical control (CNC) machine operators, fabricators, boilermakers, welders, electricians, mechanical fitters, hydraulics technicians and more. “Good engineers who can write well are especially valuable,” Mark says. “Knowledge about how things are made and how things work is extremely useful.”

What does Mark see in the wild-west future for robotics? “Imagine a humanoid robot doing winter Olympics grade snowboard tricks,” he says. “Perhaps robotic industrialisation of space and other worlds, with robots sending products back to Earth, or preparing fresh planets for human habitation.

“If you can imagine it, robots might do it.”

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DOWN ON THE FARM

FAST FACT In the first nine months of 2017, almost 26,000 robots were sold in North America totalling about US$1.5 billion.


Image courtesy of The University of Sydney/Australian Centre for Field Robotics


uc.australiascience.tvSHAKEDOWN

Robotics and agriculture already go hand-in-hand, says Salah Sukkarieh (left), a global expert on field robotics systems.

“There are robot platforms that can automatically work in horticulture, grazing livestock and grain farms,” he explains. “They can detect weeds automatically and eradicate them, as well as pests. They can also use very sophisticated AI [artificial intelligence] techniques to determine the health of the plants and animals.”

In the future, Salah says, robots will play an even greater role: “There will be large farms

that are fully autonomous…and small farms with little robots to help farmers with the difficult and boring tasks.”

He adds that the influence of robotics is growing. “Robotics,” he says, “is everywhere, from agriculture to aviation, mining to space exploration.” To get into the area, Salah recommends a focus on technical skills in mathematics and science, as well as having soft skills in communication and problem-solving.

Salah Sukkarieh is Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at the University of Sydney and Director of Research and Innovation at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics.

INTO THE FUTURE, BRICK-BY-BRICK Mark Pivac is Chief Technology Officer at Fastbrick Robotics (FBR), inventors of the bricklaying robot. “The Hadrian X will unpack bricks, cut them, put grooves in them and put glue on them, and then place them very accurately into a wall structure, layer by layer, all according to a CAD house plan,” he explains.

FBR already employs about 100 people, including engineers, programmers, assembly technicians, computer numerical control (CNC) machine operators, fabricators, boilermakers, welders, electricians, mechanical fitters, hydraulics technicians and more. “Good engineers who can write well are especially valuable,” Mark says. “Knowledge about how things are made and how things work is extremely useful.”

What does Mark see in the wild-west future for robotics? “Imagine a humanoid robot doing winter Olympics grade snowboard tricks,” he says. “Perhaps robotic industrialisation of space and other worlds, with robots sending products back to Earth, or preparing fresh planets for human habitation.


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DOWN ON THE FARM

FAST FACT In the first nine months of 2017, almost 26,000 robots were sold in North America totalling about US$1.5 billion.


Image courtesy of The University of Sydney/Australian Centre for Field Robotics

SHAKEDOWN


Every week, South32 changes 300–700 pulleys across more than 50km of conveyor. “The conveyor reaches up to 4.2m above the ground,” Andrew explains. “They have to harness up, climb onto the belt and lift these 17kg pulleys out, overhead and at odd angles.”

At height, each pulley can take 20–30 minutes for a person to change manually, a job that for comes with the risk of stress, strain and injury. “It’s a problem they’ve had for 35 years,” Andrew says, “a really

intensive manual handling task fraught with risks.”

Sandpit’s solution was a triple-jointed robotic arm. All three joints are intelligently and

remotely controlled using a joystick. It’s cut the job time to 12 minutes.

“Adding robotics is incredibly

advantageous when you start looking at improvements on cycle time,” Andrew says.

Coming up with clever solutions requires clever thinking and Andrew says he looks for practical

experience when hiring new engineers, not just qualifications. “Someone who’s got their hands dirty, someone who knows what a wrench is. That trumps a lot of other criteria,” he says.

Case Study Solving a 35-year-old problem

“Adding robotics is incredibly advantageous.”

Andrew Bradfield is a mechanical engineer at Sandpit Innovation, an Aussie team that designed and delivered a robotic pulley replacement system for mining company South32.

