THE RESULTS ARE IN
These four researchers based in Australia have been honoured for their promising studies into a wide range of scientific and technological issues. By Jane Albert.
These four researchers based in Australia have been honoured for their promising studies into a wide range of scientific and technological issues.
It’s been 12 years since L’Oréal took the innovative step of partnering with UNESCO to champion Australia’s young female leaders working in the game-changing areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Meet Airlie Chapman, Asha Bowen, Katarina Miljkovic and Kirsty Short, whose ground-breaking work takes them from Mars to the Kimberley in remote Western Australia and sees them working towards eradicating dangerous skin infections in our Indigenous children and developing robots to assist in disaster management. Founded in 2007, the L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Australian and New Zealand program recognises the achievements of exceptional early-career female scientists, granting them $25,000 each to help further their research.
Dr Airlie Chapman MECHATRONIC ENGINEER: CONNECTING HUMANS AND ROBOTS
Which area do you work in? “My specific field is multi-vehicle robotics – many vehicles working together – to achieve a common goal. Imagine there’s a flock of drones searching for a lost hiker. They have to cover a large area of bush, but you can’t have a central commander because they’re so spread out, so they have to cooperatively work out the best way to cover the area. I use a combination of mechanical, electrical and software engineering to build the robots, then program them to react and think.”
What path did you take to get here? “I studied engineering at Sydney Uni, then did a masters in robotics at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics; a PhD at the University of Washington in aerospace engineering with amajor in control theory and a masters in mathematics, more postdoctoral research, before returning to Australia as a lecturer and researcher in mechatronics engineering at Melbourne Uni.” How does your work help create a better world? “I try to focus on solutions that prevent humans being put at risk. When it comes to tasks that are repetitious, we should be looking at robotics, [freeing up] humans for innovation, the things we enjoy and are passionate about.” What would you most like to
achieve? “There is a misconception that robots will one day work fully independently. My vision for the future is humans working collaboratively with robots, where information flows seamlessly to achieve a bigger goal. Imagine you have a flock of aerial robots supporting firefighters, providing critical information about changing fire conditions, and as the firefighters move, the flock also moves, gathering and relaying significant information.”
What are the biggest hurdles you’ve faced? “Fighting the misconception that aptitude is gendered. There are a lot of stereotypes about what an engineer looks like – geeks with pocket protectors or burly men in hard hats – that detracts from women going into those areas. Less than 10 per cent of mechanical engineers are female. What needs to be highlighted is that engineers are social people trying to understand and tackle important problems, working collaboratively to try to make the world better.”
What advice would you give young women? “Focus on the destination and put that idea of where you want to go on a piece of paper to remind yourself. Think about what you can potentially achieve with STEM skills, how empowering it is to solve big problems, to help so many people with theories or products you generate.”
What is the significance of the L’Oréal fellowship? “It’s an acknowledgment of how far we’ve come, which is quite rare this early in your career in my field; and I can start inspiring those girls starting out, which is a huge thing for me.”
Dr Asha Bowen PHYSICIAN AND CLINICAL RESEARCHER: WORKING TO ERADICATE SKIN DISEASE AMONG AUSTRALIA’S INDIGENOUS CHILDREN
What area do you work in? “I did my PhD in Darwin researching a better treatment for Aboriginal kids with skin sores and found almost one in two Aboriginal children living in remote Australia will contract a skin infection (skin sores or impetigo). The standard treatment is a penicillin injection, which is really painful, and most kids run away before they’re treated, and we found a short course of oral liquid antibiotics was just as effective, which is great news for kids. If left untreated, the children can end up in hospital with life-threatening acute heart problems, kidney problems or blood poisoning.”
How treatable is it? “When it’s a minor skin infection it’s eminently treatable, but by the time you’re hospitalised with acute rheumatic fever, the heart may already be damaged and treatment becomes much harder.”
What path did you take to get here? “I’m from Sydney, but did an arts degree majoring in geography and environmental studies at Tasmania Uni, then went to medical school at Sydney Uni. I trained as a physician specialising in paediatric infectious diseases through Sydney Children’s Hospital. After working in Darwin, we moved to Perth (working in infectious diseases at Perth Children’s Hospital), but my research work is predominately up in the remote parts of the Kimberley, where there’s a lot of Aboriginal health problems.”
What did you want to be when you were young? “A chef or a hairdresser. By 15 I wanted to be a doctor because I saw it as a way of helping people, but I never imagined how much of health care is dependent on science. It’s been a very exciting career and one that continues to change.”
What was your most exciting breakthrough? “We’d hypothesised that syrup medicine was just as effective as a needle and when we crunched the numbers the results were almost identical. That got published in one of the best medical journals in the world ( The Lancet). The knowledge that the science you’ve done will make a difference to the Aboriginal population and is globally influential is really cool.”
If you had one wish for the world, what would it be? “I would really like to see Aboriginal children have the same health outcomes as nonAboriginal children.” What are the biggest hurdles you’ve faced? “The one thing I’ve always looked for and haven’t found until quite recently are
The L’Oréal fellowship “is an acknowledgment of how far we’ve come, which is quite rare this early in your career in my field… I can start inspiring those girls starting out”
female mentors who are clinicians, scientists and mums. Hopefully, I’ll be that person to other people.”
