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Professor Peter Cullen to head line-up as … the debate is back!
Remember
YES I AM FAT BUT IT’S NOT MY FAULT?
Well this year, Deakin Research and the Ecology and Environmental Change RPA is hosting another public discussion focussing on issues crucial to our future wellbeing: YES IT IS UNSUSTAINABLE BUT IT’S NOT MY FAULT.
This year’s discussion will again be held in the beautiful St Michael Church in Collins Street Melbourne at 6pm on Tuesday, October 9th and it will be recorded for a later broadcast on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters program.
This year the guest speakers will include the eminent Professor Peter Cullen, AO, FTSE, member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.
Other speakers are Deakin’s own Dr Anne Wallis and Associate Professor Geoff Westcott.
Deakin’s Director of Research Services, Alison Hadfield, said: “Last year’s event, both for the live audience and for those listening around Australia on Radio National had a huge impact on the on-going debate over obesity in our community.
“This year will be no different as we address another crucial issue, the sustainability or otherwise of the way we are living in modern Western Society.
“I would like to invite as many people as possible to come along and hear what Professors Cullen and Westcott, as well as Dr Wallis have to offer.”
For more information about the debate, ring 5223 2918.
Expanding Geelong's Horizons
An edited version of the talk given by Professor David Stokes, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, at the Smart Geelong Research of the Year Awards Presentation Dinner on August 25, 2007.
Anytime
is a good time to talk about expanding Geelong’s horizons but tonight
I want to talk about why 2007 is an especially good time.
I should hasten to add that I am well aware that 2007 could be a very special year for Geelong for a different reason.
I was listening the other morning driving up from Geelong to Melbourne to Ian Cover and ABC radio and he was talking about some of the characters they are starting to see at Geelong’s AFL games.
I really like the man in a blue duffle coat with ‘go Polly’ on the back or the guy with the red and white vinyl bag that says TAA.
Of course I am not here to talk about a winning football team. I am here to talk about expanding Geelong’s horizons through research and the role of a different winning team - the research winning team from the members of the Smart Geelong Network …a team-made up of research staff from manufacturing industry, government departments, the Gordon Institute of Technical and Further Education, two Divisions of CSIRO, Barwon Health, a marine research facility at Queenscliff, and Deakin University.
I was at the Victoria Prize ceremony at Government House last week and the new Premier said 2007 is a special time.
I agree. There is an election coming, we have a new medical school in Geelong, we have a new Premier in Victoria, we have new future funds being set up, and we have been talking up the creation of our version of Silicon Valley in Geelong.
It is time to say again to our community leaders that research is not a cost --it is a benefit and an important driver of prosperity.
What I want to talk about tonight is what we at Deakin are calling a “step-change” - what we have to do in the next few years to make a bigger contribution to research, not more of the same, but a contribution that really puts Geelong on the map as a place in the world that is recognised for its research.
Suppose we could put Geelong on the world research map in the way that the people who built this City put Geelong on the map because of the quality of Geelong wool.
Some years ago I was part of a team that travelled the world looking at innovation in the textiles industry. We went to Biella in Italy where Avagadro, the man of the famous number lived. We went to Biella for a different reason and that was to see Italy’s finest wool suiting being made at Nino Cerrutti’s factory.
The wool, of course, came from Geelong. Walking through the picturesque cobbled streets of Biella that night we saw shops with woollen clothes that said made in Italy from Geelong wool.
A step change involves ideas, planning, money, and world class facilities.
When most people talk about research and innovation, money and facilities seem to be the things that loom large on their list. They are important, but in my view we should also be talking about people and ideas.
Research is about exceptional people who have exceptional ideas. Sometimes they work by themselves. These days research is more often about exceptional people with exceptional ideas who lead exceptional research teams.
The important words here are exceptional, ideas and lead.
When I was a post-doctoral student at Imperial College in London my boss showed me a facsimile of the book that he had been given when he became FRS. On one page there was a list of the people who had joined the society that year and their signatures.
On earlier pages and in earlier years were signatures of James Cook, Edward Jenner, Hans Krebs, Dorothy Hodgkin, Joseph Banks, Joseph Hooker, Thomas Huxley.
This year, 2007, 44 names were added including two from the University of Melbourne, Professor Sam Berkovic for his work on epilepsy and Professor David Boger for his work in fluid mechanics.
Otto Warburg, who won a Nobel prize for Medicine, told a story about his father, who was a highly respected physicist, and in Warburg's childhood such luminaries as Albert Einstein, Max Planck, Emil Fischer, and Walther Nernst were frequent dinner guests.
Staying with this theme of exceptional people, I was listening recently to a talk by Lord Robert Winston. He was talking about the significance of RNA in epigenetics. During the talk he referred to the idea that there had always been exceptional individuals who could think in different ways and that one day science might understand more about these processes.
In my view “Team Geelong” has some of these exceptional individuals and we are doing our best to look after them.
EVENTS
Smart Geelong Network Research and Learning Expo -
18 to 26 August 2007, including Researcher of the Year Awards Dinner celebrating
the achievements of Geelong's most talented researchers. The guest speaker
is Professor David Stokes, Deakin University's Deputy Vice-Chancellor
(Research).
To find out more: www.smartgeelongnetwork.com.au
or call 5226 7707
Research Services Division:
Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds
Pigdons Road, Geelong, Victoria 3217 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 5227 2673 Facsimile:
+61 3 5227 2175
Email: dvc-research@deakin.edu.au
www.deakin.edu.au/research
Deakin Research Updates - back copies
Back issues of Deakin Research Updates are available at: www.deakin.edu.au/research
Professor Kate Smith-Miles - new career focus ignites at Deakin
It’s hard to know what is the most newsworthy: The fact that along the road to becoming a prolific researcher, Professor Kate Smith-Miles had an epiphany.
Or the fact that she had the time for one.
One of Deakin’s youngest senior academics, the head of the University’s School of Engineering and IT has already had what can only be described as a crowded personal and professional life.
By the time she was considering a move to Deakin last year, aged just 35, she already had on her CV seven ARC grants, more than 150 papers and the supervision of 15 PhD students.
Then there was the not small matter of parenthood – Charlotte four and James two – plus her passion for that most wonderful of musical instruments with its deep, rich sounds, the 'cello.
But let’s get back to the epiphany, because – squeezed into all of the above and plenty more as well - it has played a critical role in bringing Professor Smith-Miles to Deakin.
“I discovered I actually enjoy helping other people do research as much as I enjoy doing research myself,” she said.
“Years ago when I got my first paper in a good quality journal or my first ARC grant, that was a real buzz for me, but I noticed that as time went on I got more of a buzz out of the success of someone I had been mentoring.
“So when the job came up here at Deakin last year, I saw it as a really great opportunity for me to expand my role as a facilitator of other people’s research, especially in a school like ours which has a great breadth of opportunities.
Home is where the research is!
As any good businessperson will tell you, return customers are the best ones because they are a sign you got it right the first time.
Deakin Federation Fellow and director of the Centre for Material and Fibre Innovation, Professor Peter Hodgson, is wondering if the same applies to researchers.
“We’ve got Lingxue Kong back here as an Associate Professor after he left us and went to South Australia,” Professor Hodgson said with wry laugh.
“He’s one of the best researchers in the business, a wonderful collaborator across a broad range of disciplines and to have him come back makes you think we must be doing something right here at Deakin.
“And with Lingxue back, putting together research teams in the skilled way he does, whatever we’re doing that’s right will only get better!”
There is more to this home-coming than first meets the eye.
Deakin looks ahead!