An addiction to Lego led Ryan Steindl into a career in robotics. Now a mechatronics engineer, he works with CSIRO’s Robotics and Autonomous Systems group where he designs and builds legged robots. “They’re six-legged at the moment,” he explains. “We want to be able to explore rough terrain, like a rainforest, with creeks and hills and boulders to get around.”

Ryan explains that he’s played with Lego all his life and still does, he admits with a laugh, at the age of 28. “At school I got into RoboCup Junior,” he says. “We were competing in teams

in robot soccer and dance and line-following. From there I always loved robotics.”

Ryan designs his robots to be ultra-lightweight. “Everything is really light but flexible,” he explains. “The less mass you have, the less energy you need; so the further you can walk.”

CSIRO’s robotics group is also working on SLAM (Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping) technology for

3D-mapping. “We can just walk through a space and create a 3D map of our environment,” Ryan says. “One of the biggest problems in robotics is knowing what your world’s like. The better you know your world, the better you can do tasks.”

FROM ROBOCUP TO RAINFOREST

FAST FACT Do humanoid robots freak you out? You’re not alone. The Uncanny Valley is a phenomenon where humans get the heebie-jeebies when dealing with human-looking robots.

“The less mass you have, the less energy you need; so the further you can walk.”

Image courtesy of Sandpit Innovations

Image of Zee courtesy of Dr. Navinda Kottege / CSIRO

Meet Zee, named after the character voiced by Woody Allen in the animated movie Antz, a prototype for confined space inspection and mapping. The CSIRO team have aptly named these these six-legged hexapod robots Syropods.


Ask a robot to pick up a cup and its computer brain goes into overdrive. What type of cup? How heavy? How slippery? How full?

“The robot needs to figure out what it needs to do to accomplish the task,” explains Dr Hanna Kurniawati, a University of Queensland researcher in mechatronics, which combines electronics and mechanical engineering. “I’m interested in how they do this in the absence of perfect models and perfect predictions.”

Hanna recently won ICT Researcher of the Year at the Australian Computing Society Digital Disruptors Awards. On a typical day she might be working with honeybee experts to uncover how bees avoid collisions, or looking into new ways to help robots deal with uncertainty so they can make better, faster decisions. Or she might be helping to develop an electronic soccer ball for vision-impaired kids, which, she says, is a “sort of

a side project”.Hanna credits C-3PO as

the inspiration for her career in robotics: “I watched a lot of Star Wars growing up and Doraemon, [a Japanese manga series] about a cat robot from the future” she laughs. “I wanted to somehow have the robots that movies

promised us.”To make your

own cat robot from the future, you’ll need skills, Hanna says. “You need calculus, statistics, probability, plus

an understanding of physics and computer science. Robots are driven by computers, so you need a good grasp of computing, not just programming but also the concepts behind it. You want your software to be very efficient.”

YouTube, she says, is a great place to start: “There are lots of videos of how things that appear boring or dry can be applied to things that are more interesting.”

Case Study But...what if? And then...?The world is an imperfect and uncertain place, particularly if all you have to work with are sensors and software.

“You need calculus, statistics, probability, plus an understanding of physics and computer science.”

Love sport? Love science? Turn your passions into your career.

HAVING FORMER WALLABIES’ captain John Eales as a mentor was one of many connections that made Benjamin Hunt’s time at Bond University rich and rewarding – both personally and professionally. After being selected as one of the first two recipients of the university’s John Eales Rugby Excellence Scholarship, Benjamin moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast to study for a Bachelor of Exercise and Sports Science part-time while playing rugby union with the Under-20s Queensland Reds.

Bond’s small class sizes aim to make it easy to develop one-on-one relationships with other

students and academics, and Benjamin found the supportive atmosphere was a huge help in figuring out the career path he wanted to pursue. “People are actually interested in what you want to do, not just [about] pumping you through and getting your degree done and then out of there,” he explains.

Having completed his studies in 2017, which included work experience in the High Performance Training Centre at the Bond Institute of Health & Sport, Benjamin landed a job as strength and conditioning coach at the prestigious Scots College, in Sydney. There he is training young rugby players – including perhaps Australia’s next John Eales – to reach their potential.

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Image © LaCozza/Adobe Stock


Ask a robot to pick up a cup and its computer brain goes into overdrive. What type of cup? How heavy? How slippery? How full?