What advice would you give young women? “Find what you’re passionate about and follow it, even if it seems impossible.”
What impact has the L’Oréal fellowship had? “Recognising that I have a role to play as a woman in science and that I have a voice that can influence the next generation; and that there are other women doing amazing science in so many other domains I’ve been privileged enough to connect with and learn from.”
Dr Katarina Miljkovic PLANETARY SCIENTIST: WORKING ON NASA’S MARS MISSION
Which area do you work in? “I look at meteoroid bombardment and make impact simulations. If you’ve ever wondered about the extinction of dinosaurs after the big rock from space hit Earth, those are the kinds of physical phenomenon I make simulations of, to try to understand the effects on Earth. I’m now a collaborator in an international team working on Mars on the NASA mission InSight that successfully landed on the surface of Mars in November. I’ll be using the data from this mission to study the properties of the interior of Mars – what kind of crust it has – to tell me how Mars evolved and why it’s so different to our Earth.”
What path did you take to get here? “I grew up in Serbia and studied astrophysics in Belgrade, then did my PhD in planetary sciences in the UK. I spent a couple of years working in universities in London, then in an institute in Paris doing my post-doctoral research training mapping the gravity around the Moon, before spending a year on the same project at MIT in the US. Four years ago, we moved to Perth on a fellowship at Curtin University and I now have an Australian Research Council fellowship for another three years.” Do you remember first becoming interested in the Moon or the solar system? “I remember looking at the Sun and the Moon thinking: ‘Why is that going up and down, and why can’t I look directly into it without it hurting my eyes?’ It woke up something in me that was hungry for knowledge about the world around us.”
What’s the most exciting part of your job? “Looking at the data from space missions that are telling us something about a planetary body that nobody has seen or understood before, then it’s up to me to try to make sense of what the planets and moons are telling us.”
If you had one wish for the world, what would it be? “What I want to see in my lifetime is an end to climate change, to create a new world that’s safe for our children to still live here. It’s something our children will hopefully change, because we’re failing.”
What are the biggest hurdles you’ve faced? “I needed to take on research jobs in a lot of different places, which was brilliant, but my private life came second. I think that’s why a lot of people drop out of academia, because you come to a point where you want a normal life. I’m lucky my husband followed me around the world and now Australia is home.”
What advice would you give young women? “There are so many different job opportunities that don’t require a particular degree today, so do what you enjoy and if you don’t see yourself in that anymore you can always change. Follow your dreams, no matter how kooky they sound: I’ve done it and it worked out for me.”
What impact has the L’Oréal fellowship had? “Celebrating science with different audiences and showing the rest of the world has been amazing. I never thought the worlds of Vogue and science would collide, so I’m so happy about this opportunity!”
Dr Kirsty Short VIROLOGIST: EXPLORING THE LINK BETWEEN INFLUENZA AND OBESITY
Which area do you work in? “I did my post-doctoral training in the Netherlands focussing solely on flu, because I really fell in love with the flu virus, as much as you can fall in love with a virus! I was trying to understand what causes severe, potentially fatal, flu. I now work at the University of Queensland as head of a research group where we have two areas of focus: to better understand ‘bird flu’ and how to better protect humans from contracting it; and understanding chronic medical conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, how we can boost the immune response of these people, and how they interact with flu and what that’s going to mean to future flu pandemics if we have a growing number of people are living with obesity and/or diabetes.”
What path did you take to get here? “I studied arts-science, majoring in microbiology/immunology and Asian studies, at Melbourne Uni and did my PhD there in viral–bacterial co-infections, looking at how flu makes you susceptible to secondary bacterial infections. I’ve been at Queensland Uni for three years now.”
What’s been the most exciting part of your career? “When I was very early in my career I was working on a project where we had to make bacteria glow and I’d been trying for ages and ages but they wouldn’t glow. I was heartbroken and trying different things and close to giving up then one day I tried a different plate and they lit up like Christmas trees. It was the most amazing feeling and it taught me to persevere.”
If you had one wish for the world, what would it be? “A universal flu vaccine. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime, but that’s the dream.”
What are the biggest hurdles you’ve faced? “One of the biggest hurdles for everyone in science is the constant challenges and disappointment, because there are lots of times you have an amazing idea but sometimes the technology isn’t available, you can’t do it. Then there are moments where something works and you know you’ve got an amazing discovery that could change lives. That’s worth all the knock-backs in the world.”
What advice would you give young women? “Find your passion. If you’re passionate about anything in the STEM field you’ll make it work. It’s tough, but the rewards are immense.”
What impact has the L’Oréal fellowship had? “It’s an amazing opportunity and incredibly motivating. The funding is supporting the work we do looking at obesity, asking questions like: ‘Why are people with obesity more susceptible to severe flu? How long does the susceptibility last? If you lose weight does it reverse it, or is your immune system permanently altered? How can we boost the immune response of people with obesity? And, ultimately, how can we ensure people are protected from severe flu during seasonal outbreaks or global pandemics?’ It’s also an amazing opportunity to promote women and diversity in science. This is so important, because that diversity will lead to more innovation and better, more advanced scientific discoveries.”
“Find your passion. If you’re passionate about anything in the STEM field you’ll make it work. It’s tough, but the rewards are immense”