 Welcome to the first of a series of talks and tours about science at the University of Adelaide. So my name is Sandy Stacey. I'm the head of school of physical sciences here and if you come to the talk at 12.30 by my colleague Andrew McKinnon you'll find out the physical sciences involves chemistry, physics and earth science. We also have schools of biological science, agriculture, food and wine and animal and vet science and each school will be doing a presentation like this about a half an hour and those are listed in the booklet right in the very front. We also have a number of talks about science, some tours of our facilities and I think most people walking in were given the sheet outlining those and if not there are plenty of people afterwards who can give you that. So there's a lot going on today and then of course we've got the Big Marquis and lots of people very willing and happy to talk to you about opportunities in science and also about what life is like as a student at the University of Adelaide. So this is a really exciting time to be entering university or thinking about university or going into the job market. It's also kind of a scary time because the world is changing so so quickly. Climate change of course is a big aspect of this and so 2016 was the hottest ever recorded. So the acceleration of climate change is increasing. We've seen a lot of issues with coastal erosion in Adelaide this year and some doom and gloom predictions. A lot of work will go into that type of stuff involving all types of science from biodiversity and stabilizing dunes to the effect of hard protection on coastal systems to marine life. Lots of opportunities there. Coral bleaching has been another thing that's been in the news big time and again big challenges there but also big opportunities. And another thing that's really taking off is what's called disruptive technology. So this is technology that changes the way things work you know and the internet is a big one for us. So I'm old enough and some of the parents in the room are old enough to remember when we didn't have the internet we didn't have email. And we certainly you know didn't have these things in our pockets. So we're seeing a rise of a whole bunch of technological things but then they change society as a whole. And then on the science end there's a lot happening now with renewable energy with improved batteries. So we're starting to see that solar power isn't just transient but it can be stored. So lots of science around that lots of science around advanced materials capturing energy for example hydrogen batteries. So it's a very very rapidly changing world. And that's really important to think about because if you're a potentially university student you graduate at age 21 22 you're going to be working for at least 50 years. That's pretty scary. And the jobs that you start with will not be the jobs that you end with. So right now we're seeing this is a slide from 2014 that in Australia on average people have five careers over their lifetime. They make big changes in what they do. Okay think about how much more that's going to change in the next 50 years or 55 years with all these disruptive technologies and with these big global challenges. So here are just some ideas of jobs that didn't exist and exist now. I asked developer being number one this is from LinkedIn by the way. So again you know we didn't used to have these things in our pockets. Now it's a huge industry and it's already starting to wane. So the last time I was at the airport half the people in the queue in front of me were checking in online with their watches. Okay so in 10 years time will you just be thinking it? Who knows. Okay so all that's going to change. Data scientist that's something that's really exploded and will probably continue to explode in different ways. So we're surrounded by big data and then how do you we make use of that. Okay so there's just some big big jobs right now that didn't exist 10 years ago. Again try to imagine what the jobs might be 10, 20, 30 years hence you can't. So what you've got to do is you've got to develop skills. And another reason for that is that there are a lot of estimates now that a lot of jobs that exist today won't exist in 10 years time because of the rise of automation. So robots are getting smarter and smarter our technology is getting much better and this is an estimate for example from Syro saying that 44% of Australian jobs are under threat of automation. And some of that is stuff that we're seeing pretty commonly starting to be pretty common driverless cars for example. Do you need taxi drivers when you can have an automated car that comes and picks you up and takes you wherever? Same thing with trucks that type of stuff lots of transport issues but also lots of things you might not think about. Eye surgery for example is starting to become automated. You look at those and you go oh geez could you imagine lying there looking up at one of those robots and then you think well you know what their hands don't shake. But that type of stuff things that we wouldn't think of as being requiring pretty high level skills are more and more being able to be automated. And so there's already stories going out you know has the uprising already begun. There's talks about do you need accountants for example because they have to understand the tax code. Well do I need to go to a physical person with all my receipts and all my stuff to do my taxes or can a robot do it? Okay so that type of stuff. And so if you're going to be employed for the next 50 or 60 years in this environment you've got to be able to do things that robots can't do and you've got and that means you've got to be able to think. And so the skills that are so so important now and in the future are critical thinking, are problem solving, are understanding data, understanding methods, really analyzing things and coming up with stuff that's new. Because robots can do the same thing over and over and over again. They can be taught to process some level of information but they can't come up with the things that are new. Okay and that's what scientists do. And as it turns out these are exactly the skills that employers really value. So this is a survey of about a thousand employers. It was done by the Office of the Chief Scientist a year ago. The number one skill is active learning, learning on the job. And that makes sense because again a lot of the jobs don't exist now. You can't be trained for those. You've got to come in and you've got to learn. And a lot of big employers, the government, a lot of big industry