“The robot needs to figure out what it needs to do to accomplish the task,” explains Dr Hanna Kurniawati, a University of Queensland researcher in mechatronics, which combines electronics and mechanical engineering. “I’m interested in how they do this in the absence of perfect models and perfect predictions.”

Hanna recently won ICT Researcher of the Year at the Australian Computing Society Digital Disruptors Awards. On a typical day she might be working with honeybee experts to uncover how bees avoid collisions, or looking into new ways to help robots deal with uncertainty so they can make better, faster decisions. Or she might be helping to develop an electronic soccer ball for vision-impaired kids, which, she says, is a “sort of

a side project”.Hanna credits C-3PO as

the inspiration for her career in robotics: “I watched a lot of Star Wars growing up and Doraemon, [a Japanese manga series] about a cat robot from the future” she laughs. “I wanted to somehow have the robots that movies

promised us.”To make your

own cat robot from the future, you’ll need skills, Hanna says. “You need calculus, statistics, probability, plus

an understanding of physics and computer science. Robots are driven by computers, so you need a good grasp of computing, not just programming but also the concepts behind it. You want your software to be very efficient.”

YouTube, she says, is a great place to start: “There are lots of videos of how things that appear boring or dry can be applied to things that are more interesting.”

Case Study But...what if? And then...?The world is an imperfect and uncertain place, particularly if all you have to work with are sensors and software.

“You need calculus, statistics, probability, plus an understanding of physics and computer science.”

Love sport? Love science? Turn your passions into your career.

HAVING FORMER WALLABIES’ captain John Eales as a mentor was one of many connections that made Benjamin Hunt’s time at Bond University rich and rewarding – both personally and professionally. After being selected as one of the first two recipients of the university’s John Eales Rugby Excellence Scholarship, Benjamin moved from Sydney to the Gold Coast to study for a Bachelor of Exercise and Sports Science part-time while playing rugby union with the Under-20s Queensland Reds.

Bond’s small class sizes aim to make it easy to develop one-on-one relationships with other

students and academics, and Benjamin found the supportive atmosphere was a huge help in figuring out the career path he wanted to pursue. “People are actually interested in what you want to do, not just [about] pumping you through and getting your degree done and then out of there,” he explains.

Having completed his studies in 2017, which included work experience in the High Performance Training Centre at the Bond Institute of Health & Sport, Benjamin landed a job as strength and conditioning coach at the prestigious Scots College, in Sydney. There he is training young rugby players – including perhaps Australia’s next John Eales – to reach their potential.

strengthsPlay toyour

BOND thrid grad profile.indd 1 27/03/2018 12:37:01 PM

Image © LaCozza/Adobe Stock



uc.australiascience.tvREALITY CHECK

Swimwear, virtual reality and surfing are at the heart

of these three successful Aussie startups with very

different origin stories. Our writer Ivy Shih takes

you behind the scenes for some first-hand advice from

the entrepreneurs who began them. Prepare

to be inspired!

Kickstart your startup

Case Study: OceanZenphilosophy: so much more than just a fashion brandfounded: 2014

oceanzenbikini.comOn Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Steph Gabriel has successfully built a business that combines passions for fashion and cleaning up the planet. Her company OceanZen manufactures sustainable swimwear from recycled fishing nets and plastic bottles.

Steph had always had a close relationship with the ocean and has seen first-hand the devastating impact of waste on our waterways. She’s been an active advocate for marine conversation, working in the Grand Cayman with wild stingrays. And at university she studied environmental science and worked in marine research, investigating the genetic diversity of humpback whales in Ecuador and coral reefs in Indonesia.

“Being in the ocean eight hours a day, I was really seeing the effects of tourism on marine


Funding from ING Bank's Dreamstarter grant program was the boost Steph Gabriel needed to grow her fashion startup company OceanZen.

OceanZen's mission is to create sustainable swimwear from recycled plastics.

T ALL BEGINS with an idea. It might come as a flash of inspiration while walking the dog or daydreaming during that last lesson on a Friday afternoon. Or it could be a slow burn that eventually consumes you.

However it starts, you soon believe that when your idea is made into reality it’s going to make a difference to people’s lives or fill a need that’s been crying out to be filled.

