Issue 02. 19 March 2012 - UWA Staff - The University of Western ...

UWA NEWS
19 March 2012 Volume 31 Number 2
Macropod. Rock art from the north-west Kimberley region supplied with the permission of the Kandiwal Aboriginal Corporation
Kimberley
dreaming
becomes
a reality
By Lindy Brophy
“It all started with falling in love,” Maria
Myers told a roomful of archaeologists,
geologists and academics in the
humanities.
It is not something often heard in the usually
formal context of the Vice-Chancellery’s Prescott
Room, where partnerships are cemented,
agreements signed and initiatives launched.
This ceremony celebrated all three in the form
of a new Chair in Rock Art for UWA. Ms Myers,
passionate Chair of the Kimberley Foundation of
Maria Myers Australia (KFA) said she fell in love with the
Kimberley, and this led her into working towards
bringing the story of the region and an understanding of its ancient treasures
to all its stakeholders (Indigenous people, pastoralists, and the tourism and
mining industries) and to future generations.
The Kimberley Foundation has given UWA $1.5 million to set up the KFA Ian
Potter Chair in the Centre for Rock Art. KFA will work to raise a further
$500,000 and the University will provide $2 million, for a total of $4 million
for an ongoing position.
continued on page 2
In this issue P3 Aussie english P7 international women’s day P8 treasures of the berndt museum

Kimberley dreaming becomes a reality from page 1
The gift will support long-term research into the nature and
context of the Kimberley’s rock art, working in partnership with
the traditional custodians. Researchers will study and record
the art and pass on knowledge to students and the broader
community about the value of the region’s rich cultural heritage.
Winthrop Professor Krishna Sen, Dean of the Faculty of Arts,
Humanities and Social Sciences (in which the Centre for Rock
Art Studies sits), said UWA and the KFA had been discussing
the Chair and their ongoing research partnership for two and
a half years.
The Vice-Chancellor, Professor Paul Johnson, had met
Ms Myers in Melbourne last year, before taking up his post at
UWA, to discuss the opportunities that existed for scholarship
and research in the Kimberley.
Professor Sen said the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research), Alistar
Robertson, had worked tirelessly, alongside UWA graduate
and Director of the KFA, Dr Jim Ross, to bring it all together.
“There are at least 40,000 identified rock art images in the
Kimberley and many more not yet identified,” Professor
Johnson said. “It is a great role for this University to work with
the KFA and the government to recognise the rock art as a
world resource, to be understood and protected.
“Universities have a responsibility to work for the public
good, and the public good is always advanced by better
understanding,” he said.
The Centre for Rock Art Studies, within the discipline of
Archaeology, will soon advertise the position.
Top right: Jim Ross (centre), Alistar Robertson and Paul Johnson at
the launch of the new Chair
Bottom right: Gwion figures. Rock art from the north-west Kimberley
region supplied with the permission of the Kandiwal Aboriginal
Corporation
Is exercise the answer?
Louise Naylor helps Leteisha Warner
with her exercise routine
Diabetes is one of the most common
diseases of the 21st century in the
western world, but preventing or
treating it is far from simple.
Babies born with a pancreas that does
not release insulin have Type 1 diabetes
and most of them will have to take
insulin for the rest of their lives.
Type 2 diabetes occurs because at
some stage later in life, some people’s
bodies produce too much insulin. They
can usually manage their diabetes with
lifestyle changes, including exercise
and diet.
Dr Louise Naylor at the School of Sport
Science Exercise and Health is trialling
adolescents with Type 2 diabetes to see
if regular exercise has an effect on their
insulin sensitivity, and thus their health.
“We are not exactly sure how children
get Type 2 diabetes,” Dr Naylor said.
“Sometimes it’s due to an unhealthy
lifestyle, and sometimes there are
genetic factors.”
She and her team train groups of
teenagers three times a week for 12
weeks, measuring the effects of the
exercise and comparing the results with
children who are obese but not diabetic,
and other children, who are neither.
Her research project, Can exercise
training improve health in adolescents
with Type 2 diabetes, is funded by the
Bright Spark Foundation, which
supports the work of promising young
researchers working in the areas of
children’s health.
“The aim of the program is to increase
muscle mass, since muscle uses
glucose and therefore improves their
diabetes,” she said.
The teenagers are referred by Princess
Margaret Hospital and Dr Naylor is
running three 12-week trials.
2 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

“So I went, like, see
you on the Oak Lawn”
Celeste Rodriguez Louro loves the
way English is spoken in Australia
It’s not like any other language
“I dated this loser in high school and he was obsessed
with lollies…and he’d just eat them. I’m just like: That’s
disgusting.”
You don’t need to have teenage children to recognise the
speech patterns of young Australians in this second decade of
the 21st century.
Rather than be affronted by them, Dr Celeste Rodriguez Louro,
an Assistant Professor in Linguistics, is fascinated by the
structure of vernacular Australian English.
“I love the way English is spoken in Australia,” Professor
Rodriguez Louro said. “I love the long drawn-out ‘yeah’ that
is so indicative of the laid-back Australian way.”
Professor Rodriguez Louro is a sociolinguist. Sociolinguistics
examines the relationship between language and society,
including how linguistic and social factors such as age,
education, social class, ethnicity and others influence
language use and change.
One of the outstanding aspects of current youth language
across varieties of English is the use of ‘like’, known as
‘quotative be like’ in the linguistics literature.
“There has been much published on ‘like’ over the past
15 years or so, but Australian English deserves a closer look.
I’ve conducted some research on the use of quotation in
Perth English and I’m presenting my findings at a linguistics
conference in Manchester in April this year,” she said.
This research shows that – just as with other varieties of English
around the world – the use of ‘like’ usually starts with girls,
around the age of 11 and continues well into the tertiary years,
with boys ‘catching up’ later in life.
“Women are leaders in language change in the western world,”
Professor Rodriguez Louro said. “Girls from 11 to 13 are very
vigorous users of ‘like’, while boys lag behind until they get
to about university age, then they use it more than their
female peers.
“My research shows that while young people are using ‘like’
extremely often, it is rare to hear it used by somebody over the
age of 35. The general consensus is that it started in the US,
then spread via the mass media including to Canada, where it
has been in use for a long time and has expanded and is now
heard amongst people over 40.”
She said that – much to the dislike of older generations – young
people were bound to continue to use ‘like’.
“As with other aspects of language innovation, the expansion of
‘like’ depends on it being evaluated positively. We will have to
wait another 20 years to see whether ‘like’ remains a strong
contender as people age.”
Professor Rodriguez Louro is also researching how verbs such
as ‘think’, ‘believe’, ‘guess’ and ‘reckon’ are used to express
one’s attitude in Australian English. She hopes to study how
these verbs were used from the 19th century onwards and how
the system of Anglo Australian English compares to the uses of
these verbs in Aboriginal Australian English.
Professor Rodriguez Louro says the widely used ‘yeah, no’
expression in Australian English reflects the Australian
preference for conflict avoidance. “As a cross-cultural
observation, in my native Argentina, it is common to hear
people respond with a blunt ‘no, no, no, no’ before giving their
opinion as a response to yours,” she said.
“In countries such as Spain, Italy and France, expressing your
opinion is valued and conflict is not avoided.
“Cross-cultural communication is ever important and we are
lucky to be offering an exciting unit in second semester this
year,” she said.
The Linguistics discipline, in the School of Humanities, is
offering a broadening unit this semester, Communication
across Cultures and Languages. This new unit gives students
an opportunity to learn about how language is used and
understood in different cultural settings looking at, among
many other areas, how silence is deployed by people from
different cultures, inside and outside Australia.
“We are thrilled to be able to teach in this crucial area,”
she said.
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 3