run what are called graduate programs. So they take people who've graduated from uni and then they train them in their specifics for their employment. But what they do is they build on the skills they've got. So they want the students to come with the skills and then they can train them about the specifics. So the employers want being able to think on the job, learn on the job. They want critical thinking. They want problem solving. They want interpersonal skills. You've got to be able to work and play well together. And then things like time management, show up for work, that kind of stuff. And it isn't until you get to number nine that it's the occupational specific skills. So if they want somebody to work in field X, you don't have to necessarily have a lot of training in that field as long as you've got the skills. And that again is really important in a changing world. And it's the importance of STEM skills, which is the reason that the state government is putting so much money now into STEM and to science, technology, engineering and math. And so the state government absolutely believes that the future of the state is around having highly trained STEM professionals who may not necessarily work in STEM, but will work, but will use those skills. And so you've probably seen the announcement recently that the government has put in 250 million into schools to refurbish or redevelop facilities for STEM. They're also providing private schools with 250 million in loans to do exactly the same thing. And the reason for that is the estimate that 75% of jobs in the next 10 years will need STEM skills. So again, the government's putting a lot of money into that. In addition, South Australia is really positioning itself to be the science and technology state. So defense is a huge thing. You all know the defense white paper, the submarine build. So there's going to be a lot of defense related science and technology jobs. Okay, and we don't know exactly what those will look like. Some of it you can think about some of it will change again, with the rise of automation. But there's a whole set of career paths in that area. And an indication of that this is a big international company. It's based in the UK. It's Australia offices in Brisbane. And they're pulling out of Brisbane, and they're relocating to Adelaide. Okay, and they do a lot of stuff with defense. They also do a lot of stuff with nuclear. And of course, we have no idea what's going to happen. And with the nuclear agenda in South Australia. Another thing is food. And again, the government is putting a lot of money into food and a lot of effort into supporting a food strategy for the whole Northern Corridor. And that involves everything from food technology to better ways of growing food, to work that we do at the Wake campus, which is looking at the conditions under which crops grow well and adapting them for changing conditions. Agriculture is getting much more technological. So we're using drones to monitor crop growth, for example, a lot of work being done in that. This picture on the bottom is Sundrop Farms. This is in the Port Augusta area where they're using concentrated solar to run greenhouses desalinate water. So it's all essentially a closed system powered by the sun and growing tomatoes. At the moment, probably other things in the future. So again, lots of opportunities in science, but requiring these STEM skills. But again, just just remember that science skills don't necessarily, you don't have to pursue a linear path. So you might study chemistry and end up going on and being a chemist, but you might study chemistry and do something else. And this is a picture from Geoscience, which I'm parochial because I'm a geoscientist. And so this is from the US where people who've gotten an undergraduate degree in Geoscience, and these are sectors they've gone on to work in. So the nonprofits, some stay in academia, government, industry research, but also the types of jobs people with undergraduate degrees in Geoscience pursue. Some stay in science, some go into education, some into policy, business law. So again, it's about the skills and using those skills. So if you study science at the University of Adelaide, what do you learn? And why should you study science here? One reason is our programs and the variety of programs that we offer. When you come to university, you're 18, 19 in general, 17, maybe. How can you really know what it is you want to do? You're interested in science, maybe you like physics, maybe you like math, maybe you like chemistry, biology, maybe you're not sure. Maybe and you come here, you don't really know what you want to do. The BSC gives you a lot of flexibility. So the general Bachelor of Science so that you can say, well, okay, I'm going to take some biology. I'll try a geology course. I'm going to try some, you know, a bit of physics, I'll do a bit of math, and I'll see what it is I like. And by final year, you major in something, well, you've figured it out what it is you really like to do. And I'm an American originally, as you probably got from the accent, I really liked that approach. I mean, I went to university thinking I was going to major in journalism, I ended up doing a degree in geology, PhD in geophysics, and now I'm head of a science school at university, you know, so it's that kind of path. So the BSC gives you that flexibility. We've also got the BSC advanced, which gives you a research component to it. And so this is geared more towards people who think that they want research careers, or they want to do or probably more likely to go on and do graduate work. Okay, doesn't mean that people do the general BSC can't do graduate work as well, or that people do the advanced have to go that way. But it has a research component. And it's harder to get into it requires an HR of 95. And then we also have name degrees. So there are people who really do know what they want to do. And they're really interested in wine, for example. And so they go to the weight and they study viticulture, or they're really interested in some in wildlife conservation biology, or geology, or animal science. Okay, so we have those options as well. And flexibility. So if you start and you say, Well, I'm going to do x. And then you say, Well, actually, I didn't like that, you can switch. Okay, so you're not locked in for life. So we've got that big more key outside, there'd be a lot more people to talk to you about the specifics of this. So they can tell you what you would be studying who you'd be studying with how it works. What sets the University of Adelaide apart from