“I can’t believe no one else has thought of this yet,” you think at first. And then you realise: “This is a great idea for a business.” The next step is turning that idea into a product or service that can bring you an income and might even be the basis of a long career.

There’s certainly a lot of evidence that great startup ideas can go a long way. According to figures from the Federal Department of Industry, Innovation and Science, net job creation in Australia comes from early stage and startup businesses. In fact, young companies created almost all of the 1.6 million net new jobs in Australia from 2003 to 2014.

So, if you’re ready for a big step into the unknown and want to take that amazing idea of yours to the next stage, make sure you’ve got a game plan. Identify your: Audience: who do you want to use your product or service? Mission: what is your startup trying to do? Funding: will the money you need to get your idea off the ground come from your savings, crowdfunding or private or government funding?

There are no rules set in stone on how to start and run your own business. But knowing what options are available will make everything seem less overwhelming. Here we tell the stories of three Aussie start-ups well on their way to success and we share the advice of the entrepreneurs behind them. We’ll also show you where you can find help and get guidance. And we explain the language of the start-up world.

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Case Study: Phoriaphilosophy: building a bridge between the digital and physical worldsfounded: 2014

phoria.com.au

Trent Clews-de Castella has always been interested in the crossover between

psychology and engineering. And

what fascinates him most is

how human

connected hopeful entrepreneurs with mentors to test whether their fledging startup ideas had merit. Yes! The Fitzroy Academy was a real thing. Trent explains that it wasn't quite an accelerator or incubator, but was instrumental in forming PHORIA.

The startup then entered the Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP), Australia’s first university-based accelerator program. There, the fledgling company was able to get seed capital to take the business to new places. For Trent it was a mind-opening experience.

“I was connecting with the movers and shakers of 3D visualisation, finding what tools they had, what barriers they faced and also what opportunities,” he says. “We also realised that we didn’t have immediate software and financial skills so we started looking for co-founders. We were at the right place at the right time. It was then we realised we had something with potential.”

Since then the company has gone from strength to strength, working in exciting projects, including one that involved

creating virtual reality house tours for television renovation show The Block.

Recently PHORIA teamed with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to design a virtual reality excursion to Melbourne Zoo for kids in hospital. By bringing virtual reality into the hospital setting, PHORIA is contributing to medical research that’s investigating whether animal-assisted therapy could help with pain and anxiety for young patients.

The experience broke new ground for PHORIA in capturing 360-degree video.

Trent recommends that anyone wanting to expand a great idea into a startup should look for incubators and accelerators.

“One of the benefits is [you can] really just ask the right questions. You don’t need to know all the answers, but at least you are aware so it is a matter of surrounding yourself in the right environment,” Trent says. “And the right people are not afraid to give you a polite nudge and kick up the rear if you’re not headed in the right direction!”

behaviours and needs can be supported by engineering new tools of the future.

Trent is a co-founder and CEO of PHORIA, a Melbourne tech startup that specialises in immersive media. For the last four years it’s been creating cutting-edge technologies to provide a virtual reality solution to many real-world problems.

“Virtual reality can build a bridge where people can travel vast distances and bring digital, far-off worlds to your immediate physical environment,” he says.

Back in 2014 Trent and his fellow co-founders had a concept of using virtual reality as a real tool for businesses, but didn’t want to rush into it. “You have this burning question you want to solve [and] naturally a lot of people want to go out and build this product, launch it and make a lot of noise,” Trent explains. “But then you spend a lot

of time and money without really getting feedback.”

So the team first went to the ‘Fitzroy Academy

of getting shit done’, a month-long program that

life but also our environmental impact in terms of marine debris and pollution,” Steph says. Plastic pollution in our oceans is a huge and ever-growing problem. Carried by ocean currents, much of the world’s plastic debris ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean.

“All this passion was building up to be something great,” Steph recalls. “So, I thought why not combine my two passions together, which are marine conservation and bikinis!”

With just $5000 of her own savings and while still a full-time student in the final year of her degree, she launched OceanZen on Instagram and slowly grew the company, recruiting friends to help model her bikini designs and create the company website.

“It’s important for anyone who wants to launch a business to be really resourceful,” she advises. “I always try to find different opportunities.”

