Profiles: Georgina Sweet Fellows
Georgina Sweet Australian Laureate Fellowships are awarded to outstanding Australian Laureate Fellows from the science and technology disciplines.
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Professor Hongxia Wang (2024)
Research
Professor Wang aims to make solar cells highly efficient at energy conversion and more durable, maximising their cost-effectiveness and useful life. This project will use molecular engineering and doping techniques to maintain durability and good photoactivity in the perovskite (a metal compound), and to replace gold electrodes with superior low-cost carbon alternatives that have well-tuned and highly efficient electronic and surface properties. The outcomes of Professor Wang’s research will lift Australia’s research standing in this field and build manufacturing capability in a significant industry of the future. This project will also position Australia to capitalise on its well-known natural advantage in exploiting solar energy, and to create more skilled jobs and valuable export opportunities. Professor Wang’s development of these innovative and reliable technologies aligns with the two priority areas in Australian Government National Reconstruction Fund announced in 2022: “Renewables and Low Emission Technologies” and “Enabling Capabilities”.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Through the Georgina Sweet Fellowship, Professor Wang will support Higher Degree by Research students (HDR), early-career researchers (ECRs) and mid-career researchers (MCRs) in their career development in multidisciplinary areas spanning chemistry, materials science, and physics. With particular focus on women and others who are systematically disadvantaged, Professor Wang will achieve this through a series of activities in each year of the Laureate program.
Professor Catherine Stampfl (2023)
Research
Professor Stampfl’s project will focus on new catalysts and advanced new materials that speed up carbon dioxide transformation and efficient ammonia production to manufacture sustainable fuels and chemicals and enable new technologies such as for renewable energy. This research will develop a computational platform that uses powerful supercomputers, accurate simulations of atoms and artificial intelligence to overcome challenges in rapidly identifying and testing new materials. The breakthrough theoretical and computational methods expected to be delivered will advance Australia’s renewable energy and emerging quantum technology industries and inform the development of sustainable manufacturing.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Stampfl will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to endorse two key activities.
The first activity is to support a minority group in engaging more strongly in STEM; namely, to provide stimulus and encouragement to female students from rural and remote parts of Australia to study the Sciences at University. Professor Stampfl will establish 20 Georgina Sweet Rural and Remote Science Awards of $3,875 (4 per year, for five years) made to outstanding year 12 female students from rural and remote parts of Australia to study Science at an Australian university.
The second activity is to support early career researchers. The challenge in productivity for young parents striving for an academic career does not stop after returning from parental leave. Professor Stampfl will create 10 research awards of $2,000 (two per year, for five years) to support early career parents in their research, to be used flexibly in support of their research trajectories.
Image credit: The University of New South Wales
Professor Joanne Etheridge (2022)
Research
Professor Joanne Etheridge’s Laureate project aims to develop new ways to measure the structure of matter at the level of atoms by reimagining the fundamental concepts behind an electron microscope. Understanding the type and arrangement of atoms in matter can be critical for understanding its properties. However, there remain many systems of matter, both natural and engineered, that cannot be examined with existing techniques. This project aims to develop an electron microscope capability that can achieve an entirely new level of sensitivity and thereby detect features that currently cannot be seen. This will provide scientists with a new capability for investigating the natural world and for engineering new functional materials for use in areas as diverse as energy storage and production, computing, communications, lighting and drug delivery.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Etheridge will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to establish programs to support early and mid-career researchers within the electron microscopy and imaging physics communities. This includes bespoke accelerator fellowships to provide short term assistance to allow a researcher to ‘catch up’ after a period of career disruption arising from, for example, maternity leave, covid-related disadvantage, carers leave or ill health. Grants will be tailored to the needs of the applicant for maximum benefit, for example, for teaching relief, lab assistance, child care, travel assistance, instrument access etc.
Professor Etheridge will also work through entities such as the Australian Academy of Science and the International Science Council’s Standing Committee for Gender Equality in Science to develop and advocate for employment structures and funding mechanisms that facilitate diverse career pathways in scientific research.
