Tag Archives: People

ASC Member profile – Claire Harris

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It’s an anecdote my mum loves telling: “When Claire was a child, she told everyone she wanted to be a bush ranger!”. We all knew I meant park ranger, inspired from lots of time spent exploring the outdoors and trips away camping with Scouts. As a young thing I always knew I wanted to do science (environmental/outdoor preferably) so choosing my high school subjects and university degree was quite easy.

After completing a B Env Sci (and some serious time off enjoying beach volleyball and beer) I got work experience with Queensland Department of Primary Industries, Fisheries and then they offered me a job. It was fabulous: time outdoors, dragging nets through cane field drains in Maroochy, mixed with a bit of lab work sorting samples, mixed with office work and writing. I wrote the stakeholder newsletters and helped write the guidelines to explain what our science meant for policymakers and landholders.

Within various State government jobs, the Cooperative Research Centre for Coastal Zone, Estuary and Waterway Management, I more naturally leaned towards project management and communicating about the research, talking with people about what it meant for them and what they wanted from the research projects. That’s when I started to do science communication study on the side, studying a PGDip at UQ (and ANU a few years later) part-time, around my fulltime work. This was also when I first came across the Australian Science Communicators. I joined the Brisbane committee, met with Jenni and others at Econnect and volunteered at Riversymposium assisting with media as part of a uni subject.

Learning about science’s role in society and how it can be valued, ignored, politicised or sidelined (cue shocking visuals of the John Gummer MP in the UK feeding a hamburger to his daughter during the early days of the mad cow disease discovery) was particularly fascinating.

Funnily enough, after travelling in Europe and the Middle East for 6 months in 2006, I happened to end up working for the UK government in the mad cow disease section as a science communicator. I rewrote technical stuff for non-technical audiences putting it on the web and in policy briefs.

Over the last 5 years I have worked in Canberra, communicating science in the natural resource management and agriculture areas picking up elements of knowledge management and social research at Land & Water Australia and CSIRO. I just finished a six-month secondment at the AG Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry working on comms strategy in the climate and carbon farming areas. It was extremely challenging but very fulfilling.

I’ve worked for many different agencies, learning new skills and exploring new perspectives all the time and I think this has really benefited my career. From what I see, the science communicators of today need to be able to explore new ways of doing things while also getting better at articulating why our roles are so important and the value we bring. I guess one of my purposes in life came from asking the question: if no-one considers, understands or can contribute to what science is then is there any point in doing the science in the first place?

Although I do sometimes get a little sad when I realise I’ve forgotten some science basics, I feel that I am helping in the best (and most fun, creative) way I can to have science contribute to better lives. And I am also passionate about raising the profile of science communicators. I feel great satisfaction when I am told that I have changed someone’s outlook forever – they will now always think about who they need to talk with and how best to do it rather than just being sure they only need a factsheet to achieve their outcomes!

 

Claire Harris

ASC ACT President, Vice President ASC National Executive

http://au.linkedin.com/in/claireharrisoz

At the moment I have a little project collecting links for communication conferences: http://delicious.com/claireharrisoz/tag_bundle/comms-conferences

Unsung Hero Award of Australian Science Communication 2012

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The Australian Science Communicators

is proud to offer the

Unsung Hero Award of Australian Science Communication

The Unsung Hero of Australian Science Communication is an initiative of the Australian Science Communicators. The ASC offers this award to honour a person or group who exemplify science communication.

Nominations are now open for the 2012 Unsung Hero Award of Australian Science Communication.

Click on the following link for full information:
Unsung Hero Award of Science Communication 2012, 29-9-12

Nominations close at 5pm on Friday 2 November 2012.

The award will be presented during the Australian Science Communicators Annual General Meeting, 27 November 2012 in Brisbane.

Jesse Shore
National president

Member Profile: Jesse Shore, ASC National President

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I’ve been fortunate to find a career which allows me to indulge my two passions in life; my fascination of science since I was 12 years old, and my attraction to acting and other involvement in live theatre from my early 30s. I became a scientist to fulfil the adolescent dream and then managed an amateur theatre company to immerse myself in my adult captivation. I had no idea that my two interests would soon merge and be fulfilled by an area of work that was yet to have a name.

