In this episode, we reflect on Science Meets Parliament 2024 – a bespoke training event run annually by Science and Technology Australia. This event brings together emerging scientists and Australian federal parliamentarians to strengthen connections between STEM professionals and decision-makers.
I chat with Sharath Sriram, President of Science and Technology Australia, RMIT Professor and start up founder. We also hear from attendees Preeti Castle, Mark Hutchinson, Alfonso Chinnici, Warwick Bowen, and Parwinder Kaur, to get their impressions of #SMP2024.
We reflect on Sharath’s National Press Club address and Australia’s place in the world of innovation. Sharath describes Australian innovation ecosystem funding as three interconnected pieces – higher education, government and industry investment – and comments on how the three components need to be better connected. Low R&D investment from industry results in research being commercialised abroad rather than with local industry. We then discuss the industry settings in Australia that may sit behind the current malaise in private sector investment.
Our discussion then turns to the ‘missing middle’, a term coined by Minister Ed Husic at the National Innovation Policy Forum, and the need for national scale up infrastructure (as touched on with Katherine Woodthorpe in the January 2023 podcast). We also discuss the need for increases in domestic technology transfer capacity, which follows the calls made by Natalie Chapman on this podcast earlier this year. We close our discussion on how Australia might position itself in global innovation and how benefits might flow back to the Australian innovation ecosystem.
Transcript
CB: Hello everyone, and welcome to Tech Transfer Talk. My name is Cameron Begley, Managing Director of Spiegare. And joining me today is Sharath Sriram, who is now the President of Science and Technology Australia, recent guest at the National Press Club of Australia, giving his keynote address at Science Meets Parliament, and who kindly joins us today. Sharath, welcome.
SS: Thank you, Cameron, thank you for having me here.
CB: A pleasure. It’s terrific to have you. For complete disclosure, Spiegare and the podcast sponsored Science Meets Parliament, and we’re really thrilled to have a chance to get your reflections on the event. But equally, if not more importantly, the National Press Club address and things that have happened since. Sharath, how did you find Science Meets Parliament this year as President?
SS: Exciting is one of the words. Intense is another, and engaging. I think it is a very different conference or workshop people attend, because we’re usually used to sitting in the room listening to people talk to us. But in this case, you’re forced to talk and engage broadly. And one of the objectives of Science meets Parliament is to be in Parliament and go engage with, educate and excite all the parliamentarians about the opportunities of science. And so that way, it is a special and exciting event.
CB: Yes, indeed. Did you yourself get to talk to many parliamentarians? I assume you did.
SS: Uh, casually, yes. I had one formal meeting, but generally with STA board members. We are the silent chaperones. We get the early and mid-career researchers to talk about what they do.
CB: Excellent. You’re the enablers in the background, not front of stage for this occasion.
SS: That’s right. Especially in the meetings.
CB: Yeah. Fantastic. And while you were there, Sharath, did you get any feedback from some of the participants? Were they happy? Challenged? Excited? Petrified?
SS: I think the first half a day, most of them were nervous, because they did not know what to expect in meeting with the parliamentarian. Obviously, some of them were a year or two out of their PhD. They had been paired up to meet a minister or sometimes people with a reputation in the media, and so had concerns about how to prepare. And I think the bottom line is all parliamentarians, the advisors are human. They are also working hard. It’s an intense sitting week. So, getting them to just go with the flow is a big thing. And most parliamentarians got into the role because they wanted to serve. So, it’s always very insightful to listen to their first speech. Like what motivated them to take on this role in the limelight, which in many ways is always open to scrutiny, and it’s long hours. So, for a researcher an academic that’s very normal. It’s very long hours. Insecure contracts, similar to parliamentarians. I always joke a postdoc contract is three years, similar to any member of parliament.
CB: That’s quite true actually. Yes. Very nice parallel there, Sharath. Excellent. Let’s hear from Preeti Castle. Preeti, thanks for joining us.
PC: Pleasure.
CB: How many SMPs have you been to?
PC: This is my second.
CB: Second. Any different to the first one?
PC: A lot bigger.
CB: A lot bigger! Oh, that’s a good thing.
PC: Fabulous. Yeah. I’m from Perth, so it’s really fantastic. There’s quite a few of us here.
CB: Okay. A whole cohort jumped across the Nullarbor.