Steph’s hard work paid off. In 2017, OceanZen received a Dreamstarter grant from ING Bank, a program that provides startups with funding and knowledge to build financially stable businesses. She says the grant has allowed the company to grow and helped produce OceanZen’s new swimwear collection, which launched in November 2017.

The bikinis are made from ECONYL, a fabric created from plastic collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. An American company cleans and shreds the plastic, which is recreated into a very fine yarn. That’s then shipped to Italy, where it is mixed with Lycra for the perfect amount of stretch needed for swimwear.

Marine conservation and advocacy has formed an important part of OceanZen’s identity. The company’s Instagram account features photos of sharks, sea turtles and other marine life with messages of marine conservation awareness. Steph credits her university degree and work with helping make OceanZen a label that sets it apart from other swimwear brands.

“My studies in environmental science have also given me the skills and credibility in what I am saying. Not many fashion labels come from this kind of background,” Steph says. “OceanZen wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for my unique experiences. It’s a brand that supports marine conservation and wants my consumers to build a more conscious lifestyle.”

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REALITY CHECK


Case Study: Phoriaphilosophy: building a bridge between the digital and physical worldsfounded: 2014

phoria.com.au

Trent Clews-de Castella has always been interested in the crossover between

psychology and engineering. And

what fascinates him most is

how human

connected hopeful entrepreneurs with mentors to test whether their fledging startup ideas had merit. Yes! The Fitzroy Academy was a real thing. Trent explains that it wasn't quite an accelerator or incubator, but was instrumental in forming PHORIA.

The startup then entered the Melbourne Accelerator Program (MAP), Australia’s first university-based accelerator program. There, the fledgling company was able to get seed capital to take the business to new places. For Trent it was a mind-opening experience.

“I was connecting with the movers and shakers of 3D visualisation, finding what tools they had, what barriers they faced and also what opportunities,” he says. “We also realised that we didn’t have immediate software and financial skills so we started looking for co-founders. We were at the right place at the right time. It was then we realised we had something with potential.”

Since then the company has gone from strength to strength, working in exciting projects, including one that involved

creating virtual reality house tours for television renovation show The Block.

Recently PHORIA teamed with the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to design a virtual reality excursion to Melbourne Zoo for kids in hospital. By bringing virtual reality into the hospital setting, PHORIA is contributing to medical research that’s investigating whether animal-assisted therapy could help with pain and anxiety for young patients.

The experience broke new ground for PHORIA in capturing 360-degree video.

Trent recommends that anyone wanting to expand a great idea into a startup should look for incubators and accelerators.

“One of the benefits is [you can] really just ask the right questions. You don’t need to know all the answers, but at least you are aware so it is a matter of surrounding yourself in the right environment,” Trent says. “And the right people are not afraid to give you a polite nudge and kick up the rear if you’re not headed in the right direction!”

behaviours and needs can be supported by engineering new tools of the future.

Trent is a co-founder and CEO of PHORIA, a Melbourne tech startup that specialises in immersive media. For the last four years it’s been creating cutting-edge technologies to provide a virtual reality solution to many real-world problems.

“Virtual reality can build a bridge where people can travel vast distances and bring digital, far-off worlds to your immediate physical environment,” he says.

Back in 2014 Trent and his fellow co-founders had a concept of using virtual reality as a real tool for businesses, but didn’t want to rush into it. “You have this burning question you want to solve [and] naturally a lot of people want to go out and build this product, launch it and make a lot of noise,” Trent explains. “But then you spend a lot

of time and money without really getting feedback.”

So the team first went to the ‘Fitzroy Academy

of getting shit done’, a month-long program that

life but also our environmental impact in terms of marine debris and pollution,” Steph says. Plastic pollution in our oceans is a huge and ever-growing problem. Carried by ocean currents, much of the world’s plastic debris ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a floating island of rubbish in the Pacific Ocean.

“All this passion was building up to be something great,” Steph recalls. “So, I thought why not combine my two passions together, which are marine conservation and bikinis!”

With just $5000 of her own savings and while still a full-time student in the final year of her degree, she launched OceanZen on Instagram and slowly grew the company, recruiting friends to help model her bikini designs and create the company website.

“It’s important for anyone who wants to launch a business to be really resourceful,” she advises. “I always try to find different opportunities.”