People tell me that my career sounds like I took a left turn but I see it mainly as a westerly-trending journey with a step to the north. My impulse for science took me from Brooklyn, NY, to Berkeley, CA, and then far to the southwest to Canberra. The ACT was my cocoon where the science-adolescent transformed into the theatrical-hopeful. It was after the move north, to work on the Powerhouse Museum project in Sydney, when the adult science communicator truly emerged.

It occurred to me that developing museum exhibitions was much like putting on a stage production. The wide range of display media seemed like the sets, props, lights, sound, scripts, and so on of live theatre. I found I could use my science background and theatre experience to bring meaning and fun to science-related ideas.

Being exposed to the broad range of subject interests of the Powerhouse, such as science and technology, decorative arts, social history, and design, was also helpful. They gave me the idea and the means of placing science within a broad cultural context.

Although my job title was Senior curator of sciences, from the mid-1990s, around the time the ASC was formed, I started to say that I was a science communicator. The term science communication was fairly new then, and even today I get asked to explain what a science communicator is.

I’ve now clocked up 28 years of communicating science and welcome the chance to put energy into the broader area of the profession through the ASC and its activities. If I could find a way to describe what it is that we do in around 25 words or 140 characters I’d feel that I made a real breakthrough.

It is exciting to be active with the ASC at a time when its profile is rising and it’s becoming increasingly influential. At our recent national conference we stepped up to a new level of organisation and amenity. Attendance numbers increased and so did financial support. Feedback from delegates was overwhelmingly positive and we had many constructive comments about how to do things better for the next event.

I’m looking forward to the ASC taking its next steps forward as an organisation but I may be a tad overly optimistic that our profession will become a household word. Now if I can only get on stage again I’d be really happy. Did someone say, “To be, or not to be – a science communicator”?

Jesse Shore
National President

Outreach where they least expect it – Guerilla Astronomers

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Thanks to Kirsten Gottschalk from ICRAR for contributing this post:

I have a confession – I love astronomy. Something about it has fascinated me ever since I can remember. Understandably then, it’s something I am very passionate about. This is why I was quite taken aback when I heard “People aren’t interested in looking through telescopes anymore,” during a session at the recent ASC National Conference.  From a respected astronomer no less! Luckily for me and my love of astronomy, her experience couldn’t be further from my own.

 

As part of my role in the Outreach and Education team at the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) I take a lot of telescopes to a lot of places and people are always interested to look through them, at them, or just talk about them.

 

One of my favourite outreach strategies is the idea of ‘Guerilla Astronomy’ – taking a telescope somewhere people will least expect it and introducing them to astronomy with no advertising or attempt to gather an audience.

 

Myself and a band of ICRAR’s professional astronomers take a small (but still impressive looking) telescope or two out to the side of a bike path, to the middle of the CBD shopping precinct, or to another outdoor event and simply stand next to our telescopes talking to anyone that comes near. People always come near, and the result is something that never ceases to remind me why I do what I do.

 

From the woman on her evening jog who got straight back in the car after seeing the Moon to go get her kids; to the children who wont let anyone else have a turn because they are so mesmerised by the Orion Nebula; through to a member of the public helping his elderly mother take her first close up look at Jupiter and its moons, and her gasp when the image became clear to her through the eyepiece. Talking with the astronomers who join me on these evenings, we have so many more positive engagement stories like these. To me, this kind of work is the most important and most interesting part of science communication – engaging with the unengaged and giving them a positive experience of science to take away.

 

There’s probably a large combination of things that make these events so successful – the unexpected experience, and therefore no expectations of what will happen, us being conveniently located where people are already, and in the evening when there’s sometimes a bit more time to spare. But I like to think that the telescopes themselves play a big part in it – they’re an ingeniously simple piece of machinery (just a couple of mirrors and a lens when you get down to it) that pack a big punch and make the previously invisible, visible.  Nothing beats seeing the red spot on Jupiter in person ‘for real’ and knowing that the light has travelled from the depths of the Sun where it was created in a nuclear reaction, all the way out to Jupiter (741 million kilometres) and then bounced off right back into this telescope and then your eye. Or maybe that’s just me?

