People might think that business development
is sitting in front of a boardroom pointing to charts and figures.
But actually what I do is identify awesome research that can transform our everyday lives.
My name is Dr Geremy Farr-Wharton and I'm a Social Scientist with QUT's
Office of Industry Engagement. What I get to do is work with businesses
to help them engage with the latest in health and data science research.
I have the coolest job because I get to take cutting edge research to those that
shape the world, and the innovations we use.
What we do at universities is sit at the very frontiers of science,
pushing the boundaries of what can be.
Businesses are usually established with technologies and pushing them as
far as they can go, and sometimes they want to go that extra step further. So
they engage with universities because we're at that frontier,
so that we are able to solve some of the challenges in the most exploratory ways.
Believe it or not, the most important part of my day is taking the time to actively
listen and reflect on the nuances, the intricate details and the problems we are trying to solve.
By looking at the nuances, it helps us to make connections between
individuals, business and the fabric of society.
A typical day for me begins with spending time with people that work at some of the
most incredible businesses in the world. These businesses have taken their technologies to
their limits. Think about our phones, the devices that keep us alive in hospitals,
or even the cars we drive - or that drive us.
One of the most cutting edge fields I've had the opportunity to explore
has been the makeup of the gut microbiome.
A microbiome is a group of microorganisms in a particular environment, including our
bodies. We know that trillions of microorganisms call our guts home. The research suggests that
autoimmune diseases actually start as a result of what's going on in our guts.
It turns out that everything we eat has an
impact on our gut. Some foods feed the good bacteria that we want to grow in numbers,
as these help maintain our health. But there are plenty of foods that feed the bad bacteria,
like processed sugars, white bread and many others. And make no mistake, for 24 hours a day
your gut is a war zone for these microbes as your body tries to keep its balance.
The technologies we use to analyse the gut microbiome, which we call a spectrum analysis,
takes too long to analyse. We need real-time technologies to determine the makeup of our gut
and this continues to be a problem even today.
So we need teams of people from different STEM fields all working together to help
unlock important insights that lead to innovations for healthier lives.
An important part of my job is to ask the right questions
to understand how technology can address wicked problems.
So what are wicked problems anyway and why are they important? Wicked problems
are those that don't have one clear solution, like climate change or e-waste or homelessness.
These problems are wicked because they contain many complexities.
These are all the different factors that make up a problem.
It's my job as a social scientist to see the problem in the context of the bigger picture,
as part of different systems, and ask when did the problem begin? Who does it impact? How and why?
This technique of understanding the world is sometimes referred to as systems thinking, and
I use this technique in my everyday work exploring the potential benefits of emerging technologies.
Developing a career as a social scientist
is something that happens over time and there are many different pathways to getting there.
After working in the IT industry for a while,
I started asking those fundamental questions of why and how.
I became interested and passionate about research
because I could see how innovations could change things for the better.
To do this kind of work you need to spend some time
thinking about your passions and the most important problems of your time.
Problem solving is a practice and it takes time to get good at it. If you see a problem in the
world you want to solve, learn more about that problem's history. Ask questions - who
does it impact? What systems does it intersect with? And who else is interested in solving it?
There are no limits to what you can achieve and it starts with solving one small problem.
Social science provides lots of exciting opportunities
to work overseas and here in Australia. During my time at the CSIRO,
I was part of many different research projects, from designing our smart cities,
to developing health apps and medical devices that support health and well-being.
These experiences showed me how science and business
can work together to launch products designed to enrich our lives and make them more productive.
We hear a lot of things about the exponential increase of innovations such as artificial
intelligence, quantum computing, interplanetary travel, but we don't really know what our reality
will look like when these technologies mature. So the ultimate question for me is how social
science and research can help us navigate these uncertain futures.
It's an exciting mystery to be part of, because together
we shape the future of our realities and what could be.