AAS | Events | 14-15 February 2008

Jenny Graves Jenny Graves Jenny Graves graduated from Adelaide University and received a Fulbright Award to undertake her PhD in molecular biology at the University of California in Berkeley. She was selected as the 2006 Laureate for the Asia Pacific Region L’Oreal–UNESCO Awards for Women in science.

Jenny is currently the Research Director at the Australian Research Council’s Centre for Kangaroo Genomics and Head of the Comparative Genomics Research Group at the Research School of Biological Science at the Australian National University.

Jenny Graves has a highly acclaimed international reputation for her work in mammalian genetics and comparative genomics on Australian marsupials and monotremes. Her research has raised profound questions about fundamental human biological and mammalian evolution. She has made extensive groundbreaking discoveries relating to the cell cycle, control of DNA replication, evolution of the mammalian genome and the function and the evolution of sex chromosomes.

We are starting this afternoon off with a discussion of the international dimension of the experience of postdoctoral fellows and early career researchers.

I probably don't have to tell you that science is international, and Australia really needs to be out there in the world, because we are so far away. This means we need to send our early career researchers, including postdocs and postgraduate students, out into the world, not only to gain experience and the networks that one gains overseas, but also as an advertisement for science in Australia.

My overseas experience was absolutely critical to my career. I did a PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1960s and '70s (rather accidentally, I must say) and really that gave me the foundation that my career has been built on.

It introduced me to an entirely new discipline – molecular biology was in its infancy there and I was lucky to join the first department of molecular biology. It introduced me to new friends (one of whom became my husband). It was the beginning of networks, particularly with US scientists, which have stood me in good stead for my whole life. Building up those networks is a tremendous boost. Also, it introduced me to an entirely unique culture because I was in Berkeley during the Free Speech movement, the dawn of student protest about the war, so it was a very exciting time, and those experiences too have stayed with me my whole life.

The Academy has many programs that seek to make connections with overseas academies and establishments, and sponsors exchanges involving early career researchers. We have scientific exchanges with Europe in which we send researchers for visits totalling two weeks, and about a third of the recipients are early career researchers. We have programs of scientific visits to North America as well, and again about a third of the recipients are early career researchers. We have a big program of exchanges in which we are able to send 20 early career researchers to Japan, and about the same number to Korea; those programs are undersubscribed.

We also run workshops on specific topics. There was one in the United States last year, there is one in the planning stages in Brazil and one in Indonesia, and about a third of the delegates to these are early career researchers. So there are a number of opportunities already for young people to exchange and gain new experiences. We would like to know how to help young people to make better use of these programs, and where there are gaps that possibly we could fill.

I want now to introduce our next speaker, Bryan Gaensler. He was a Sydney prodigy and the 1999 Young Australian of the Year, and he is now back in Sydney as a Federation Fellow. But there were 10 very critical years in the middle when he was in the United States, gathering new skills, new experience and new networks. I look forward to hearing him tell us how that experience changed his life.

Thank you, Bryan.

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