PC: Yeah, quite a few of us from different organisations.
CB: Fantastic. And what has been, other than size, what’s been different about SMP? Has there been a particular theme you’ve picked up?
PC: It’s nice to see some messages reinforced. But what I have been really happy to see is every address and every panel and every one-on-one discussion of, I’ve had, everybody’s talking about the importance of how do we communicate science? Not just to policymakers, but to communities and particularly, to people that invest in science. And that’s a big interest of mine. Big interest of mine.
CB: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, you know, this is a tech transfer podcast and communication is the first part of translation and transfer. So, it’s great that communication is getting a lot of attention from your conversations.
PC: Yeah. Absolutely, because without that, without that access to information, there is no next step in terms of being able to understand it or even to apply it, that we have.
CB: Preeti, thank you so much for your time today.
PC: You’re welcome. My pleasure. Thank you.
CB: That was Preeti Castle from the Western Australian Biodiversity Science Institute.
You found your way to the National Press Club for the keynote. And there were some pretty notable themes that you were putting forward to the room. Indeed, to the country, given the stage that you’re on. And one I’d like to touch on to start with is the intellectual potential of our country, and sitting that in contrast with the number of organisations, patents, licensing, that happens offshore. What’s the answer to that? Or how do you see us turning that around?
SS: The answer might seem crude, but often it is ‘follow the money’, because people chase the incentives. So, if you take our university sector has increasingly become the powerhouse of our research in the last 20 years. You know, the interesting parallel is when we’ve had the boom of international student income, which universities have used to fund research. With the focus on publications, so they move up the ranking and attract more students. And so, the incentives there have always been the rankings of the university. It’s not the products and impact they create. And so, that’s sort of the conversation we need to shift. Change the incentives so that people follow them.
CB: In a manner of speaking, Sharath. You see a bit of a perverse incentive there. That on one hand it’s working perfectly well for the outcome they’re seeking, but it’s not serving the industry base or the creation of long-term wealth. And through commercialisation, its serving revenue, but not serving that other purpose.
SS: So, that’s one of the reasons I look at the innovation ecosystem as three parts. There’s the higher education sector, the university research. It being funded this way to generate more and more ideas at the highest standard is outstanding. Obviously, it’s relying on international student income is not a sustainable model, but it’s being funded well to do this, ensures Australia produces 4% of the world’s publications for having 0.3% of the world’s population. That’s a mind-boggling number. But the other two parts of our innovation ecosystem, which is government investment in R&D and industry and business investment in R&D have to follow it. If any of them trip up, then these ideas end up going overseas where the other parts are working better.
CB: So, the industry pieces are a point on which there’s much debate. There was the report that came out in 2023, I think it was at the National Innovation Policy Forum, about the missing middle. And so, there’s not that wealth of middle-sized companies that are looking to innovate, adapt and grow. And, you know, in some side conversations that I’m involved with, there are some interesting market structural challenges in Australia. In the sense, that we’ve got comfortably entrenched oligopolies, and they’re not in markets that forced innovation compared to, say, the United States or North America, LATAM, or even Europe, where you’re forced to innovate in order to survive.
SS: The single simple instrument is the R&D tax incentive.
CB: Yeah, it is.
SS: But it does not focus the efforts into innovation. It can be very incremental and slow. So, one of the examples I use is, currently in Australia, it’s used as a tax offset.
CB: So, that’s an interesting notion there, Sharath, that the R&D tax system, which is, you know, exceptionally well used, broadly used. It doesn’t distinguish between different types of innovation, all of which have a place in a legitimate but in principle, the world that we’re looking at, I think predominantly Europe is that of deep tech, is sort of the phrase used, you know, heavily science-oriented innovation that then drives new and different values, differentiation, etc. Whereas innovation, incremental innovations perfectly valid. But the tax system doesn’t distinguish. And I get the sense that you’re contending, well, we need to find a way to distinguish it, to find a sharper tool to drive more of the deep tech, science-based innovation. Not to say one is good or the other one is bad. It’s to simply say, ‘We need more of this.’