The importance of
academic research
Paul Johnson
Vice-Chancellor
When the Royal Society was
founded in 1660, it was possible for
a knowledgeable person to be able
to understand the full gamut of
scientific discovery of that time.
Centuries later, it is hard to keep up with
the furious pace of research advances
even in one’s own discipline.
While some in the community might
view this rapid growth of scientific
knowledge as an indication that we’ve
pretty much covered all that needs to be
discovered, the application and impact
of academic research on our daily lives
continues apace.
The truth is that we can’t really begin
to imagine what the world will be like
in 30 years. We do know it will be
fundamentally different from today; and
we can be sure that it will be different
because of science, technology and
innovation which will almost certainly
start out in the university research
environment.
Research is not only critical to the
economic and social development of
society; it is also critical to the mission
of our University.
Some research benefits are obvious – for
example, benefits of an economic kind
(a new product, technology or service),
a social kind (increased knowledge of
relevance to policy makers), of an
environmental kind (improved techniques
to ensure sustainable food production),
of a cultural kind (increased understanding
of cultural values or social
approaches) or of a health kind (a better
understanding of the causes of medical
conditions or better means of delivering
health services).
For some research the benefit may not
be so obvious. As Albert Einstein once
remarked: “If we knew what it was we
were doing, it would not be called
research, would it?”
Nevertheless, it is this research which is
the foundation for knowledge that makes
possible so much of the innovation and
application that provides wider benefit.
There is a large element of serendipity in
research and we need to acknowledge
that for every successful connection
between research and application, there
are many projects that will not succeed
in the same way. But such research,
nevertheless, adds to the stock of global
knowledge and provides the source of
new ideas, methods, techniques and
innovation across a whole range of
disciplinary and multi-disciplinary areas.
There is no doubt that the emphasis on
the social, cultural, economic and
environmental impacts of research has
increased greatly. This has been partly
driven by the debate over the impact
and quality of research and also by a
pragmatism that applied research is
more likely to persuade funding bodies
to spend on research.
Our economy is based very strongly on
technology and innovation – and in
Western Australia that centres on the
resources sectors of agriculture, energy
and minerals.
And as we continue to pursue our global
research agenda, we can look to a vast
range of opportunities to build a future
economy based on the existing
strengths of our resources wealth
backed by research from this University.
Staff pitch in to
pick up what’s
pitched out
A piano leg, a finger puppet and a
complete outfit – pants, shirt, shoes
and socks – were among rubbish
picked up by UWA volunteers during
Clean Up Australia.
About 120 staff and students cleaned
up the Crawley campus, the Nedlands
campus and the Matilda Bay foreshore
early on Friday 2 March and were
rewarded with a breakfast at the
University Club – as well as a sparkling
campus.
Co-ordinator Trish Howard from
Sustainable Development (Facilities
Management) said the crew had picked
up about three cubic metres of rubbish
and recyclables across 742,000 square
metres in less than two hours. (The set
of clothes was found on the Matilda
Bay foreshore.)
“It was a great effort and we were
delighted that nearly all the people who
volunteered last year put their hands up
again this year. I didn’t have to go
looking for volunteers,” she said.
Cigarette butts, as always, featured
among the rubbish collected.
Ms Howard said she would be
interested to see how many, if any, were
collected next year, after the smoking
ban had been in place for a year. “It will
give us an idea of how successful the
smoke-free campaign is,” she said.
Breakfast for the volunteers was
sponsored by the University Club and
Sustainable Development.
Ewann Lebrun and Nicolas Thebaud from
Centre for Exploration Targeting target
the rubbish
4 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

New technologies
can unlock
humanities secrets
In the literary world, it was an accepted assumption that
the 1970s was a time of unprecedented growth in homegrown
Australian fiction. And everybody was reading and
talking about books by young Australian women.
But it was not until recently that a researcher was able to
measure just how many novels were published in that decade,
and she found that there had been a decline in novels by
Australian writers overall, but confirmed an increase in
women’s novels.
It is this sort of research – testing ideas about literary history –
that is becoming possible with the spread of ‘Digital Humanities.’
The intersection of Humanities and digital technologies is
opening up opportunities in the fields of literature, linguistics,
history and language that were not possible without
computational methods and digitised resources to bring
information together in an accessible way.
Winthrop Professor Philip Mead and Dr Toby Burrows have
set up a Digital Humanities Reference Group and are working
on developing the field at UWA. Late last year Professor Mead
visited King’s College London which has the world’s first
university Department of Digital Humanities and has just
offered the first PhD in the field.
“It’s an emerging, exciting field,” Professor Mead said. “For us,
2012 will be a year of talking to leaders in the field and finding
out where the important directions are, to help us to develop
Digital Humanities here at UWA in a distinctive way.”
He said UWA academics were combining traditional research
methods with the possibilities offered by computing. Professor
Mead offers an Honours unit in English that introduces students
to Digital Humanities.
“Inevitably, it will become part of our undergraduate teaching
because it’s what we will be doing,” he said.
One of the world’s leading exponents of Digital Humanities,
Professor Alan Liu from the University of California Santa
Barbara, will be a plenary speaker at the first conference of
the Association for Digital Humanities in Australasia at the
Philip Mead, trailblazer for new humanities research
Australian National University later this month. He will present a
roundtable discussion at UWA before that.
Professor Liu studies “information culture as a way to close the
circuit between the literary or historical imagination and the
technological imagination.” His presentation at the University
Club is part of the Institute of Advanced Studies’ program.
Professor Mead said that while it was exciting to combine
traditional research skills with the latest technology, proponents
shouldn’t try to turn literature, for example, into data.
“The increasingly available databases and digital resources
are what allow us to expand our research and enhance our
methodology. You don’t want to get lost in the ‘busy work’ of
creating databases, but focus on the important research
questions you want to answer.
“Digital technology allows us to ask different questions,
questions we wouldn’t have been able to answer before
databases became available,” he said.
“For example, having Australian newspapers from the 19th
century digitised allows us to ask about people’s reading
experiences. There were not many books published in Australia
then, so people’s main reading was newspapers. Without a
database, it would be impossible to do this research.
“And having, say, Patrick White’s manuscripts digitised means
a researcher can access them in one place, instead of several
libraries and repositories around the world.”
Professor Mead has contributed to the first Australian book
on Digital Humanities, Resourceful Reading. It is the first
comprehensive account of eResearch as it transforms the field
of Australian literary studies in the 21st century.
Transcription software is being developed for turning scans of
books and documents into text, as the field of digital humanities
really takes off.
“It is changing our work fundamentally, changing the questions
we ask, the patterns and links we can find and enabling us to
test theories that were previously impossible to test,” Professor
Mead said.
To attend Professor Alan Liu’s discussion on 23 March, please
RSVP to ias@uwa.edu.au
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 5