Image credit: Professor Joanne Etheridge
Professor Yun Liu (2021)
Research
New materials drive creativity and are the catalyst for innovation. Crystal chemistry – now 100 years old – cannot satisfy industry demand for precise analysis and prediction of new materials. This limits creativity and wastes research and development resources. Professor Yun Liu’s Laureate project aims to overcome this challenge and develop a powerful new tool that will allow us to design the next generation of functional materials. The high-performance materials developed through this program will directly benefit Australian industry in areas such as energy storage and conversion. This will deliver opportunities for advanced manufacturing, and commercialisation via networks of new and established partners. The project will improve Australia’s innovation capital and enhance our position as world leaders in emerging science and technology. It will produce smart careers in areas such as material informatics and quantum computing. Australian researchers will gain state of the art training in materials science, innovative technology, and leadership.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Yun Liu will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to provide career development support to attract and retain talented female earlier career researchers (ECRs) in materials chemistry (MC), facilitate disciplinary collaboration and promote women in STEM. She will visit rural or remote schools with a mind to create a girls-in-materials workshop to attract girls and young women to STEM. She will also visit institutes/universities to create a dialogue on the issues facing women in MC research.
Professor Liu will create a senior, multidisciplinary, women’s advisory committee to provide mentorship to female ECRs. Three female ECRs each year will be selected as award recipients (including one outstanding ECR from overseas) and their travel in Australia will be supported for attending major international conferences, delivering seminars, and establishing collaboration. These recipients would become mentors themselves and form part of this new research network. Apart from the direct benefits, the recipients themselves would be role models to female material chemists enabling ongoing generational effects.
Image courtesy: Professor Yun Liu
Professor Catherine Lovelock (2020)
Research
Professor Lovelock’s Laureate project aims to enhance coastal sustainability to the benefit of coastal communities. Her research will support restoration of coastal wetlands to increase storage of blue carbon thereby helping to mitigate climate change. Restoration of degraded coastal wetlands in Australia, and globally, will support local communities and their economies by improving water quality, sustaining fish populations and providing defence against sea level rise and wave energy, and have the important benefit of storing carbon. By enhancing knowledge of the benefits of restoring coastal wetlands for carbon sequestration, including financial opportunities for carbon farming and the role of blue carbon in meeting our national greenhouse gas emission targets, the project will help inform and improve coastal wetland management globally.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Catherine Lovelock will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to engage with rural and remote coastal communities about the importance of coastal wetlands and the role and importance of environmental science to support restoration. This project particularly hopes to inspire girls and women of rural Australia where they face significant challenges in accessing and succeeding in STEM educations. Catherine’s project will build on the model of The Flying Scientists Initiative of the Queensland Office of the Chief Scientist. With her team of early career researchers, Catherine will visit rural and remote areas to talk with community groups and within schools about their science, addressing the shortage of science-related events convened outside of the highly urbanised regions in Australia.
Image credit: The University of Queensland
Professor Belinda Medlyn (2019)
Research
Professor Medlyn’s Laureate project aims to develop a predictive, process-based model for Australian vegetation dynamics in response to environmental change. Rising CO2 concentrations, warming temperatures and increasing extreme events are already disrupting Australian ecosystems. Our knowledge and understanding of these impacts is accumulating, but fragmented. This project will bring these data into an integrated quantitative model that can identify the critical limiting factors for different vegetation types, and predict their dynamics and resilience. This will inform policy and land management across Australia, with significant ongoing benefits for land management, fire management, agriculture and conservation.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Medlyn will address two areas with the Georgina Sweet Fellowship. Firstly, as a long-term part-time academic herself, she aims to support alternative career pathways. She plans to convene a national working group of academics and administrators to rethink the “pipeline” career model, and develop resources supporting non-linear career pathways.
Secondly, she aims to encourage women to develop stronger quantitative skills, which are so important in all fields of science, including ecology. Initiatives will include high school outreach, workshops for early career researchers, and Masters by Research scholarships to support women to train in vegetation modelling.
Image courtesy: Professor Belinda Medlyn
Professor Christine Beveridge (2018)
Research
Professor Beveridge’s Laureate project aims to discover the genes and processes that control plant shoot architecture, which is a major driver of yield in field, horticulture and forestry crops. Shoot branching is the result of the complex interplay of genes, environment and crop management. By investigating cellular process governing growth and development, as well as physiology and molecular genetics, this project will enhance Australian capacity and multidisciplinary innovation. An improved understanding of shoot branching and how it may be manipulated will improve our knowledge of plant sciences that could contribute to agricultural expansion and food security in Australia and internationally.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Beveridge will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to expand on her current mentoring and coaching activities to create online personal development resources. Using short presentations delivered by scientists and leadership professionals, with a strong representation of women, the videos will cover a variety of topics pertinent to the personal development of early career researchers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. This ready resource will enhance the career development and learning of Australia’s early to mid-career researchers.