SS: I think we need more of everything, right? That’s been Australia’s risk. We need diversification because we do not know what the future is going to be. We can’t put all our eggs in one basket. When you take the deep tech example, there are a couple of aspects. One, with the R&D tax incentive, there was a review, I think it’s now almost nine years old—2015. It said a portion of it has to be a collaboration premium. So instead of them spending on themselves, if they’re working with collaborators, they should get a bigger bonus. So that again makes people step outside the comfort zone. The other opportunity in deep tech innovation is actually pilot production facilities because often deep tech needs expensive infrastructure, which most small-medium enterprises cannot afford. Until their technology is refined and the manufacturing processes are established, each company going and investing on their own is not reasonable. It’s never going to happen.
CB: So, in that second point there, Sharath, you’ve touched on that issue of scale up which keeps, you know, looping around the innovation system, is almost the second valley of death. The first step is to get a product, and then the second valley is to scale that product. And I think, from my observation, Sharath, the notion of scale up is a very different conversation from the digital world to the biophysical world. And I suspect that’s something you appreciate with your technical background.
SS: We have to think levelling up our collaborative research infrastructure scheme to a prototyping and early-stage manufacturing scheme, also.
CB: It’s interesting, Sharath, thinking about this pilot production scale up challenge. In a conversation I had earlier this year, we mused about the idea that, well, we have a national collaborative research infrastructure scheme, yet we don’t have a national, collaborative, scale up infrastructure. In principle, we don’t have that infrastructure systemically set up ready to do those scale ups. There are, you know, you’ve got one for medical devices and one over here, but we don’t have a strategy or a national system, I think.
SS: I think the federal government and the Minister for Innovation, Industry and Science and Ed Husic’s office, are trying to actually bring them together. But I think getting awareness up to speed about what exists everywhere is a challenge in itself.
CB: Very much so.
CB: Yeah, the CRC-P. Yeah.
SS: And that is based around SMEs, and it forces them to actually work with researchers, work with end users, and may help them move really fast.
CB: Yeah, absolutely. It’s a very interesting comment you make there just about industries’ ability or inability to navigate the innovation system. An interesting remark that was made by Katherine Woodthorpe, actually just after the first National Innovation Policy Forum, where she reflected upon how difficult it is for someone to find the front door to a university. She asked me, ‘Well, where do I go in and where do I find someone to point me to where I have to go to?’ They can be somewhat labyrinthine the way they’re set up. But in a way, it was an interesting metaphor for the very challenge that you highlight, which is where does industry engage?
SS: Who are the connectors of commercialisation? So, who helps them demystify the university bureaucracy, the IP ownership, the grant systems, and actually gets products out?
CB: Well, I would put it to you that they’re people that do technology transfer, and that’s what Natalie Chapman was all arguing earlier this year.
SS: But I think, under them, they need a level of research leaders who understand what to pass on to them. And how to work with industry. So, I think it’s multiple levels, right? When the idea is strong, they know what to do with it. But how do researchers assess which ideas are worth going there? Some are worth publishing; some are worth commercialising. And I think that level of training becomes important.
CB: I think that you will have many supporters from the tech transfer community with those sentiments, Sharath. It is interesting the way you describe it as the as the other missing middle. It is that ability to translate between the industrial world and the research world and step across that, I’m sorry to call it a divide. It shouldn’t be but…
SS: In Australia, it is a divide.
CB: We have a divide here. Yes, yes, I think it’s more like a cell wall in some jurisdictions. But here it’s more canyon-like. But nonetheless it’s traversing that space that we need to get better at.
SS: And I think the reason I also bring in the researchers in that missing middle piece is, so that’s one of the reasons that Science and Technology Australia have been pushing for a ‘bench to boardroom’ program. So, we want to take a collection of people. And again, I’ll say this collection of people interested in it. We shouldn’t force every researcher to become a commercialisation person. Then we affect a pipeline. People go into that because they’re passionate, but some people are comfortable, but we want to train them in the boardroom skills, how this decision making happens so they can actually feed it back and be those middle level connectors.
CB: Let’s firstly hear from Mark Hutchinson and then from Alfonso Chinnici.
CB: Great. Mark Hutchinson, lovely to see you here. What number is this?
MH: Nine.
CB: Number nine.
MH: Number nine.
CB: Fantastic. Hip to be square. What’s different this time perhaps, to the other eight.
MH: Well so this is really different for me having been the immediate past president. I’m here having fun without too many responsibilities. So that’s cool. But also, whilst I am past president, I’ve picked up a series of other new responsibilities, being on the Prime Minister’s National Science and Technology Council, which met yesterday. So that was my first opportunity to be there with the PM, and then also on the board of the Australian Economic Accelerator for Minister Clare.
