AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE WORKSHOP 2008

Enhancing the quality of the experience of postdocs and early career researchers
The Shine Dome, Canberra, 14–15 February 2008

Welcome
by Professor Kurt Lambeck PresAA, FRS

Welcome, everybody, to the Australian Academy of Science and to this workshop on early-career researchers in science. (I should immediately add than when I use the word science it will generally be as an abbreviation for the much broader range of disciplines including mathematics and technology.) The future of Australian science is something that the Academy is very concerned about and one thing that underwrites a good future is to ensure that there are quality careers for the next generation of leading research scientist in our universities, research laboratories and industry, and that there is an adequate support system for them during their early years.

We are not alone in this concern and it is a particular pleasure to welcome Senator the Honourable Kim Carr – our new minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research – whose Government has responded to our concerns with the creation of a 1000 new mid-career research positions over the next five years. I also welcome Professor Margaret Sheil, the relatively recently appointed CEO of the Australian Research Council, who has been given the responsibility of administering these Fellowships, and Professor Warwick Anderson, the CEO of the National Health and Medical Research Council. That you are both here attests to the importance of the subject before us.

I also welcome the speakers whose experiences will guide us in our discussions and I welcome you, the next generation of scientists who I hope will come away from this meeting with ideas that you can use in your own career development and which you can share with your peers.

The Academy has long recognised the need to support scientists at the early stages of their careers to give them the best chance to succeed, innovate and achieve their best. We see this as one of our core responsibilities and we try to do this in a number of ways.

Thus, the Academy has provided support for early- and mid-career researchers through events such as the annual Researcher Think Tank program, the Australian Frontiers of Science symposia, and the many Science at the Shine Dome activities. In the past the outcomes of these programs have finished up on the desks of high-level science policy decision makers, including the Prime Minister's Science Engineering and Innovation Council. The Academy also preferentially supports early and mid-career researchers through our international programs of bilateral and multi-lateral research exchanges and conferences and out of some of these have emerged significant long-term international science and technology cooperation.

We realise that we can only reach a small part of the community through these activities but I hope that incremental drops do ultimately lead to an improved landscape for scientific research in Australia.

Why do we do this? We do it because we believe that Australia deserves a prosperous, healthy, educated and vibrant society. One that is characterised by a diversified economy not based only on the exploitation of natural resources but also on its intellectual resources. We believe that such a society must be strongly science and technology based, and internationally competitive in the creation and use of knowledge. To achieve this where better to start than to ensure that researchers have support systems during the early years of their careers; when they are often most productive yet faced with the great challenges in other areas of their lives.

Thus this workshop is another initiative of the Academy to support Australian researchers, one that has been made possible through the generous sponsorship of the Australian Research Council.

The idea of this workshop is to provide our young scientists with key skills at a crucial point in their careers. Researchers today face a large array of challenges. Having been trained almost exclusively in research, they are suddenly expected to become expert teachers, PhD supervisors, to be accomplished in publishing, public speaking and in raising the public awareness of science, and in seeking financial support for and managing their laboratories and research teams. All this while keeping ahead in their respective fields, and all this at a time of juggling the balance between professional and personal lives. Hopefully, we will learn a few things here to help you in this.

The Academy will capture key elements of this two-day workshop for sharing with other early-career researchers who are unable to be here today. To make this effective, one key purpose of the workshop is to obtain crucial evaluation and continuing feedback from the researchers here today. You will have the opportunity to tell the Academy what skills and mentoring you feel will be needed by scientists entering careers in Universities, research institutes, industry and government agencies. The outcomes of the workshop will then be used to create a best-practice guide for research management for wider use. I will no doubt wish that I had had access to such a guide some 30+ years ago.

At this point, I'd like to welcome Senator the Honourable Kim Carr to open this workshop and thank him for his time today. On behalf of the Academy I congratulate Senator Carr on his appointment as Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and wish him well in this position. We look forward to working with you and your Government in the days, months and years ahead.

Senator Carr has served in a range of portfolios since entering the Senate in 1993. This includes acting as the Shadow Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research. Thus it is not a surprise that he has hit the ground running since becoming the new minister, announcing a wide range of key policy decisions. These include:

• appointment of an advisory council to the ARC to restore independence of the Council,
• establishment of Industry Innovation Councils to support the Enterprise Connect network,
• a review of the CRC program including the restoration of public benefit as a primary objective of the program, and
• a comprehensive review of Australia's national innovation system incorporating a 10-point innovation plan,

Minister, we wish you well in the execution of these policy decisions, particularly in the last. The decisions announced so far indicate that your Government is committed to creating a framework for Australia's future in which science and technology research and development play a central role.

Minister, I invite you to address us.