 It's this thing of like, fail, fail, fail, fail, win. Science is great like that, so keep becoming back. People think there's a right way to go through this. There's one right pathway. That's what you get told all the way through school. Go, you know, do this, do this, do this. Do this, do this, do this. And you need to know the secret of how to get to the best outcome. And I don't think there is a best outcome. I think it's my way of saying I just basically randomly drifted through life and I've wound up here. I'm Jack. I'm a third year Bachelor of Philosophy Science student at A&U and mainly focusing on synthetic biology and chemical biology. I'm a professor in the research world of chemistry and the research world of biology. And I'm also a chief scientific officer at a company called SEMSARA Eco. So we're here today so I can ask Colin some questions about what he does and if he has any advice for someone wanting to explore a career in the same area. So at a dinner party, how would you explain what you do? I don't really go to dinner parties. I'm too busy. I would just say, yeah, I'm a researcher. We do research into understanding how enzymes work and trying to make them do useful things for us, for people. What would you think is a kind of key turning point in your career? I think at one point I realised that the work I do isn't for me. So I think there's tendency at the start of your career you're just doing stuff that you find interesting. And it took me, we were able to realise that you have to be doing work that other people find interesting. Getting paid by the taxpayer, right? So it shouldn't really be just doing work that is cool and interesting. You should be doing work that is, you know, going to help. The people who are paying for it, yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, thinking about who's paying for the research and why you're doing the research and you're not doing it just to satisfy your own curiosity. How important was your undergraduate degree in kind of shaping your career? I'll be honest, I didn't go to many lectures. It was important to do the research. So there are a few things that I started to get interested in around third year. Yeah, so I think it was, it was important. If you're in my position now, thinking about going into one of the new synthetic biology startups in Australia would you recommend doing a PhD or would you recommend? I would recommend doing a PhD because you've had sort of qualification inflation over the last 20 years and that used to be not many people had a PhD. Now lots of people have a PhD. Now lots of people have PhDs and so not having a PhD can limit you in terms of your career progression. Yeah, okay. And that lots of positions when you start getting to that level will start to require a PhD. Yeah, you don't think you've gained just as much experience four years in industry as you would four years in a lab? Probably not in the sense that an industry and I know this because this is sort of what we're doing you're basically, there's not a lot of freedom to learn like it's we need these results in three months and you have to just do this and I know you want to look at these other things but we don't have the time. What would be your dream project to work on? Sleeping. Let's get lots of projects. Yeah, I don't really buy the idea of dream projects either. Like it's, you know, I think, you know, it's one of these things of like people having dream jobs and dream projects and things. I don't think it's for real. I think like you just have to, you know, any project can be good and, you know, if you have crazy expectations of a dream job or a dream project, which you don't. You're only going to be let down. Because they don't actually exist. Let's check. Thanks for talking to me. No worries. It's a pleasure.