CB: So, you’re free and unfettered.
MH: Well, yes. But it’s fun now to see it as a consumer of amazing things that are happening here at Science Meets Parliament. And then engaging more with the people who are in the sessions and yet, having fun with it.
CB: So, you’re immersing yourself in it rather than trying to run it?
MH: Yes, yes. Exactly. So I am at the grassroots, having fun.
CB: Fantastic. Now, we won’t ask you what happened in those conversations with the Prime Minister and Minister Clare yesterday. One of the things that’s been bobbling around the room, which I think is getting more and more airplay, is commercialisation and tech transfer. We talk about that on the podcast all the time. The needle seems to be moving. What are you seeing at SMP this year that’s bringing this forward?
MH: So, I think that the big thing at the moment has been that we have so many parts of the part, the different parts of government puzzle are actually aligning to have a common vision and activity driving for utilisation of the science and technology. Now, I use the word utilisation in the broadest sense, because some of that may be commercialisation…
CB: And some of it may not.
MH: May not. And that is fine. As long as we are actually getting the stuff out of the lab and into the real world. Now, that’s going to be heavily driven by the national science and research priorities, which are informed by the National Reconstruction Fund Priorities, which are informed by…you know, everything is coming up now. So, where we’re seeing this need arising, we’re starting to see these opportunities come forward and clear direction and captaincy within the system. So, I’m really excited by the opportunities that are there. We have a long way to go to get our brilliant academic ideas ready in the right hands, to then be placed in the right, responsible investment structures out there.
CB: I think it’s a really important difference you’ve struck there between commercialisation versus technology transfer. It doesn’t all have to be for profit. It doesn’t all have to be an IP licensing or new venture event. And I think, my observation is that’s sort of been a little bit of the focus in recent years. And perhaps we’ve been a bit distracted by the new ‘let’s create a new company’ rather than thinking more broadly about this concept.
MH: And I think this is where we need our academic community to be better presenters and presence in boardrooms.
CB: Mark, great catching up. Thanks very much.
CB: Okay, Alfonso, fantastic to see you here. How have you found the day at Science Meets Parliament?
CB: Yeah. Fantastic. So, at the University of Adelaide, what’s your field?
AC: Yeah. So, I’ve been with the University of Adelaide for close to ten years now. And I work in the clean energy tech, space technology. I loved the introductory speech by the honorable Minister Husic this morning. Really, really fantastic speech around the need for science, acceleration of renewables, and the deployment of some of these technologies to reach net zero within 2050.
CB: Yeah. This is a tech transfer talk podcast. So, what’s the tech transfer challenge that you see Alfonso in, whether it’s the CRC or just what you see with industry? What’s that challenge?
AC: So, I’ll, give my kind of bits of experience around tech transfer, some of the challenge. So firstly, I would like to say that being part of the University of Adelaide, I’m very fortunate because I’m part of a very nice ecosystem where we have the researcher very well connected with the commercialisation and innovation branch of the University. And also, things like CRC really help in connecting the dots between the upstream tech supply down to the end user. So, of course, it’s always a challenge to navigate. One thing I would say, which I also tell my colleagues, that we work together in this journey, is firstly make sure we get the commercialisation branch of the uni is the very first point of, go to for any kind of inquire around IP, IP management and how you can develop. And you know, that brings the also, a different view to the table besides just the design technical part of the any technology or innovation that we are bringing from the science part. And talking about ecosystem is also important. You know, coming from the university, in the academic sector, how we can bring the technology to market? Of course, the university accepts some, except in some cases, we are not, our business model is not to develop technology or for commercialisation, but we would like to see that technology out there. So, there is an important bridge between the academic side and the uptake of the technology. So, again, for me, the ecosystem is really, really critical. What I would say is really bridge, get to know and work together, hand-in-hand with the commercialisation side of your university or your research provider, and also try to be part of the right ecosystem.
CB: Yeah. Fantastic. Alfonso. Grazie, per la vostra attenzione.
AC: Thank you.
CB: That was Mark Hutchinson, former president of STA. And Alfonso Chinnici from the University of Adelaide.