 

I’ll admit, sometimes it is frustrating the first question is ‘How much is it worth?’ but there are always more questions, and I like to think that they’re only asking because they think it’s so cool they want one too!

 

Nevertheless, the benefits to me, to ICRAR, and our astronomers stemming from Guerilla Astronomy are numerous. It never ceases to inspire a researcher to be told their life’s work is utterly fascinating by either a 5 or 75 year old, and they get told often and emphatically at these impromptu events. We’ve also had so many people follow up for more information, attending our other larger events, or even organising us to visit their school or club for a talk stemming from one simple interaction by the Swan River on a Wednesday night.

 

Our last Guerilla Astronomy event had over 150 people look through our telescopes over the course of two hours, without us even having to put a sign out!

 

Kirsten Gottschalk
Outreach and Education Officer
ICRAR: Discovering the hidden Universe through radio astronomy

 

ASC assistant treasurer appointed

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The National Council has appointed Pete Wheeler for the ASC assistant treasurer position.

Pete is the treasurer of the ASC WA branch, has been treasurer for another society and manages the sizable budget for outreach and education activities in his job for an astronomical centre.

David Ellyard, our national treasurer, and Pete will soon start working together to bring Pete up to speed with the national accounts and to divide up the financial tasks. Pete will become a non-voting member of the Executive and National Council.

Pete joins Sarah Lau, our national secretary, as WA members on ASC national committees.

Jesse Shore
National president

Member Profile: Past President and Life Member, Robyn Williams

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Robyn Williams is a past president and life member of the ASC. He is a science journalist and presenter of Radio National’s Science Show (since 1975), Ockham’s Razor and In Conversation.

Robyn is as prominent on radio as he is on television, having narrated programs such as Nature of Australia, and Catalyst, and appeared on World Safari with David Attenborough.

He has conducted countless interviews with scientists for ABC TV and he hosted a link between leading scientists of Australia and the United Kingdom at the Grand Launch for the Royal Institution of Great Britain, attended by David Attenborough and the Queen.

Robyn Williams is highly respected in the academic world. In 1993 he was the first journalist elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 1988, he received an Honorary Doctorate in Science from the Universities of Sydney, Macquarie and Deakin. The ANU awarded him a Doctorate of Law, and he is a Visiting Professor at the University of NSW and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland.

He was appointed AM in the 1988 Australian Bicentenary Honours list. He was elected a National Living Treasure by the National Trust in 1987 and even has a star named after him by the Sydney Observatory. Robyn has served in various positions including President of the Australian Museum Trust, Deputy Chairman of the Commission For The Future, and President of The ANZAAS Congress. He is an Ambassador of the Queensland Museum Foundation.

Robyn Williams has written over 10 books, three of which are on the Higher School Certificate reading list. In 1994, Robyn Williams took up a Reuters Fellowship at Oxford University where he wrote his autobiography And Now For Something Completely Different, in deference to one of his most popular interviews with John Cleese on psychiatry. His book, Future Perfect, focuses on cities, transport, communication, education and science.

Although Robyn Williams graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in England, he admits to having spent as much time acting as he has studying. Early in his career he made guest appearances in The Goodies, Monty Python’s Flying Circus and Dr Who and stood in for Tom Jones for four months in his TV series.

Next week Robyn celebrates 40 years since joining the ABC Science Unit.

See Robyn address the ASC National Conference on Monday 27 February.

The sky’s the limit for users of theSkyNet

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Thanks to Pete Wheeler, UWA for sending in this article:
Thanks to a new initiative called theSkyNet, you don’t need a supercomputer to help collect data for the next generation of radio telescopes.

This ambitious citizen science project uses a global network of privately owned computers to process astronomical data arriving from galaxies, stars and other distant objects located across the universe.

WA’s Science and Innovation Minister, John Day, launched theSkyNet in September 2011.

The project soon attracted almost 20,000 hits to theSkyNet.org website, and nearly 3,000 members in the first day. A few weeks later, the website surpassed 100,000 hits and 5,000 members.

