To be a leader in science, you've got to be passionate, energetic,
fundamentally believe in it whole-heartedly and never look back.
There are many aspects of science where women can be bringing their own take on it.
I think it's important for women to be present in science.
It's important for women to consider careers in science and really pursue those options
and the extension of that is that it's important to have female leaders.
Remember when we were kids and we tried all sorts of ideas at home, very often to the horror of our parents.
This is exactly what I'm doing now, and I get paid for it!
I've always had a love of mathematics and problem solving and analysing data.
I like the science that I do because it has a practical application. We can understand the climate system
and how that will help us plan for the future.
Currently we're involved in one of the largest studies worldwide to look at the effect of
foecal transplantation on ulcerative colitis. I feel very lucky to work with young researchers
who have come to my lab to take part in the research and often to drive the research.
I'm a chemist working with very smart materials called polymers.
They're like shape shifters that change as the conditions change around them.
I'm using these intelligent polymers to target cancer.
I really love what I do, I love working with my PHD students.
Over the three years of their PHD, I can see them growing into independent scientists
and at the end, they have their own ideas which is brilliant.
I'm trying to find the edges in the climate system.
So as an example, if you take a glass of water, you put it on your table and you push it a little bit,
the glass will follow and actually move a little bit.
You push it again with the same force, and the glass will just fall down.
Right now, all our models are a little bit too sluggish to respond to
abrupt change when we compare them to past records and there's still lots of work to be done.
I love the questions that you can answer as a scientist
so it really intrigues me looking at the subject group that I'm interested in
which is people with brain injuries and trying to work out what exactly is it that's going wrong for you?
What exactly is happening? What's happened in your brain?
If we understand these disorders, then it gives the opportunity to find new ways to treat them.
I'm passionate about science in my particular area in clinical psychology
because I think it's critical that individuals with mental health difficulties
are offered treatments that really have a strong scientific basis.
I'm a physical oceanographer which means I study the physics of the ocean.
My particular focus is looking at the East Australian current
which flows down the east coast of Australia and we're interested in the current and how
it impacts on the continental shelf. What the implication is for biodiversity and how
that has an impact on our fisheries and our transport of marine species.
The thing that excites me about science is the curiosity value.
We estimate around about 20% of fatalities on the road
are caused by driver fatigue and we've found in the research that we've been doing
is that people are very aware that they are getting sleepy and that those are pre-cursers to crashes
and by reducing fatigue, we can cut down the amount of carnage, death and long term injury on the road.
The research that I do is based on understanding why people who wear contact lenses
get problems with their lenses. So I'm about trying to make contact lenswear safer.
And the reason I'm passionate is I come from the U.K. and I'm a hospital optometrist in the U.K.
That work led to trying to understand risk factors
to try and understand things we could modify and things we could do to improve the safety of lens wear.
Science is the future.
You've really got to keep pushing science to have that smart country
and everyone can make a contribution to that.
Your mobile phone is science. Everything is science.
I believe in the power of connections. Connections between people, things and place.
People are part of the environmental problems but I believe that they are also part of the solution.
The focus of my research is on special interactions between individuals and communities and their natural environment.
Once we understand the trends and impacts
we can analyse what responses or strategies can be put in place to reverse all that recent environmental issue.
So I've always been fascinated in how things work
and I guess the thing that I always thought is, if you can manipulate atoms,
the smallest part of nature, you can put them together in a different way,
like lego blocks, in a different way that anybody else has done.
And if you can do that, could you create something that doesn't exist already and what could it do?
So what we try and do is to build those devices at that level now
to see if we can encode information on them and then try and build a new type of computer
that works entirely on quantum principles called a quantum computer.
So it's an exponential speed-up in computational power and it will effect pretty much every industry
from logistics, the health industry, defence, finance, every industry.
The harbour is my laboratory although I've worked from the Great Barrier Reef
all the way down to Antarctica
and all of the work that I do is underneath the water so it's all sub-tidal research.
It's so important to have females being recognised for their achievements in marine science
and being put up there as role models for the next generation of scientists.
If a young girl came to me and said, I'm thinking about a career in science, I would say
"Go for it. It's so rewarding, it's so much fun, you will never, ever get bored."
I think women are very interested in social matters and so I think I bring a different perspective.
There's so many exciting and interesting things that women can get engaged in.
It's a fascinating career.
Leadership isn't encouraged from an early age
and I think women don't put themselves forward for leadership.
And so at some point, you have to realise that you can lead I think
and I think that's probably one of the biggest challenges.
The perfect world picture for women in science
I think would be to have the sense that science is a discipline that everyone can follow
and the way to do that is to have mentors, senior women in science setting the examples
and acting as real role models.
To not give the impression that a choice for a career in science
needs to be driven by or governed by gender.