CB: The other breaking story, if I can call it that, Sharath, is around, I think, an increasing appetite from the current Australian government. So, we’re talking in 2024, and the current Australian government has a very clear appetite for innovation, and trying to understand how to build higher value industries with higher paying jobs that meet emerging needs. With that in mind, I think it’s a really interesting time, Sharath, around the role that innovation plays in driving some of the policy announcements, the industry growth fund and the National Reconstruction Fund and, most recently, the Future Made in Australia Act, I think it’s called. That all these things ultimately depend on some sort of science and technology in order to inflect the country’s industrial base from its current level of complexity, which I think we can say is quite low, to a level of complexity that actually gets not only the economic ambition met, but also the environmental and social ambitions met. How does this all play out for you at Science Technology Australia?
SS: So, you mentioned complexity, economic complexity. And that’s a point I referred to in the National Press Club address. We are currently ranked 93rd in the world. And the question is, would we accept that in at the Olympics? We certainly wouldn’t.
CB: I think we know the answer to that in this country.
SS: Yeah. But on the flip side, the other point you made is, we excel at research. For a country our size, so many of our universities are ranked in the world top 200. So that means we do have the innovation which exists, the brilliant ideas coming out. It’s how do we tap into it? And it’s a good thing that the government is planning and supporting so many different schemes, because products in different disciplines are never linear pathways. Each of them have to take different paths to be a success. So having a network of schemes with supported, which act as a safety net as it progresses, is important. From the Future Made in Australia side, it’s something I’ve been very passionate about. That Australia can make high value products, things which contain our intellectual property and our ‘secret sauce’. We need to be making it here. We shouldn’t be sending the secrets away. We can always get the enclosures, the packaging, everything from a base which can supply it in a competitive manner.
CB: Sharath, I think the observation that I would bring to this is, that internationally, highly successful economies, complex economies, are ones that have relatively sophisticated domestic markets from which they lay a foundation to then service the needs of the world. So, if we think about that as a model, for want of a better word or, and it’s an observation, but if we think about that as the model. Australia, we’re 28 million people, you know, next stop, Antarctica. And where do those deep markets come from that allow us to be that sophisticated manufacturer?
SS: Constantly looking at which of our technologies have a ‘secret sauce’. We can use Australia as a testing ground, develop the market, and people around the world say, ‘I want it in my country’.
CB: So, Australia is a testing ground, so it would be seen as a development and design market rather than a final market for a lot of the knowhow and technologies that we’re talking about. Is that how you see that?
SS: I would view us as an advanced market in terms of, we are disruptive and take risks. So, for a long time, Australian finance sector was considered actually at the cutting edge of innovation. And new technologies, new ways of transactions, speed of transaction but then every bank was creating a closed system which is actually slowing things down. And so now, for example, in the finance sector, India is considered a beacon because they created an open stack which everyone can use. They do billions of transactions a second with money moving between accounts instantly. So, I think those sorts of lessons about also being agile as we do new things, is important.
CB: So as an advanced market, you’re thinking, if I have you right here, Sharath, you’re thinking about an advanced market is one that can adapt and improve rapidly rather than an advanced market in terms of the consumer base or customer base.
SS: That’s right. And it should be serving our population. If you take healthcare as an example.
CB: Yeah. Good example. Yeah.
SS: Based on our current numbers, population growth and aging. By mid-2040s, we are going to need $1 billion hospital wing every week.
CB: Right, okay.
SS: That’s not going to happen. So how would we disruptive them, disrupt the model and keep people aging better and healthy at home. So, we can launch that, such technologies. How do we improve access for our indigenous communities or remote communities to health care?
CB: Yeah, okay.
SS: And all that is technology focused, right? So that we can develop here, prove that it works in a remote community. The data can be viewed in a metropolitan. The doctor does quick diagnosis, and then you can keep scaling it up in the country and across the world.
CB: So that idea there Sharath, that comes around to the idea of setting bold goals for the nation. You know, what is it that we want to be successful at? And dare I use the phrase even seeking to pick winners. We cannot possibly be good at everything, and the Olympics proves that. Just turns out we’re really good at swimming and yachting and rowing, so maybe we should just stick with water sports. But we can’t be good at everything, so we need to choose where we’re going to be good. And in fact, even the last few days, you know, classic Porter theory is where do you have national competitive advantage and how can you use that to service your needs and others? So, you know, a bit of classic market strategy theory there. So, you’ve suggested health, which is a very noble and indeed, I think needed area of advancement because there’s no getting away from aging. Time is the one irreversible thing. So, with that in mind, are there other thoughts you’ve got, or do you at least feel that we need to pick some areas to focus on?