What makes a tick
By Sally-Ann Jones
… tick?
What makes a ground-dwelling and disease-carrying tick decide to crawl up
a grass stalk and launch itself onto a human or animal host?
Are some solitary locusts more likely than others to suddenly band together in plague
proportions and act as one?
And why do single-celled algae change from vegetative reproduction to having sex?
These and other questions are being investigated by evolutionary biologist Future
Fellow Professor Joseph Tomkins in the Centre for Evolutionary Biology.
He is testing a model that seeks to explain what triggers changes in the behaviour or
development of living things, whether they are as small as single cells or as big as a
plague of insects, numbering many millions.
The model, pioneered by Professor Tomkins’s collaborator, Professor Wade Hazel
at De Pauw University in the United States, suggests that a certain threshold in
the environmental conditions experienced by an organism make it switch between
two alternatives.
“A cell can divide itself or find another cell to exchange DNA with, as it divides,”
Professor Tomkins said. “A male salmon might stay in its home river growing to only
a few hundred grams, or go to sea for years, returning weighing a few kilograms.
The model we are interested in treats the decisions that organisms make as traits,
and asks how these decisions evolve. To date it has not been applied to the breadth
of questions to which it could.”
Professor Tomkins, who won an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship of
almost $1million over four years, will travel to France and Scotland to examine the
behaviour of deer ticks, which are responsible for the growing spread of Lyme disease
throughout parts of Europe.
“The tick that carries Lyme disease – which can be extremely disabling, and even fatal,
if not treated with antibiotics – climbs up a grass stalk to look for a host only in certain
weather conditions,” he said. “By knowing what triggers its behaviour, we hope to be
able to warn farmers to move their stock, and hikers to avoid tick-infested areas, at
times when ticks are searching for hosts.”
Lyme disease also occurs in Australia, causing at least one death in the past
18 months.
“My ARC project will test the environmental threshold model to see how well it
applies to decision-making in a range of organisms across the spectrum of life.
“It will help us understand the diversity of life and give us insight into what happens
when species are under threat from human activity,” he said.
Bike week
Up to 300 staff and students are
expected to cycle their way to a
free breakfast this week.
The Bike Breakfast, to be held on the
northern terrace of the University Club
from 7am to 9am on Wednesday
21 March, is a free event to recognise
and reward cyclists for looking after their
health and not bringing a car to UWA.
Organiser Ruth Balding, Transport
Coordinator at UWA, said limited
parking and increasing road congestion
were making it increasingly difficult for
students and staff to drive to the
Crawley campus.
“So we’re hoping to show that cycling is
a popular and feasible transport option
for many car drivers and that UWA will
be working hard to create a cyclefriendly
campus,” Ms Balding said.
“Riding a bike to uni is a great way to
keep fit, maintain good mental health,
save some money and reduce your
environmental impact.”
The City of Nedlands has joined forces
with UWA to support the Bike Breakfast
and will offer some great prizes on
the day.
Bikeweek is an annual celebration of
cycling coordinated by the Department
of Transport’s Bikewest and hosted by
local governments, community groups,
workplaces, cycling organisations and
schools across the State.
This year, Bikeweek runs from 18 to
25 March.
6 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

Gen Y offers us
our best chance
at excellence
Just as women used to sit in groups weaving together,
more than 100 women (and men) at UWA sat together in
the Tropical Grove, listening to Carolyn Oldham weave
together the threads of her vision for a resilient and
excellent university.
Winthrop Professor Oldham was the guest speaker on
International Women’s Day and she brought together the
strands of efficiency, engaging with young people and
offering them a vision to create the resilience needed for an
inspiring future.
The theme for the morning, Connecting Girls and Inspiring
Futures, is something Professor Oldham said she had spent
half her life pondering. “I see the challenge to engage girls and
present the vision of an inspiring future in engineering as a
critical need for my profession’s future viability,” she said.
Although her discipline, environmental engineering, enjoys a
staff and student balance of almost 50 per cent women, other
areas of engineering fail miserably on the gender scale.
But it is not just girls, but boys, who, more than anything, “want
to have voices in their communities,” she said. “With this desire
to be heard, they bring a heap of energy, ideas and passion …
(but) we are often disinclined to listen to them. We often don’t
feel we have the time to really listen.”
She said the girls and boys who are our future are at home with
the new world where digital technology has eroded traditional
power bases and we need to engage meaningfully with them to
find a new way of operating.
Professor Oldham talked about community resilience: “The
ability of communities to cope with rapid change, to cope with
new demands, to ensure the community is sustainable and
high-performing even under extreme conditions, the ability to
transform and evolve.”
She spoke of the “critical difference between long-term
resilience achieved through diversity of thinking and doing, and
the efficiency of the current system.
“Efficiency often uses a short-term framework … I suggest our
biggest challenge is to know when to follow the efficiency
pathway and when to follow the innovation, resilience and
Carolyn Oldham was the first woman to be
made a Winthrop Professor in Engineering
sustainability pathway. I propose that by engaging young
women and men in our decision-making, we make that
balancing act explicit.
“I believe the key to engaging girls (and boys) is dependent
on our ability to offer them a vision not just of the future, but
a vision for the present. I believe that the vision girls and boys
are looking for is a future with genuine dialogue. Engaging with
girls, particularly in areas like engineering, and presenting an
inspiring future for them, is a commitment and a responsibility
that has to be shared by all of us.
“If we do not encourage an environment where people’s voices
are heard, whether they are girls or boys, we don’t even get to
the starting line in attracting our best chance of a resilient and
excellent university for the future.”
UWA music student Olivia Thorne, a member of
C 4 Cello, which performed at the Tropical Grove
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 7