Members sign up and donate their spare computing power to theSkyNet, an activity which is not only rewarding, it’s also fun. Members receive “credits” for processing data and donating time on their computer, which earns them trophies they can share with their networks through Facebook. Users participate in the project as individuals but can also form or join alliances to help process data as a group.

There are also some very real-world rewards on offer, with the most attractive being the opportunity to visit the Murchison Radio-astronomy Observatory in the Mid-West of Western Australia. This remote and radio-quiet site is home to several next generation radio telescopes and is earmarked as the potential site for the proposed Square Kilometre Array.

With support from the WA State Government, theSkyNet is an initiative of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), a joint venture of Curtin University and The University of Western Australia.

According to ICRAR’s Outreach and Education Manager, Pete Wheeler, the project aims to involve people in the discovery process while also raising awareness of radio astronomy and providing a real resource that astronomers can use to advance our understanding of the universe.

“This is a very exciting project for us as it’s a unique opportunity to bring our research and public outreach activities together and get the public involved in science,” he said.

“We were hopeful that the name of the project would generate interest, but the level of interest and uptake we experienced so soon after launch was beyond our wildest expectations.”

So far, theSkyNet has been using data collected by the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales to refine the system and demonstrate that the results produced by theSkyNet are scientifically useful and accurate.

Next, theSkyNet will use a reprocessed version of this data to create a new catalogue of radio galaxies before moving on to larger data sets in preparation for the enormous volumes of information that will flow once telescopes such as the CSIRO’s Australian SKA Pathfinder come online in the next couple of years.

ICRAR Director, Professor Peter Quinn, said: “Radio astronomy is a data intensive activity and as we design, develop and switch on the next generation of radio telescopes, the supercomputing resources processing this deluge of data will be in increasingly high demand.”

At any one time, around 4,000 machines around the world are online and contributing to theSkyNet. On average, the network is performing one million processing tasks per day, placing theSkyNet on par with a supercomputer with between 15 and 20 TFlops of computing power. The cost to build a single supercomputer with this sort of capacity is currently around $1.5 million.

Rather than the cost and years of planning needed to build and run such a machine, theSkyNet runs with only minimal cost and has appeared virtually overnight. Using the power of the Internet to connect people to the excitement of scientific discovery makes cost effective, efficient and environmentally sensible use of readily available computing resources that might otherwise be wasted.

This type of community computing is especially useful when the time taken to process the data is not an issue. Rather than using valuable supercomputing time in facilities such as the iVEC Pawsey Centre in Perth, data that can be processed in “slow time” can be off-loaded to a distributed network like theSkyNet.

“The key to theSkyNet is having lots of computers connected, with each contributing only a little, but the sum of those computers can achieve a lot,” Professor Quinn said.

For further information and to sign up, visit theSkyNet website at www.theSkyNet.org

Past President and Life Member Profile: Alison Leigh

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From Alison Leigh:

I didn’t grow up dreaming that one day I would be …. the Editorial Director of the World Congress of Science Producers. No such thing existed. Now it does and like the best things in life – it evolved.

I emigrated to Sydney from the UK in 1988 – bicentennial year; fully expecting my on-screen career as a BBC TV and radio reporter /presenter to continue to flourish here. Wrong. I was “too old” and “too English”. Yikes! What to do? Try my hand at producing? My current affairs credentials landed me the job of Producer, Media Watch, with the task of getting series one to air. Next thing I know after that baptism of fire, I’m being courted by the Executive Producer of “Quantum”- to be the Series Producer – i.e. day to day manager of that show. Saying yes to that job changed my life – and my focus.

For several years I was Series Producer and then Executive Producer of the ABC TV Science Unit. This gave me the privilege of being closely involved in the development, production and commissioning of dozens of science TV programs in addition to Quantum:  Hot Chips, What’s your poison?, The Future Eaters to name a few. I was also closely involved in the development of major initiatives that have enhanced the celebration and understanding of science in Australia such as National Science Week and of course, our very own ASC – I was a founding member. We were a small group then and now look how far we’ve come.