SS: I think we do. It’s a bit like, you use the sports analogy. We pick certain fields. We have the highest probability of a gold medal and invest in that.
CB: Yeah, we do.
SS: Yes, we support everything, but we invest much more in a few select sports.
CB: Yep. We do.
SS: And I think, it’s also a distinction of spending on R&D and translation. What government spends on. If someone feels something else is a good idea, they’re welcome to spend. The government is not saying ‘no’, but what the government spends on should be for the benefit of the most.
CB: So, the distinction you’re drawing there is what the public money gets invested in and not disadvantage any private money. But the public money should be quite vectored in what it does and where it doesn’t.
SS: I think fundamentally we create companies’ products for a user.
CB: Yes, we should.
SS: And we should remember the user. Depending on the technology, different users have different acceptance levels. So, I think, in some cases, Australians may not be willing to be the first, but other countries may be more open to it. For example, a country which has limited health care may be willing to take on more digital health platforms which send their data to a doctor instantaneously. While another country may be caught up in concerns over privacy, that they actually delay prevention of health issues. So, I think it’s going to be case-by-case—it’s tough to generalise.
CB: Yeah, I think it’s that, at least having that conversation around the priority of Australia in that. You’re quite right, there will be technologies that come much later to Australia than other jurisdictions just for consumer or social or legislative reasons. There could be a whole bunch of things behind that.
SS: And it could be an Australian idea, if Australia is not really a benefit of it elsewhere. And at least that creates confidence for people to adopt it. So, I work with one of the companies which makes an aged care product. From day one, they’ve had higher demand for it from Hong Kong than from Australia, because there’s a more general acceptance of technology in a bedroom setting.
CB: Okay. There you go. Excellent. An excellent example, actually, of that. Sharath, where to from here? Your presidency is relatively new for STA. What does the next 12 months look like for you? We’ll see each other between now and then, of course. But you’ve got 12 months to the next Science Meets Parliament. What do those 12 months hold for you, do you think?
SS: I think it’s an exciting time and potentially a complicated one, with an election somewhere being announced in the next 12-month period, which can change the trajectory of some of these partnerships. The real opportunities I see, are some of the schemes the government announced being rolled out, being tested, and supporting a few ideas. The other opportunities are trying to invest a bit more carefully into the security of our research workforce, because no point investing in products and companies if we lose the research workforce. It’s very tough to build it back. It takes a longer time. So, I think balancing both while we invest and grow is significantly important. But to me, there are a couple of wins which are very budget neutral, is streamlining how we apply for grants. Too many agencies, too many forms. I think for our community, that sort of productivity boost will allow them to spend more time on engagement and relationships than grant writing.
CB: Yes. Wouldn’t that be nice?
SS: It certainly would.
CB: No, that’s fantastic. It’s going to be an exciting 12 months, Sharath. And it’s terrific to have you at the helm at STA now. Thanks very much for joining us today and look forward to seeing more from STA. And indeed SMP 2025 when it comes around.
SS: Thank you, Cameron. Thank you to everyone who’s listening.
CB: And in closing, let’s hear from Warwick Bowen from the University of Queensland and from Parwinder Kaur, our special adviser to the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation in Western Australia and at the University of Western Australia.
CB: Warwick, how have you found Science Meets Parliament?
WB: It’s been really interesting so far. A lot of talks from different perspectives, on how science, industry, government should engage.
CB: And your role at UQ. You have a new Centre of Excellence, I understand.
WB: Yeah. I’m the director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in Quantum Biotechnology. QUBIC’s the first national centre in the world that brings quantum and the life sciences together.
CB: We both had the opportunity to chat with the minister’s office regarding jobs and training and skills, and an interesting conversation unfolded. You were really keen talking about quantum capacity, if I could call it that, or skills capacity.
WB: Yeah. That’s right.
CB: Tell us a bit, what’s on your mind there.
WB: Yeah. So, we all know or many people now know, that quantum is is growing very rapidly and translating out from university labs into industry and into society, with the prediction of hundreds of billions of dollars of economic value in the next decade or so. To drive that value, we desperately need more people trained in quantum and associated areas. We’re not going to get there if we just maintain the status quo. So, the question is how do you do that?