Buried treasure under lights at last
It was like opening a treasure chest – a very
prolonged opening that took four years.
This is how long it took to pack and verify every
one of nearly 12,000 pieces in the Berndt Museum
collection for its move from the cramped
basement under the Social Sciences building to
its new, albeit temporary, home beneath the
Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in the Dr Harold
Schenberg Arts Centre.
Dr John Stanton, Director of the Berndt Museum, has devoted
his life to the Museum, begun and bequeathed to the University
by anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt.
But even he was surprised to see some of the artefacts he had
almost forgotten about. “It was 30 years since I had seen some
of the pieces and it was such a wonderful experience,” said
Dr Stanton, who positively glows as he walks through the
gallery space that is the Museum’s exhibition space while
awaiting a purpose-built home for the Museum.
If the exhibition space produces a glow, the offices, work area
and storage space under the Art Gallery generate a metaphoric
brilliance, as Dr Stanton sees the precious pieces finally cared
for as they deserve to be.
For years, staff and visitors were tripping over boxes as the
collection spilled out of inadequate storage into the
gallery space.
It took three full-time packers as well as the Museum staff to
make the move. The Museum Gallery was closed to visitors for
the past two years.
“It’s a long time to be closed, but our collection was still
available on-line,” Dr Stanton said. “We are one of the few
museums in the world which has a catalogue of all our objects
on the Web. About 15 per cent of the collection is shown in
photographs but we were able to photograph every piece as it
was rediscovered and packed, so we hope to have the whole
collection on-line eventually.”
Above: Crayon drawing by Djamagula, Oenpelli NT, RM and CH Berndt
Collection, 21 March 1950. Far right: Polychrome wooden figure,
T’ang Dynasty, China, RM Berndt Collection, c.1932. Right: Asmat
shield Irian Jaya, Indonesia, E Sanchz-Flores Collection
8 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

Dr Stanton said visitors to the website were monitored and
there had always been a lot of overseas interest, with students
and academics from the US, the UK and across Europe using
the website. There are also plenty of requests for commercial
use of images.
About 70 per cent of the collection is Australian objects; the
rest are from Asia and Melanesia, complementing the Australian
Indigenous pieces.
How to reintroduce the public to the Berndt collection
stimulated vigorous discussion during the packing and it was
decided, after a suggestion from Relocation Manager Fiona
Gavino, that staff should choose their favourite pieces and the
first exhibition could be a collection of those favourites.
Relocate and Rediscover: Treasures of the Berndt Museum
is the result. It is a small exhibition that includes a feathered
mask from the New Guinea highlands, a wooden figure from
the T’ang Dynasty, possibly the oldest Australian bark painting
in existence and a contemporary Aboriginal painting of a
football match.
It is a beautifully-lit exhibition, eliciting a feeling of entering
something extraordinary.
One of Dr Stanton’s favourites is the mask from New Guinea,
from 1951. It is displayed in a glass case, alongside a rare
photograph of it being worn in the Highlands.
Paintings on the inside of a bark shelter were probably created
around 1875, making this the oldest bark painting in the world.
“They are from the period of transition when Aboriginal people
were just coming into contact with white people,” Dr Stanton
said, “A pivotal incident in the history of Aboriginal, indeed
world, art.”
There is a ‘sister basket’ woven from pink sedge in 1860; a
photograph taken in the Kimberley from 1937 when the local
Indigenous people were already using dots on the ground to
tell stories; and a brightly coloured painting of a modern
football match.
John Stanton and his staff in the thick of packing two years ago
Photograph of a performer wearing a fern tree mask,
Kainantu, Eastern Central Highlands, Papua New
Guinea. RM Berndt Collection, 1951
“All the pieces have a story to tell,” Dr Stanton said. “As
anthropologists, we deal with culture, not art as such, and
these objects speak volumes if you know how to decode
the story.”
He said bark paintings from western and north-eastern Arnhem
Land were a response to a demand for portable craft in the
1950s. “The movement was well-established by the 1960s and
by the 1980s, it was rivalling dot paintings. Bark paintings are
not found anywhere else in the world.”
Dr Stanton was a young PhD student when he started working
at the Berndt Museum with Professor Ronald Berndt. He is
looking forward to its new home in the Dr Harold Schenberg
Arts Centre, well before he retires.
The Berndts spent their lives building up the collection;
Dr Stanton has spent his bringing it to the world.
Relocate and Rediscover continues at the Gallery until the end of
the semester. A new exhibition will be mounted every semester
while the Berndt Museum occupies its gallery in the LWAG.
Above left: Ngarrindjeri shield, Coorong SA, RM Berndt Collection,
c.1938. Top: Sister basket, Strathern Moravian Mission, Gippsland
Rev. FA Hagenauer Collection c.1856, gift of Dr Le Souef
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 9

Improve your
performance
If you think you don’t need a high
performance computing facility to
assist your research … have a chat
with Jenni Harrison, and prepare to
be surprised.
Professor Harrison is UWA’s eResearch
program leader, based in the Interactive
Virtual Environments Centre (iVEC) in the
Physics Building.
She is keen to explain how access to
high end computing facilities, such as
visualisation, can be of huge benefits to
researchers in all areas. “Lots of people
think they don’t need high powered
computing, but they might not realise the
benefits, especially in creative areas,”
Professor Harrison said.
“Of course, we (iVEC) do a lot of work
with ICRAR, with astronomy and
crystallography, who use enormous
amounts of data, but data is used
extensively in the creative industries, for
example in movies and re-creations of
fine art, which can benefit from using
high performance technology.”
She is currently working with the Institute
of Advanced Studies on ways that iVEC
can increase the support for digital
humanities researchers at UWA.
The iVEC program is a joint venture
between the public universities in WA
and the CSIRO. “High performance
computing is very expensive and needs
to be refreshed every couple of years,
so it is cost-effective to share facilities,”
she said.
iVEC provides specialised support to all
partner organisations in areas including
eResearch, industry engagement and
education. Professor Harrison is based
at UWA, but supports eResearch at all
the iVEC partner institutions; she has
colleagues located at Edith Cowan and
Curtin Universities who provide industry
engagement and education support
respectively.
“eResearch is much wider than just
using the supercomputer,” she said.
“One project I supported used
multipoint video conferencing so a
group of geographically dispersed
musicians could play together. Such
technologies allow people to actively
participate, collaborate or learn, which
is especially beneficial to individuals
living in remote locations.
“Another project I am presently working
on with colleagues across Australia will
develop a sharable online tool which
aggregates marine data collected by
researchers; the resultant information
will be used by the marine community
to ‘map’ changes in Australia’s oceans.
“These are the sorts of creative results
we have the power to achieve.”
One of the biggest challenges of her
work is the wide range of awareness
of technology among university staff.
“Everybody is at a different level and it
certainly keeps us on our toes.”
From a background as a chemist and
10 years working in biosciences,
Professor Harrison was most recently
with the National Health Service in
Edinburgh. She was designing and
delivering online training for health
professionals throughout Scotland,
Jenni Harrison, here to help
including the creation of 3D anatomy
and virtual patients.
“Access to education in some rural
communities is challenging, so this was
a great solution,” she said. “I learn so
much about the disciplines in which I
work. In the health area, there are issues
of intellectual property rights such as
copyright, consent, confidentiality,
privacy and data security, all of which
apply to many other disciplines.”
Professor Harrison is finishing a Masters
in e-Learning from Edinburgh University.
And computers have become part of
her comfort zone in her private life too.
She enjoys shopping on-line and gets
most of her news on-line rather than
from newspapers.
“I was quite a subscriber to the paper
book, until I was given a Kindle for
Christmas!” she said.
For information on eResearch, please
go to ivec.uwa.edu.au/ and click on
services. You will find contact
information and how to access iVEC’s
Twitter feed, which tweets news,
coming events and conferences.
10 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