Image courtesy: The University of Queensland.
Professor Michelle Coote (2017)
Research
Professor Michelle Coote’s Laureate project plans to study how to control chemical reactions via pH-switchable electrostatic catalysis. The catalysis developed in this project aims to accelerate and control the chemical reactions used in the synthesis of pharmaceuticals and materials, providing significant practical benefits to the industry. This project also offers an opportunity to train the next generation of chemists in the principals of computer-aided chemical design.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Michelle Coote chairs the Royal Australian Chemical Institute Equity Committee that, among other things, recently introduced two awards for women in chemistry to promote female researchers and provide role models for the next generation. As a Georgina Sweet Fellow, she plans to continue this work and help to develop mentoring networks for women in chemistry, dedicated to the championing of female chemist early career researchers. Professor Coote will work with and support the Australian Academy of Science’s new #WomenInSTEMonline initiative aimed at making it easier for female scientists to be identified for speaking and leadership roles, by providing bursaries to early- and mid-career researchers and professionals to attend the accompanying National Women in STEM Symposia. She will also continue the work of previous Georgina Sweet Fellows by running the MAGIC workshops for women in STEM to provide practical skills in career development.
Image courtesy: The ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science.
Professor Branka Vucetic (2016)
Research
Professor Branka Vucetic’s Laureate project aims to develop theories and practical methods to design wireless communication systems for future generations of internet services. Emerging smart environments and infrastructure could solve major problems facing the world today, by saving energy, reducing pollution, improving health and increasing road safety.
Scientists to date however do not know how to build wireless networks with almost zero latency and ultrahigh reliability, which are needed for machine-to-machine communications. An expected outcome of this project is new criteria and methodologies to design such wireless systems, which would affect future wireless systems and grids.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Vucetic will use the Georgina Sweet Fellowship to create a program of activities that will support the promotion of STEM education in Australia at high schools and universities. In the first initiative she will develop a program to engage with communities of high school students and teachers to promote STEM education in high schools.
In the second initiative Professor Vucetic plans to organise an annual event at the University of Sydney that will emphasise female undergraduate students, with the aim of introducing them to postgraduate STEM research. The event will consist of a workshop and visits to Sydney Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies (FEIT) research laboratories.
Image courtesy: The University of Sydney.
Professor Leann Tilley (2015)
Research
Professor Leann Tilley’s Laureate project aims to develop a cross-disciplinary program to measure, model and manipulate a complex cellular system—sexual differentiation of the human malaria parasite. Combining life and physical sciences with powerful imaging techniques, the project seeks to develop quantitative biochemical, biophysical and modelling techniques to probe a complex system in a way previously not possible.
Professor Tilley expects her research to integrate and correlate thousands of measurements of the dynamic processes inside cells. She will use these datasets to generate rigorous and sophisticated mathematical models that can predict drivers of commitment for transformation of the parasite to a sexual phase in preparation for transmission to mosquitoes. This holistic approach hopes to deliver new biotechnology and biomedical outcomes, including new ways to combat disease in livestock and humans.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Tilley has established a web site to help support and promote women in science. This web site promotes events of interest to women in science, advertises awards that recognise women in science, and provides information on career development. It also includes links to awards for women in science, and a list of high profile female researchers from across Australia to support gender-balanced conferences.
Professor Tilley has also established The Georgina Sweet Travel Support for a Female Speaker in Quantitative Biomedical Science – valued at up to $3,000 per award. In 2016, seven awards were made to support travel for high profile speakers to attend quantitative biomedical science conferences in the period 2016 – 2017.
In 2016 Professor Tilley also established The Georgina Sweet Awards for Women in Quantitative Biomedical Science – valued at $25,000 per award. These awards were widely publicised through scientific societies, universities and other institutions. In 2016, three awards were made to outstanding female researchers. The winners were recognised at a presentation event attended by over 80 people held on 27 October 2016.
Image courtesy: The University of Melbourne.