Steph’s hard work paid off. In 2017, OceanZen received a Dreamstarter grant from ING Bank, a program that provides startups with funding and knowledge to build financially stable businesses. She says the grant has allowed the company to grow and helped produce OceanZen’s new swimwear collection, which launched in November 2017.

The bikinis are made from ECONYL, a fabric created from plastic collected from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. An American company cleans and shreds the plastic, which is recreated into a very fine yarn. That’s then shipped to Italy, where it is mixed with Lycra for the perfect amount of stretch needed for swimwear.

Marine conservation and advocacy has formed an important part of OceanZen’s identity. The company’s Instagram account features photos of sharks, sea turtles and other marine life with messages of marine conservation awareness. Steph credits her university degree and work with helping make OceanZen a label that sets it apart from other swimwear brands.

“My studies in environmental science have also given me the skills and credibility in what I am saying. Not many fashion labels come from this kind of background,” Steph says. “OceanZen wouldn’t be what it is if it wasn’t for my unique experiences. It’s a brand that supports marine conservation and wants my consumers to build a more conscious lifestyle.”

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e courtesy o

f Steph G

abriel



Steph Gabriel (Founder, OceanZen)

Give it time “Don’t put pressure on deciding right now. There are so many options to follow your path and end up doing what you love. Starting your own business isn’t going to make you money right away. You need to ride it out. That is why it is so important to do something you are passionate about. If you launch something you don’t care about, when times get tough you are just going to give up. There have been so many hard times, but I am always drawn back to the purpose of my company.”

Rikki Gilbey (Founder, WAW Handplanes)

Do it sensibly“It is hard. Don’t rush into it too quickly. You can work on your idea, you can develop it. It’s very hard to put immediate pressure on yourself to generate profit you can use. Maintain a side job for a while...in the industry you are thinking of doing that startup in, if you can. That way you have a safety net. For instance, I picked up a side job at a surf shop so I could develop some contacts in the surf industry. It gave financial input into the company, covered my rent, and gave me that network and opportunities.”

Trent Clews-de Castella (Co-founder, PHORIA)

Know your weaknesses“Commit to an idea. It’s really hard to have one foot in and one foot out. It is being aware that as great as an idea may be – it is about being able to execute on it and know that not one individual has the ability to do it all. Being able to identify your weaknesses from an early stage and looking for that strength in other business partners is invaluable.”

Case Study: WAW Handplanesphilosophy: sustainable surfingfounded: 2014

wawhandplanes.com.auRikki Gilbey had always wanted to start his own business and surfing has been a long-time passion: the two merge perfectly for him in WAW (Wave After Wave) Handplanes.

He discovered bodysurfing about five years ago and found that handplaning (a practise thought to have started with kids in Polynesia using pieces of driftwood) made such a difference to the experience: “You can lean down and can get your body up and out of the water, and then you are just racing across the waves – I instantly fell in love!”

But Rikki had trouble finding a good handplane in Australia and realised there was a gap in the market. “All of a sudden, all these sparks started flying off in my brain,” he recalls. As a carpenter who’d studied marine geography, previously been a marine researcher and was working in a surf shop, his set of skills and connections seemed perfect. He saw his chance, decided to go for it and began making small handplanes at home. Rikki’s bedroom became a storage unit for timber and his garden became a workshop. Importantly his surfing mates and colleagues willingly tested his products, provided feedback and he altered his products accordingly. He began selling at local markets and any tiny profits were put back into making more handplanes.

“I was adamant I was going to grow the business organically and I didn’t have a massive amount of funds to put into it,” he says. “We were growing slowly, but we were growing.” Rikki’s creations started attracting attention in the surfing community, his products were picked up by a large outdoor gear retailer, and everything he made in his first summer sold.

“It was so humbling and I was amazed,” Rikki acknowledges. Now the business is well on its way. Central to WAW Handplane’s mission is sustainability; from the raw products he uses to his business philosophies: for every handplane that’s sold a tree is panted. Rikki strongly recommends that anyone starting a business considers sustainability. “I wanted it to be the roots of the company from the beginning. I have a product-based business so at every step I am thinking about if there is a sustainable approach,” Rikki says. “Don’t push it to the side. What I discovered was that it is not only easy to make a sustainable business, it's beneficial and a great marketing tool. It’s not hard.”