Students give athletes a
sporting chance
Students from St George’s College are helping athletes
with intellectual disabilities – and learning some
lessons themselves.
Medical student Kirsten Bennett, who has signed up for
a second year of mentoring with the Athletes Leadership
Program, said she had learned from the young woman she
mentored that life did not need to be as complicated as we
make it.
“The athletes have really taught us lessons about life,” said
Kirsten, who, along with the other St George’s residents, has
volunteered to be involved again this year, even though some
of them have graduated.
The Special Olympics program complements the Paralympics,
where athletes with physical disabilities compete nationally
and internationally. Other mentors include Mark Dodd, Rose
Devereaux, Anna and Rebecca Civil, Stacie Cunningham,
Alexander Watson, Alexander McLeay, and Akram Azimi.
Richard Pengelley, Chaplain at St George’s, UWA’s Sub
Dean Community and a former Olympic water polo player,
became involved when Special Olympics WA patron
Winthrop Professor Fiona Wood recommended him to
run a mentoring program.
Assistant Professor Pengelley had run a successful mentoring
program for the West Coast Eagles football club in 2010 with
his colleagues Associate Professor Peter Whipp and Winthrop
Professor Shelda Debowski. Professor Wood was one of the
mentors in this program.
He paired seven St George’s students with a group of athletes
and set some goals for them to achieve.
Kirsten mentored Michelle, a woman in her mid-30s who plays
softball. “I’m not a sporting person myself but I welcomed the
opportunity to get to know somebody with a different
perspective and different experiences,” she said.
Dr Fiona Wood celebrating the 2011 Athlete Leadership
Program graduation with St George’s mentors and
Special Olympians in the gardens of St George’s College
Special Olympic athlete Rusty Nelligan being assisted by mentor
in the Royal Life Saving Society water safety skills session
“We would meet for coffee and talk about the training goals
Richard had set. One of the biggest challenges for the athletes
was public speaking. As part of the program, they each had
to stand up at a public event and deliver a speech. Michelle
lacked the confidence to do that; she even found writing a
speech daunting.
“So we worked a lot together on that until she was finally
able to get up and speak at a sports luncheon.”
The program is designed to train the athletes to be able to
take a place on the Special Olympics Board.
Special Olympics is more about learning skills, taking part,
getting fit, interacting socially and instilling confidence, rather
than competing to be the fastest and the strongest.
There are competitions, and WA athletes take part in nine
different sports. The next national Special Olympics meet is in
Victoria in 2014 and the international games are in Los Angeles
in 2015.
Professor Pengelley, who has now been joined by WA cricketer
Luke Towers to train the mentors, last year partnered the
mentor/athlete pairs with Eagles footballers. They attended a
training session, toured the club and some of them practised
their speeches in front of the players.
“We also had a parade at half-time during an Eagles/Dockers
Derby for athletes who had taken part in the 2011 Special
Olympics in Athens,” he said.
The Athletes Leadership Program continues this year
with 10 athletes being mentored by current or former
St George’s students.
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 11

A to Z of
nanoparticles
There can be beauty and even fun in the shapes that
scientists find in nanoparticles.
Visiting research fellow in the School of Physics, Dr Lucia
Gutierrez-Marruedo, noticed a few years ago that some magnetic
nano-particles resembled letters of the alphabet. So she started
collecting them.
Dr Gutierrez recently found the last few to complete her set
of 26 while working in the Bio-Magnetic group at UWA, her
postdoctorate position here funded by a Spanish institution.
The group has now published, tongue-in-cheek, the first magnetic
nanoalphabet, or as Dr Gutierrez-Marruedo puts it, ‘nanoalfabeto’.
Nanoalphabet!
Pictures by: M. P. Morales 1 , A. G. Roca 2 , M. Ibrahim 3 , © L. Gutiérrez 1,3 !
1 Insituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid ICMM-CSIC, Spain, 2 The University of York, UK, 3 The University of Western Australia, Australia, 2012!
Dedication to the University rewarded
Whether it was through agriculture, medicine or
innovative outreach programs, the winners of
Chancellor’s Medals dedicated most of their working
lives to the University.
Five medals are being presented during the current graduation
season for “outstanding service and significant contribution to
the University over many years”.
On 13 March, Winthrop Professor Neil Turner was honoured
for his work in dryland crops and soils. He was part of a team
that developed a successful bid for the Cooperative Research
Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture (CLIMA). He
later helped to establish CLIMA as a UWA centre. CLIMA
research has benefited farmers in Australia and all over the
world in the face of drought and land degradation.
Professor Turner was instrumental in securing Federal funds
for the new Faculty of Agriculture building on the Crawley
campus. He helped to establish research partnerships with
India and China and is still an active member of the UWA
Institute of Agriculture.
Cathy Tang came to UWA in the 1980s to study Classics –
and never left. With her first class Honours degree, she
became a tutor in Latin, then a conference organiser, then
the Manager of University House where her charm and
organisational skills shone. She became a member of the
Council of Convocation, then joined the University Senate in
1996, on which she served until 2010.
Mrs Tang is involved with the Friends of UWA Music and the
UWA Centenary Trust for Women. Her Chancellor’s Medal
was presented on 14 March.
Roger Dickinson had a significant impact on community
perceptions of the work and role of UWA. He was a pioneer
in the use of multimedia for science education and those
skills were used to reach out to high school students, to
inform them about UWA and Indigenous art.
He has forged enduring connections with State Government
departments and schools, one of the highlights being the
SPICE program, a hugely successful and popular secondary
teachers’ enrichment program, which has benefitted both
teachers and the University. He will receive his medal on
22 March.
Another agricultural scientist, Emeritus Professor Craig
Atkins, will be honoured on 28 March. He had a
distinguished career in the area of plant biochemistry and
physiology, making an outstanding contribution to the
knowledge of molecular and cellular functions of legumes,
and improving the field performance of these agriculturallyimportant
plants.
The final Chancellor’s Medallist (4 April) is Adjunct Professor
Peter Flett who enabled strong and ongoing partnerships
between the University and the State Health Department. In
various roles including Chief Executive of PathWest, Director
of the South Metropolitan Area Health Service, and Director-
General of Health, he advocated and engineered close
cooperation between the two institutions.
He secured funding for academic posts at the Armadale-
Kelmscott and Rockingham-Kwinana hospitals, which, with
the increase in numbers of medical students, have become
critical to providing quality medical education.
12 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