Professor Veena Sahajwalla (2014)
Research
Professor Veena Sahajwalla’s Laureate project aims to transform toxic electronic waste (e-waste) into value-added metals and alloys, isolating hazardous constituents and preventing the generation of harmful emissions during processing.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Sahajwalla established the Science 50:50 program. The program aims to inspire Australian girls and young women to pursue degrees and careers in science and technology, so they can succeed in an innovation-driven future. Science 50:50 asks the simple question: since half the population is female, why not half the scientists and technologists? Science 50:50 engages girls with science and technology via school visits, Science 50:50’s audio-visual resources, the media and online resources and recruiting the help of universities, research organisations and industries. It also includes industry immersion, mentoring and networking opportunities to enable girls to get experience and a foot into scientific and technology based careers, as well as running a Science 50:50 New Innovators Competition offering university scholarships to the girls who submit the most original and innovative ideas for solving real world problems.
“Inspire others with your story” is the message of 50:50 to everyone.
Image credit: Photo is by Peter Morris.
Professor Kate Smith-Miles (2014)
Research
Professor Kate Smith-Miles Laureate project aims to develop a new paradigm in algorithm testing, creating novel test instances and tools to elicit insights into algorithm strengths and weaknesses. Such advances are urgently needed to support good research practice in academia, and to avoid disasters when deploying algorithms in practice.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Smith-Miles’ Sweet Success Grants for Women will offer $5,000 per recipient, with an expectation of matching funding from their university, providing a total grant of $10,000 to pay for research assistance, travel support, grant writing assistance, coaching, or whatever the applicant wishes to propose in their application to best support their research.
The grants will be open to women in the fields of science, engineering or technology who have had career interruptions in the previous ten years. Each year, 3 women will be supported (notionally one from each eligible discipline), enabling a total of 15 women to be supported over the course of the Georgina Sweet Laureate fellowship.
Professor Tanya Monro (2013)
Research
Professor Tanya Monro’s Laureate project aims to develop a suite of light-based sensing technologies capable of quantifying the dynamic environment of living cells. This will extend our capacity to harness light-matter interactions at the nanoscale, providing new insights in fields ranging from plant biology to medicine.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Monro pursued two areas. The first has been to establish a network of women in the physical sciences focused on developing relationships to provide mentoring support to early and mid-career researchers. Activities include workshops, social media activities and networking events.
The second centred on building the visibility and engagement of female scientists with school-aged cohorts and in public via TedX and other public and online lectures. One core aim of these activities is to create a greater diversity of female role models for girls considering studying science. Professor Monro will use the link between science and art to communicate how creativity is core to progress in science.
Image courtesy: University of South Australia.
Professor Nalini Joshi (2012)
Research
Professor Nalini Joshi’s Laureate project, Geometric Construction of Critical Solutions of Nonlinear Systems, aimed to create new mathematical methods to describe critical solutions of nonlinear systems, which are ubiquitous in modern science.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Joshi has organised and funded regular events at annual conferences of the Australian Mathematical Society, and Australia and New Zealand Industrial and Applied Mathematics, to feature female plenary speakers.
She initiated and led Science in Australia Gender Equity (SAGE), which is an initiative of the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering. SAGE aims to implement a pilot of the UK’s Athena SWAN scheme (to encourage and retain women in STEMM) in Australia. The SAGE pilot was launched in 2015 and has been hugely successful in attracting organisations that employ women in STEMM. The number of participating organisations is much higher than anticipated, including almost all Australian universities and many medical research institutes and research organisations, such as the Commonwealth Science and Industrial Research Organisation, Defence Science and Technology Group, and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation.
Image courtesy: The University of Sydney.
Professor Mahananda Dasgupta (2011)
Research
Professor Mahananda Dasgupta’s Laureate project has involved innovative concepts and new Australian capabilities that have been combined to understand quantum interactions of exotic nuclei. Her research has aimed to underpin applications of next generation international rare isotope accelerators to advance many areas of physics, medical science and future energy technologies.
Ambassadorial and mentoring role
Professor Dasgupta has undertaken a number of activities in support of increasing the profile of women in science. The outreach activities have spanned high school students through to supporting workshops involving teachers, early career researchers and senior women. Involving perspectives from sociologist, specialising in women in science, was particularly useful at the workshops. Support of the SAGE initiative is a concrete step in improving organisational culture. Further activities will be in facilitating leadership pathways for younger researchers through workshops on practical aspects of career strategies. The intention is also to provide access to a circle of powerful mentors through interactions with high-achieving established physics researchers.