the other universities in South Australia is that we're very, very strong in research. So most of you would have heard about the discovery or the detection of gravitational waves recently. A team of physicists in my school contributed to that. So they developed a wavefront sensor that was built here in Adelaide. It was installed in Lego in the US. And it was part of that detection. Okay, and that same group that's a lot of work with lasers. And a lot of that work is directly relevant to defense. And so we've got a post stock in that group who's funded by defense right now. We expect that to really take off. We do in the faculty a lot of work with understanding essentially proteins and how they affect health. And so this is a picture where this turns out there's a protein that causes cataracts. And so what some colleagues of mine have done is that they developed a molecule that binds to that protein and prevents it from causing cataracts. They've tested it in mice at the moment. It works. They've gotten some money to develop it further. And the hope is eventually there will be an eye drop that you can put in and that will prevent cataracts. Okay, in animal science work at understanding how diseases develop and how various things develop in utero. So or in Ovo in this case. So this is a chicken embryo and trying to understand in this case how the gut develops. Out at the weight, we have a plant accelerator. And so the idea is that you can grow plants under a series of very, very controlled conditions. You monitor them automatically daily, and you understand what the effects of different things are on that plant growth. So for example, if the water is slightly saline, what is the effect of that on those plants? Okay, so very, you know, cutting edge research being done out there. This is my favorite picture of the lot. This is a synchrotron image of a plant. This plant is a part of a group of plants that take up metals naturally. And so the green in this picture is nickel. And so these plants can be used for bioremediation of mining sites. So that you've got tailings piles, you can grow these plants, they'll pull the nickel out, so they help remediate the site, and then you can actually mine the plants themselves for very pure nickel. Okay, so that's more research that's happening here at Adelaide. And the great thing about Adelaide is that we do this really, really good research, and then we share that with the students, so that we have what's called small group discovery, where every student works in small groups with academics who are doing cutting edge research. Okay, so you learn from the best people, and you develop the best skills by learning from the best people. We also as a university have a big push to be global. So we send students, we exchange programs, we send students overseas, we have study tours overseas, a group from biological sciences came back recently with a great video from Southeast Asia. We have short programs that are overseas as well. So it's again part of the careers of the future, it's a global world. And so we do everything we can to give our students the opportunity to get out and see the world. Employability obviously is a big issue. Again, a lot of jobs of the future, but where have our current students gone? Well, this is a snapshot from one year's set of graduates and where they've gone globally. A lot of people in Europe, Southeast Asia, some in North America. And here's a few examples. So Sarah and Peter both studied physics, theoretical physics. Sarah works for an energy company now in Melbourne, but she's basically a financial analyst there. Peter is working in financial services in Sydney. So they're using those quantitative skills that they got from physics, but applying it in finance. And as it turns out, the biggest employer of physics graduates is finance because of the skills. Jodi and Ella both studied environmental science. Jodi is actually now working as an environmental scientist and is still here at Adelaide. Ella has listed their climate change professional, but she's working for Australia Ethical Investment. So she's working for an investment firm but using her knowledge of environmental science and of climate change. Tammy did food science and she now works for Deloitte as a consultant. Here are two recent chemistry graduates we were just in touch with last week to ask them what their degree meant to them. So Patrick is working as an environmental scientist and as you can see he says, studying at the University of Adelaide helped me develop good problem solving and critical thinking skills which enabled me to gain employment in a difficult job market. And Sophie who's working as a technical officer for skincare manufacture, so fairly non-linear career. I've been able to apply the problem solving technical report writing and data handling skills that I developed during my degree to the everyday requirements of my role. So just a couple of examples again of skills. So my advice to the people in this room and you hear this over and over, pick a passion not a profession, but it's really really true because if you study what you like, you go into what you enjoy, you'll do well at it. If you do something because you think you should because you know your mother was a lawyer or you're going to make a lot of money if you go into finance, then you're probably not going to like it. And do you really want to spend 50 years doing something you don't want to like? You don't like? So pick what you're interested in, develop your skills and I just want to end with a couple of comments from the chief scientist. So this was an address he gave the end of last month because you hear this talk about job ready and there was a very good article in the conversation recently saying that university science is not about training job ready graduates, it's about changing job capable graduates. So the difference, and this is from the chief scientist, job ready graduates might not be adaptable and run the risk of being left behind in the ebb and flow of technology driven disruption. Job capable graduates, people who are flexible, people who have skills will ride the tides as you'd want them to and then finally again from the chief scientist as long as a perfect match of discipline training to career is a social expectation we'll work very hard to fall forever short of the goal to simply pointless to pursue. What we offer instead is something worth having the capacity to adapt to change and the appetite to bring it about. We're in a world of change and as scientists you can adapt to it and also bring it about. Thank you.