Doctors happy to learn new skills
Dr Tshomo, Professor Saunders and Dr Wangchuk
The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is best known
for its policy of Gross National Happiness, and UWA is
lending a hand to ensure it is achieved.
Two doctors from Bhutan are visiting Perth to further their
knowledge of cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Leading international breast cancer surgeon and researcher,
Winthrop Professor Christobel Saunders met with Dr Lungten
Wangchuk, a public health doctor from Bhutan’s Ministry of
Health, and Dr Ugyen Tshomo, Bhutan’s only gynaecologistoncologist.
After being invited by the Ministry of Health to Bhutan in 2009,
Professor Saunders developed a cancer policy and plan for
that country.
It provided better prevention and early detection of common
cancers as well as world-class national cancer care and
support.
Situated between India and China, Bhutan has a population
of 650,000 with nearly one-third living in urban areas.
The average life expectancy is 66 years and more than
80 per cent of cancers present at a late stage.
“Tackling cancer is a complex task that will be made easier
with a comprehensive plan supported by government, health
services, health professionals, academic institutions, religious
and community leaders and the people of Bhutan,” Professor
Saunders said.
“During their visit, the doctors from Bhutan are meeting cancer
specialists, clinicians and researchers, and learning how our
cancer prevention, treatment and support services work.
“We hope that the knowledge they gain from their time here will
help them in their practice and teaching at home in Bhutan.”
The visit was funded by the Cancer Council Australia, the
Australian Himalayan Foundation and The International Skills
and Training Institute in Health.
WA public health worker Michelle Hogan, who has lived and
worked in Bhutan, helped coordinate the project and is working
to foster links between Australia and Bhutan.
Being aware of gender diversity
Last year UWA was awarded the prestigious Pride in
Diversity accolade as one of the Top 10 employers in
Australia for awareness of sexual diversity.
Pride in Diversity’s program is designed specifically to support
Australian employers with their inclusion of staff of diverse
sexualities and genders.
This recognition has prompted the University to review its
current sexual diversity strategy. Since 2002 the cornerstone
of this strategy has been the Ally program, now extended to
16 other universities nationally. The University has decided to
extend the strategy with a range of new initiatives and has
recently re-established an informal network of staff on campus
who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender or Intersex.
Beverley Hill, Associate Director, Equity and Diversity, said that
as part of our PID application this year UWA was participating
in a survey to get a current sense of the campus ‘climate’ and
the extent to which we are inclusive on this matter. “We believe
the general feedback we receive from this survey will help us
to support sexual and gender diversity on campus,” she said.
“Accordingly, we are inviting staff to participate in the PID
survey. The survey is short (no more than a few minutes to
complete), and responses are completely confidential since
no identifying information is collected. The University will
only be provided with survey feedback from PID in an
aggregated format.”
To complete the survey, go to prideindiversity.com.au/
employee-survey-2012/
To access the survey, use the password: pride2012
(lowercase no spaces). You will be asked for the name of your
organisation (The University of Western Australia is the correct
description here, not UWA), and you will be asked for the UWA
security code: UWA22
The survey closes at 2pm on 30 March.
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 13

UWA News classified
Getting up close
and personal
Howard Taylor, Skeletal remains, 1958, oil on hardboard, 60.5x122 cm
The University of Western Australia Art Collection, Gift of Dr and Mrs R
K Constable, 1978, © Howard Taylor Estate
My Collection is a new project from UWA’s Cultural
Precinct in which members of the University community
choose works from the University art collection and explain
what it means to them. The chosen works will form an
ongoing exhibition.
The first in the series is a painting chosen by former Vice-
Chancellor Professor Alan Robson, one which he got to know
intimately, as it hung in the Vice-Chancellery.
“My favourite work of art within the Collection of The University
of Western Australia is Skeletal Remains by Howard Taylor. One
of my regrets in finishing my time as Vice-Chancellor is that I will
no longer admire this painting every day.
“Painted in 1960 the oil on composition board painting is a
gift to UWA by Dr and Mrs R K Constable. Ted Snell in his
wonderful book on Howard Taylor says that “The Skeletal
Remains project was very important in laying the foundation
for the artist’s exploration of the zone between painting
and sculpture”.
“I like the painting because of its symmetry and balance and
because of the reinforcing subtlety of colour with gradation of
pinks with rectangular arrangement. Ted Snell describes the
process of its creation:
“When searching for a subject to paint, the sculpture was
dismantled and the elements reassembled as a starting point
for a series of drawings. At first the elements are accurately
transcribed into two dimensions with considerable emphasis
being placed on the kinetic potential of the form.
“As the process of analysis continued the end-on view is
simplified into a bull’s-eye target and slowly the circular
elements are liberated from the central shaft and given their
own supports.
“The legs anthropomorphise the mechanical object and with
the assistance of the title the viewer is encouraged to continue
the process. Set within a desert landscape that stretches to the
horizon, the forms resemble a lizard or large insect, denuded of
its flesh yet still poised for flight.
While not understanding all this until I read Ted Snell’s account,
I have greatly enjoyed the company of this work for nearly
twenty years.”
Notice
The University of Western Australia
Academic Staff Association
Election of Officers pursuant to section 69(4) of the Industrial Relations Act 1979
ELECTION NOTICE
Nominations are called from eligible candidates for the election of:
• President (1)
• Vice President (1)
• Secretary (1)
• Treasurer (1)
• Ordinary Member of the Committee of Management (6)
The above positions are for a one year term commencing from 1 July 2012.
Nominations will be accepted from Thursday 15 March 2012.
Nomination forms are to be completed in accordance with the Rules of The
University of Western Australia Academic Staff Association and must reach the
WA Electoral Commission by 12pm on Monday 2 April 2012.
Nomination forms and lodgement instructions are available from the UWAASA
office: uwaasa@cyllene.uwa.edu.au
Cathy King
RETURNING OFFICER
Paris Accommodation
A 17th century convent in Paris is available for UWA staff accommodation
through the French Department of the School of Humanities.
Les Récollets has 81 small flats and studio apartments for visiting researchers.
The convent was converted into an international scientific and cultural
accommodation centre by the French government in 1999 and European Studies
has recently entered into a not-for-profit agreement with the centre.
Tristan Kewe, a joint PhD candidate at UWA and La Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris,
is the contact for arranging accommodation. Les Récollets is available for periods
from a week to two years. The serviced apartments are very reasonably priced
and Tristan says the agreement is able to bypass “the French habit of asking for
mountains of paperwork.”
He would like to hear from any staff member who is interested in staying there.
For more information, email tristan.kewe@arts.uwa.edu.au or
tkewe@ozemail.com.au
UniPrint’s in-house
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See UniPrint for all your
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uniprint.uwa.edu.au
14 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia

UWA News classified
RESEARCH GRANTS
Grants Awarded Between
17/02/2012 and 2/03/2012
CANCER COUNCIL OF
WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Cornelia Bertram, Biomedical,
Biomolecular and Chemical Sciences
(School of): ‘Mode and Molecular
Mechanisms of Tea Tree Oil-Induced
Tumour Cell Death in Vivo’— $24,117
(2012)
Adjunct Professor Richard Lake,
Dr Cleo Robinson, Professor Anna
Nowak, Dr Amanda Cleaver,
Winthrop Professor Bruce
Robinson, Medicine and
Pharmacology (School of): ‘A High
Fidelity Model of Malignant
Mesothelioma’— $175,000 (2012-13)
DEPARTMENT OF INNOVATION,
INDUSTRY, SCIENCE AND
RESEARCH (DIISR)
Dr Merran Smith, Child Health
Research (UWA Centre for):
‘Population Health Research Network
Education Investment Fund EIF Super
Science Initiative’— $10,000,000
(2011-12)
ILUKA RESOURCES LIMITED
Associate Professor Andrew Rate,
Assistant Professor Sally Salmon,
Dr Henning Prommer, Winthrop
Professor Zdenko Rengel, Earth
and Environment (School of):
‘Literature Review: Geochemical
Background and Mobility of Thorium
and Uranium from Mineral Sands’—
$39,942 (2012)
MONASH UNIVERSITY
EX ARC LIEF
Professor Tim Sercombe,
Mechanical and Chemical
Engineering (School of): ‘A Hot
Isostatic Press HIP for Aerospace and
Biomedical Component
Processing’—(2012)
Winthrop Professor Dongke
Zhang, Mechanical and Chemical
Engineering (School of): ‘Test Facility
for Clean Energy Transformation
Technologies’— (2012)
NATIONAL SENIORS AUSTRALIA
Professor Paul Gerrans, Professor
Doug Hershey, UWA Business
School, University of Oklahoma: ‘Role
of Financial Literacy and Financial
Anxiety in Older Australians
Retirement Savings Decisions’—
$30,833 (2012)
PRINCESS MARGARET HOSPITAL
FOUNDATION
Ruth Thornton, Paediatrics and
Child Health (School of): ‘Dissolving
the Glue in Glue Ear – Assessment of
the Use of Dornase Alfa as an Adjunct
Therapy to Ventilation Tube
Insertion’— $50,000 (2012)
ROYAL MELBOURNE INSTITUTE
OF TECHNOLOGY EX ARC
LINKAGE PROJECTS
Assistant Professor Wei Liu,
Computer Science and Software
Engineering (School of): ‘Tools
Methodologies and Reasoning
Support for Developing Companion
Toy Modules’— $5,000 (2012)
UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH
WALES EX ARC LINKAGE
PROJECTS
Winthrop Professor Cristina
Gibson, Dr Catherine Collins, UWA
Business School, University of New
South Wales: ‘LP120100690 /
Leveraging Organisational Context to
Maximise Team Performance and
Thriving – A Dynamic Approach to
Understand Team Learning Across
Diverse Settings’— $25,195 (2012-14)
UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE
EX NATIONAL ERESEARCH
COLLABORATION TOOLS AND
RESOURCES NECTAR
Paul White, Genetic Epidemiology
and Biostatistics (Centre for): ‘Cloud
Based Bioinformatics Tools’—
$306,000 (2012-13)
Promotion briefs
WINTHROP PROFESSOR
Professor Tim Colmer
School of Plant Biology
Professor Colmer’s research focus is
the identification of physiological and
biochemical traits associated with
plant adaptation to salinity and
flooding, and the regulation of these
traits. He has built an international
reputation for his research on plant
stresses and his expertise and
leadership in this field.
He has been Deputy Head of School
as well as Associate Dean (Teaching
and Learning) in the Faculty of Natural
and Agricultural Sciences. Professor
Colmer has contributed to the
School’s role in community service,
and to the wider scientific community
as Discipline Representative for the
Australian Society of Plant Scientists.
Professor Andre Luiten
School of Physics
The main feature of Professor Luiten’s
work has been the development of
new types of instruments in the many
diverse fields of physics. He is
particularly interested in the possibility
of applying these instruments to solve
problems or to make measurements
that were not previously possible.
He is dedicated to establishing a
world leading centre for Precision
Measurement at UWA that will
produce high impact research
outcomes in both fundamental and
applied disciplines, renowned for
the quality of its research training,
and which inspires and educates
the public.
He is recognised as a prominent
and highly respected expert in the
international community of precision
metrology and fundamental
measurements, and has established
strong connections with the best
scientists throughout the world. He
was named WA Scientist of the year
in 2011.
RESEARCH ASSOCIATE
PROFESSOR
Dr Matthew Nelson
School of Plant Biology
Dr Nelson has a joint appointment:
research and teaching in the School
of Plant Biology and commercial
research with Canola Breeders
Western Australia Pty Ltd. Key
themes of his research are the
characterisation and exploitation of
genetic variation within and between
species, genome evolution and the
novel and efficient applications of
microspore culture.
He is recognised both nationally
and internationally for his work in
crop genetics and breeding
particularly in the area of lupin and
brassica improvement. In this
context, Dr Nelson has developed
an active group of collaborators
which will lead to strong research
impacts in the future.
Dr Roberto Busi
School of Plant Biology
Dr Busi’s main area of research is the
theoretical and applied aspects of
herbicide resistance evolution. He
has communicated the results of his
research at numerous international
and national conferences and is
When life is not plain sailing ...
The Employee Assistance Program offers free
confidential counselling to UWA staff and immediate
family, for personal or work problems.
To arrange an appointment contact one of the following service providers
PPC Worldwide
Level 16, 251 Adelaide Tce, Perth
Tel: 1300 361 008 (24hrs)
Web: au.ppcworldwide.com
UWA Counselling and Psychological Service
2nd Floor, South Wing, Guild Village
Tel: +61 8 6488 2423 (Office Hours)
Web: counselling.uwa.edu.au
For further information on the UWA Employee Assistance Program see
safety.uwa.edu.au/policies/eap
In a campus emergency
dial 2222
widely recognised to have strong
expertise in the area of the selection
and evolution of weed resistance to
herbicides. He has participated in
outreach activities and delivered
research results to both consultants
and farmers. Currently, he is principal
investigator in a grant funded by
the Rural Industries Research and
Development Corporation:
Sustainability of Wheat-Selective
Pre-emergent Herbicides in a
Changing Climate.
In 2008 he won the best early career
publication award within the School
of Plant Biology and in 2009, the
UWA early career publication award.
He is part of the organising
committee for the international
conference, Global Herbicide
Resistance Challenge which will
be held in Perth in 2013.
Classifieds
Accommodation
London: Accommodation available
from one week to three months, at
very reasonable price. For more
information, contact: melhon@
optusnet.com.au
HOUSESITTING
Housesitter: Available for long
term from early March. In Nedlands,
Crawley, Claremont, Dalkeith,
Cottesloe, Swanbourne, Mosman
Park, North Fremantle or other areas.
Reliable, trustworthy and mature
UWA lecturer. With excellent
references and previous house sitting
experience. Recent police clearance
check. Will look after your house,
pets, garden, plants and swimming
pool. Please contact Emmanuelle:
0431 120 356.
WANTED
HOUSE WANTED: NZ family of four
are coming to UWA for a sabbatical
13 August 2012 – 13 January 2013.
We are wanting a house to rent or sit
(furnished or unfurnished) for this time
period. House would need to be
child-friendly and have 2 or more
bedrooms. Please contact Paul
Kenyon p.r.kenyon@massey.ac.nz
TO LET
QUINDALUP: A charming, recently
renovated, fully self-contained
redbrick cottage only 400m from
beautiful Geographe Bay and 2km
from Dunsborough township.
Located at the end of a private road,
this cottage offers privacy and
security, a lovely natural vista out
over Toby Inlet Reserve, and is a
great cottage for all seasons. Please
go to quindalup.net.au for further
information.
PARIS: Interested in staying in a
lovely apartment on an island in the
Seine? Choose between seven
apartments in inner city Paris for
holiday or longer term accommodation
– Ile de la Cite, Ile St Louis,
Montmartre, Le Marais, Nation,
Unesco-Pasteur. Contact Carlotta
for arrangements: carlotta@
beeinparis.com
The University of Western Australia UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 | 15