As Executive Producer of the ABC TV Science Unit, I used to represent the ABC at a small somewhat chaotic annual get together of science producers and broadcasters hosted each year by one or other public broadcaster somewhere in the world.

My great good fortune is that just as I left the ABC in 1998 to go freelance, the science broadcasters decided that their annual get together, or congress as it was now called,  should become a professional conference. In 1999, they asked me to be the programmer of the event, the role I’ve held ever since.

The World Congress has grown into a unique forum of presentations and discussions, where television producers and executives from all over the world come back year after year to catch up with world trends in science and factual programming, to talk passionately about program-making, and to be inspired. The convivial and informal atmosphere creates lasting friendships which lead to binding business relationships and co-production partnerships, and the all important deals to be made down the track.

It’s not a full time job:  in addition to my Congress commitments, I freelance as a science and health writer when the project interests me enough. Everything from scripts for TV series and documentaries to health articles for magazines  and most recently I co-authored the book “Eight steps to happiness” to accompany the ABC TV series “Making Australia Happy”.

But it is my dream job. Fancy being paid to watch science films and science television, to keep abreast of innovative and exciting trends in the industry, to keep in touch with some of the smartest most creative people on the planet and even to travel to exotic places to meet them all face to face. Can’t be bad. Yet if it hadn’t been for some racist and ageist attitudes way back when, it might never have happened!

ASC corporate members – meeting with Scitech

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Interest is growing for organisations to become corporate members of the ASC. While I was in Perth for the 2011 ASC AGM I took the opportunity to meet with the management of one of our most recent new corporate members, Scitech.

Scitech is Perth’s and WA’s state-wide active and progressive science centre. Alan Brien, the director of Scitech, led the discussion which ranged over the recent history of Scitech and its key activities in science communication.

Some of the main points included that Scitech is the lead state institution for overseeing Inspiring Australia activities in WA. Alan’s team gave an update on developments of ScienceNetworkWA, http://sciencewa.net.au/, its online connection to science activity in the state.

We explored a few ways that Scitech and the ASC could work more closely together, starting off with the National Conference. I look forward to seeing some of the ideas being realised soon.

Jesse Shore
National President

Life Member Profile: Barbara Hardy AO

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Barbara Hardy has been working in the environment field in a voluntary capacity since the early 1970s.   During this time she spent five years at the Flinders University of South Australia studying the Earth Sciences (1974-79), following a Science Degree at The University of Adelaide in 1947 (majoring in Chemistry).

She has been a Commissioner of the Australian Heritage Commission, President of the National Parks Foundation of South Australia (now the Nature Foundation SA), Founding President of the Investigator Science and Technology Centre, and Chairman of the South Australian Landcare Committee amongst a number of other roles.

Barbara Hardy was appointed an Officer of the General Division of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1987, an Honorary Doctorate of the Flinders University in 1993, as well as an Advance Australia Award 1991, SA Great Award 1992, Institution of Engineers Medal 1992, ABC Eureka Award for the Advancement of Science 1994, and was named South Australian Citizen of the Year in 1996.  She is now a Companion of the Institution of Engineers Australia, and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy where she is a member of the Hydrogen Division.

In October 2001 she was appointed as the Member from Australia in the Asia-Pacific Forum for Environment and Development (APFED), a major international project initiated and funded by the Japanese Ministry for Environment.   APFED “aims to propose a model of equitable and sustainable development for Asia and the Pacific Region”.  Barbara has now stood down as the APFED Member from Australia, as of July 2006, and her place was taken by Greg Bourne, CEO of WWF Australia.

In August 2009 the University of Adelaide presented Barbara with a Distinguished Alumni Award “in recognition of her lifelong commitment, and significant contribution to the advancement of Science Education, Science Awareness, and Environmental Conservation”.

In November 2009. The University of South Australia established the Barbara Hardy Centre for Sustainable Urban Environments.   This organization later became an Institute.

In April 2010 the University of Adelaide admitted Barbara to the Degree of Doctor of the University (honoris causa).

Barbara Hardy’s principal interests are in ecologically sustainable development, biodiversity conservation, environmental valuation, renewable energy production and use, and in business and industrial matters especially as they affect the environment within which we all live.