It was nerve-wracking. The night before I was worried. I was like,
"Oh no, what if people don't turn up?" But they all started strolling in at 9 in the morning and I was
sitting there with their badges and their names on a piece of paper ready to give it to them.
It was the first time that this conference had been run and it had come from my brain and so I
was definitely nervous going into it. I wanted to do a really great job and I did want these females
and non-binary identifying students to feel like they had gotten something out of this conference.
So when I read the feedback and just the amazing words they had said, it really made me feel like
I had done something good and it makes me want to continue it, makes me want to do this every year of my life.
Wait a second you're going to graduate though.
I have... Yeah, I'll have to pass it on one day.
So currently I'm undertaking my honours year in Climate science and I'm specifically looking at
dust storms that have happened over Australia and using remote sensing seeing if we can look
at the extent and the dust load of those dust storms. And then using my physics background,
look at where those dust storms started from, and then hopefully develop a model where we
can predict when a dust storm is starting to form, where it will go to, so that we can put in
early warning systems. Being able to think about problems every day, it brings me a lot of joy it
brings me a lot of self satisfaction and makes me feel like I'm doing something in this world.
If i didn't have science... I didn't have science to study,
I think I would genuinely just be bored and I wouldn't know what to do with myself!
The name of the conference is the ANU Women in STEM leadership conference,
and I came up with this idea during COVID lockdown when I was considering my years
at university and also considering my future, going into honours and I had reflected on how I
hadn't been able to meet many female identifying students and I felt that was unfortunate because
I hadn't felt the support and community that I think would have really benefited me during my
university time. And I was also thinking about how I wanted a female supervisor for honours
but that I hadn't had the chance to network with academics. And so I came up with this conference
to tick off those two boxes to help build a community here at ANU and also to help female and
non-binary identifying students to network with academics so that they can find opportunities.
We just had an open discussion with each other as a group about our experiences in STEM and and it
was really incredible especially so early on in the conference that people felt like they could
open up to everybody. We had a panel where we had people from the ANU community come in who
were female and non-binary identifying speak about their experience at uni, but also how they've used
their STEM degrees to then go and implement that in workforce jobs. We had two leadership
scenarios. On the first day we had climate change policy where the students were able to work in
groups with each other and build their problem solving skills.
Let's talk about the mentoring sessions. Did you allow the participants to say,
"I would love to speak to someone like this,"
Or did you just look at their backgrounds and say "Oh okay I know how to match this person up"?
Yeah, so in the application process I asked the student what field of research they would like to go into
if they were to pursue that path and then I paired an academic based on their field of research so if
someone wanted to go into genetics I would pair them with an academic that was already working
in genetics. And so then the academic was able to speak about their journey of how they got
into genetics and I think that was really helpful information for the students.
And in a one-on-one setting.
It was on a one-on-one setting and it went for an hour and 45 minutes and so it was very
casual because I had paired each student with the academic. I got rid of that barrier of awkwardness.
It can be quite overwhelming or difficult to email an academic because obviously they're
higher up and you don't want to impede on their time so by me setting up the mentoring session,
I had removed that difficult barrier and I was able to just connect them immediately
and they could go into this casual sit-down setting to discuss anything they wanted to.
The 2022 ANU Women in STEM leadership conference will happen in April and it will happen during
the mid-semester break of semester 1. That gives students the opportunity to be able to
attend the conference and not give up their class time. I'm definitely feeling more confident now
being a woman in STEM than I did in first year or second year or third year. And I think that's
partly now that I've gotten into honours, I feel like I'm actually contributing towards science.
But I do think running this conference has also helped me because it's shown me that
these women, they do want to be here. They do want this support and this community and that
we are not alone. So I think that's really helped me, to see them coming in just absolutely buzzing,
it... it solidified in me that they want to be here that they want to take steps to secure their
future in STEM. I'm just incredibly grateful to the ANU for giving me the opportunity to run
this conference and I think this is really going to make a change in our community.