the last word …
Make Agricultural
Science a national
priority
Australia ranks fourth in the world behind Brazil,
Argentina and Netherlands as an exporter of
agricultural products.
We typically export up to 70 per cent of our output, helping
meet the food requirements of Australia’s 22 million people,
plus another 60 million overseas.
Conservative estimates suggest Australia helps feed 400-500
million people in developing countries through agricultural
education, training, development, knowledge and technology
transfer in partnership with developing countries and
International Agricultural Research Centres.
Using a wide range of indicators, including water, fertiliser and
energy use efficiency and rate of adoption of technologies
such as conservation agriculture, Australian agriculture leads
the world.
Modern society can’t thrive without access to a high level of
sustainable, economical and quality food. The challenge is to
find solutions to declining natural resources – land, water and
nutrients – and increasing human population, so investment
today in higher education in agricultural science is money well
spent for the future.
Continued long-term improvements in world food production
are fundamental to world security. Feeding the growing
population will require renewed and vigorous efforts to enhance
agricultural productivity, utilising all the advantages modern
science and technology bring.
Governments will need to increase investments in agricultural
education, research and development (R&D) – and encourage
the private sector to invest in R&D to ensure future
agricultural growth.
Farming’s viability in Australia is threatened by the current focus
on the mining and resources sector, which is pulling bright
young minds away from higher education in sciences.
UWA has a proud history of teaching and research in
agriculture and related natural resource management. We are
currently ranked 110 in the world (Academic Ranking of World
Universities 2011) and ranked 33 in the world and number one
in Australia in the Life and Agricultural Sciences category.
UWA’s agricultural science graduates enjoy a 100 per cent
employment success rate, but pay scales suffer compared
with jobs in the mining and resources sector, where unqualified
young people can enjoy $100,000+ starting salaries.
So, how do we address the challenge?
• Bridge the city-country gap with educational and awareness
programs to enthuse and inform the community, from primary
school up, of the vital importance of agriculture and food
productions systems;
• Develop co-teaching qualifications with graduate degrees in
agricultural science to place some graduates into the school
system, as champions of agricultural science;
Winthrop Professor Kadambot Siddique
Chair in Agriculture, Director UWA Institute of Agriculture,
Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Natural and
Agricultural Sciences
• Promote the diversity of employment opportunities (both
domestic and international) for agriculture science graduates;
• Close the cultural gap between industry and universities,
better define industry needs and develop closer
collaborations with commercial groups and companies
(including food processing and retailers) to increase
consumer interest in food and enable agricultural science
graduates to pursue careers where they can ‘sell’ the farming
food story;
• Rationalise the collaboration between university courses and
‘smart’ systems of delivery and encourage greater links
between metropolitan universities and rural environments,
possibly linking with local government authorities for training/
work experience;
• Encourage graduates from other disciplines to seek postgraduate
qualifications in agricultural science through
commercially funded scholarships; and
• Formalise worldwide networking of agricultural science
faculties to attract the best students and become
powerhouses of ideas and applicable science to keep the
world well fed at an affordable price.
Agriculture should be highlighted as a national priority for
education in the same way as mathematics and science are
and as nursing and education have been previously.
UWA NEWS
EDITOR/WRITER: Lindy Brophy, Public Affairs
Tel: 6488 2436 Fax: 6488 1020
Email: lindy.brophy@uwa.edu.au
Hackett Foundation Building, M360
Director of Public Affairs: Doug Durack
Tel: 6488 2806 Fax: 6488 1020
Designed and printed by UniPrint, UWA
UWAnews online: uwanews.publishing.uwa.edu.au
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16 | UWA NEWS 19 March 2012 the University of Western Australia