SAGE ADVICE “What would you tell a high-school student coming to you for advice on launching a startup.”We asked each of these three entrepreneurs. Here’s what they had to say.

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34 I ULTIMATE CAREERS

REALITY CHECK uc.australiascience.tv

UNICORNS, ANGEL investors, incubators: these might sound like terms plucked from the latest dystopian novel, but they’re all part of the language used in the startup world. So, if you’re planning to start your own company, here are some of the key words and phrases you’ll want to add to your vocabulary.

and technology alongside other start-up founders and, at times, invites CEOs and mentors to give presentations. There is a strong community element and incubators provide a chance to network and meet with other startups.

LAUNCH When you officially start a company or make a website/service live. This is when you introduce your company to the real world!

PoC (Proof of Concept) This is making your idea into reality as a working demo or product. This is a very important step because it shows potential customers and investors that your idea is possible.

UNICORN Privately owned startup with a current value of more than $1 billion. Examples include Airbnb, Reddit and Canva.

VC (Venture Capital) A venture capital firm’s goal is to invest in other companies in certain markets or industries. Funding from these can help in the rapid growth of your startup and occurs in ‘rounds’ (seed round, followed by Series A, B, and C), where the startup tries to raise capital from VC firms by showing PoC.

IN THE REALM OF STARTUPS UNICORNS DO EXIST.

Starting a new business from scratch isn’t easy, so here are a few places to get you started.

IP AUSTRALIA Your go-to Federal Government resource on how to protect and launch your startup in Australia; includes a list of possible government funding and other tools for startups.

ipaustralia.gov.au/

STARTUPAUS A not-for profit minefield of information about events, resources and information for technology startups and entrepreneurs in Australia.

startupaus.org/

STARTUPSMART Free news and advice for startup businesses. smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/

TECHSTARS STARTUP WEEKEND Organises training and networking events for entrepreneurs all around Australia

startupweekend.org/

INCUBATORSINCUBATE (NSW) incubate.org.au/

FISHBURNERS (NSW & QLD) fishburners.org/

SPACECUBED (WA) spacecubed.com/

CICADA INNOVATIONS (NSW) cicadainnovations.com/#home

ACCELERATOR PROGRAMS BLUE CHILLI (NSW, VIC, QLD) bluechilli.com/

MELBOURNE ACCELERATOR PROGRAM (MAP) (VIC) themap.co/map-startup-accelerator/

YBF (VIC) ybfventures.com/

MURU-D (NSW, QLD, WA, VIC) muru-d.com/

QUT CREATIVE ENTERPRISES AUSTRALIA (QLD) qutcea.com/

ILAB (QLD) ilabaccelerator.com/

GET READY TO GO Startup

Lingo ANGEL INVESTOR/S People who contribute a small amount of capital (mostly starting from $50,000 to $100,000) into your company. This usually occurs in the company’s early stages and is in exchange for a small portion of ownership.

BOOTSTRAPPING When a company is funded by the entrepreneur’s own personal resources without the help of angel investors or venture capital firms. It means you’re starting a business with your own finances.

CAPITAL The amount of money available for the startup to use. Entrepreneurs need to raise capital to kick-off and grow a company. This can be from angel investors or VCs. The first funding round is known as seed capital.

ENTREPRENEUR A person turning an idea into a business venture, rewards and risks included. If you’re interested in creating a startup – this is you!

INCUBATOR A place or organisation that helps early stage startups. It provides a co-working space, access to business equipment

STARTUP A company in the early stages of creating a product or service. A startup’s goal is to solve a problem or fill a need in a new and innovative way.

FOUNDER The person or entrepreneur who comes up with the idea behind the startup. There can be multiple founders, known as co-founders; all of whom have unique strengths – like technological, business or engineering skills – that they bring to support the company.

ACCELERATOR A startup accelerator is a short-term (3–6 month) program designed to speed up development for small teams. They support founders with office space, funding (seed capital), mentorship and business management training from experts and leaders in the industry. At the end of a program, founders will have the opportunity to present their product to potential investors such as VCs (see right). Entry into accelerator programs is very competitive. Be aware that accelerators usually provide support in exchange for a percentage of the value of your startup company.

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