CB: Yeah. Where does that talent come from? Is that going to be bringing more students in, more talent in from abroad, or can we nurture what we have?
WB: We need to do both. We need to be nurturing what we have. We need to be growing our base in Australia, finding groups, finding new people to bring into quantum, to physics, to chemistry and related areas. But we also we have a shallow pool in Australia. We also need to bring people in from overseas. We need to make Australia an attractive destination for quantum students, researchers and also professionals.
CB: Yep. And finally, Warwick, you mentioned you had a little startup in quantum that’s profitable, which is fantastic.
WB: Yeah. With my partner, Glenn Harris, we have a startup Elemental Instruments. And we make tunable magnetic field sources, which might sound a bit abstract, but it turns out they’re useful for material science, for medical technologies, and other sorts of technologies. And yeah, we’re selling these in large part to the quantum tech industry, to control quantum technologies.
CB: Fantastic. That strikes me as somewhat similar starting point to Axon Instruments…Alan Finkel.
WB: You mention Alan. Alan is actually the Chair of the advisory board for QUBIC.
CB: There we go.
WB: And Alan has been very inspirational.
CB: There you go. The circle is complete. Alan was on the podcast last year, actually. So, the circle, the Circle of Life is complete.
WB: Yeah. It’s a super fun process. Bootstrapping from nothing. Up to, a modest company so far, but one that does make more money than we than we lose.
CB: Yeah. An important criteria for success. Fantastic. Thanks for your time.
WB: My pleasure.
CB: Cheers.
CB: Parwinder, thanks for joining us. How are you finding Science Meets Parliament?
PK: I would say very, very insightful.
CB: Okay, great.
PK: Yeah, it’s really amazing because policy and science. I think it’s a natural marriage, that I see, because we do science for the service of the humanity.
CB: Yes, indeed.
PK: And the policymakers are not doing anything different, but they’re just looking at it through a different lens, which is more like an enabling lens to find solutions for which we are trying to deliver a service here in the scientific community. So, I think bringing this together, I’m just really surprised that there is only one Science Meets Parliament.
CB: Oh, you mean it should be amongst the states as well or…
PK: 100%.
CB: Ah, okay.
PK: I think this is something we, we really, really need if we don’t want to run an endless race. You know, when it comes to trying to chase and find solutions for the biggest challenges that we are facing as humanity on this planet, and I think that’s where the alignment with the policy people and working very closely with the policy people, understanding that how are we doing, and where we are, and then filling this huge knowledge gap that we’ve got across sectors.
CB: Yeah. Okay. So, what do you mean by an endless race?
PK: So endless races like, you know, it just seems like every year the priorities shift from a funding body perspective, right. We are writing grants after grants after grants, but, and sometimes it’s the volume they require in terms of publications. You know, the key criteria on the basis of which Australian researchers are awarded grants is ‘pubs and grads’. You know, that’s the KPI model that’s been achieved. And the publications, sometimes it’s the volumes and sometimes it’s the quality. So, I think as a nation we really need to take a stand. What do we need? Are we chasing quality? Or are we chasing quantity?
CB: Or are we chasing neither?
PK: Or are we chasing neither? For me, as a scientist, I think ‘Why did I sign up with, to become a scientist?’ It’s a 24/7 job.
CB: Yes. And it is.
PK: It takes a lot from me, to be able to deliver what we are trying to achieve. Break the new ground every day. It’s really, really important for me to know what…like, how my hypothesis is going to deliver on the solution that I’m chasing? So, if I do not have that insight in terms of a goal, I’m literally running an endless race here,
CB: Right, okay. So, a notion of not knowing what that end solution might look like and your contribution to it.
PK: Absolutely. And also, like kind of trying to achieve a balance between perfectionism and a solution that is probably, timing is more important rather than having a perfect 100% solution.
CB: Yes, yes. So that’s that idea of the perfect getting in the way of the good.
PK: Absolutely.
CB: Yes. Something that we hear from time to time.
PK: Yes.
CB: And timing is everything.
PK: Timing is everything.
CB: Parwinder, fantastic. Thank you very much.
PK: It was a pleasure. Thank you so much, Cameron.
CB: Thank you.