What drew you to science in the first instance, and later into plant genomics?

No one major event influenced me to pursue a career in science. I always enjoyed science subjects at high school, in particular Biology and Chemistry. I was also lucky to have teachers who were enthusiastic and passionate about the subjects they taught. They encouraged me to apply for a place at the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF), a forum held annually for year 12 students interested in science and technology, and I was lucky enough to be selected. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at the NYSF in Canberra and realised how many different kinds of jobs there were in science and that there were many interesting people involved in science.

I went on to study a Bachelor of Biotechnology at The University of Adelaide and became interested in molecular biology. I was fascinated by the ‘basic’ processes that go on in individual cells and how complex they actually are. I went on to undertake an honours project in Professor Jeremy Timmis’s laboratory, in the Genetics department at the University of Adelaide, investigating a small component of the molecular control of cotton fibre development. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working in a laboratory setting, but it had all happened in the blink of an eye, so I decided a PhD project would allow me to explore working in a laboratory setting for a longer period of time whilst also gaining a higher qualification.

I had been to the Waite campus of the University of Adelaide on a tour during my undergraduate degree and I realised how diverse agricultural science was and that it included many opportunities in plant molecular biology. I had also spent a week at the Australian Centre for Plant Functional Genomics (ACPFG), which is based at the Waite campus, where I did some work experience. Later on during my honours year I met with Professor Mark Tester from the ACPFG and the University of Adelaide to talk about his research projects and I decided to do a PhD in his laboratory.

Could you please give a brief overview of your studies/work and its importance to Australia?

Salinity (the level of salt in the ground) is a major stress affecting crop plant production in Australia and overseas that is expected to worsen in the coming years. Crop plants grown in salty conditions are affected by two types of stress. The first, osmotic stress, results in an immediate reduction in new shoot growth while the second, ionic stress, results in the build up of sodium and chloride ions that can be toxic to plant shoots. Each of these stresses contributes to a reduction in overall plant yield.

One of the mechanisms a plant can use to reduce salt stress is to limit the amount of sodium that is transported from the roots to the shoots to reduce the toxic effects of this ion. My PhD project was focussed around this particular mechanism of salinity tolerance and in particular focussed on a family of genes, HKT genes, identified in many plant species, which code for proteins able to transport sodium .

I investigated the HKT gene family in two plants, rice and Arabidopsis, to understand more about these genes and how the gene products (proteins) may be involved in transporting sodium within these plants. This involved comparing the location and amount of HKT gene expression between different varieties, of either rice or Arabidopsis, which differed in salinity tolerance. It also involved comparing the DNA sequences of the HKT genes between two different varieties of Arabidopsis to look for clues as to how these differences in DNA sequences might influence the differences in shoot sodium observed. A better understanding of where and how these proteins are able to transport sodium through the plant, as well as information on differences between varieties, will help to develop plants that are able to limit the amount of sodium transported from the roots to the shoots and will therefore have the potential to be more salt tolerant.

You have just finished your PhD, an amazing accomplishment. How was your experience working towards the PhD and how does it feel to be finished?

A PhD was a very challenging experience!  I feel that I have gained many skills that will be invaluable to any future career I may pursue. These include the ability to investigate and think critically, communicate effectively and have good time management and multi-tasking skills.

I enjoyed the fact that my research project involved many different tasks and activities. These included; working in a laboratory, working in growth rooms and green houses to grow plants as well as attending and presenting at local, interstate and overseas seminars and conferences. While working on a computer is still a big part of a PhD, for example analysing data, designing talks and posters and writing the final thesis, I enjoyed the fact I was able to include many of these other activities in my daily work.

Science is a very international occupation. Through my PhD I have had the opportunity to work with and meet other students and scientists from all over the world which has been both challenging and rewarding.

What has been your most memorable experience along your career path to date?

Completing my PhD has certainly been the most memorable experience to date. It was exciting to receive such positive comments from two international examiners who thought my research was relevant, interesting and will be useful for future research into the molecular control of plant salinity tolerance. I was especially proud that both examiners believed that my thesis was worthy of special recognition, which resulted in me receiving a special commendation from the Dean of Graduate Studies. I am looking forward to graduation day!

Have you faced any challenges or hurdles along the way?

The PhD as a whole is one of the most difficult challenges I have faced to date. A PhD is one of those tasks where it feels like you have been working on it forever, but at the same time it goes extremely quickly. There are plenty of highs and lows during a PhD by research, particularly when it comes to experiments in the laboratory. Some experiments just never seem to work, for any number of reasons and they have to be repeated over and over again. In the end though it is very satisfying to get a final result, whether it is what you were expecting or something different is another story!

Do you have a scientific ‘dream’? if so, what is it?

For the moment I would like to be able to continue working in research laboratories and use the skills that I have acquired during my PhD. I am currently working as a post-doctoral scientist in the laboratory of Associate Professor Vladimir Jiranek (University of Adelaide, Waite campus) using my molecular biology skills on projects related to improving wine yeast.

There is the possibility to pursue post-doctoral research interstate or overseas, but for the time being I am very happy to be able to enjoy time with friends and family without the stresses of a PhD constantly lurking! I am also able to easily keep in touch and up to date with my PhD supervisors and colleagues in regards to further progress relating to my PhD project which will allow me to continue to write papers for inclusion in scientific journals.

In the longer term I could see myself moving into science communication and/or educational roles. During my PhD I was involved in secondary school science education programs including ‘Get into Genes’ and ‘National Science Week’ as well as practical demonstrating to university undergraduate students, all of which I enjoyed.

Advice to young people interested in science?

My advice to young people interested in science would be to study a broad range of subjects at both school and university to see which you enjoy. Subjects at university can be very different to those at high school. Participate in work experience when the opportunities arise, it can help you decide if you really do enjoy something when it’s hands on rather than when you just hear about it in a lecture or see it on TV.  While it is very cliché to say ‘find something that you enjoy doing’, it can take time to actually find what that really is, keep looking until you find it!

Earlier this year, a team of researchers embarked on a scientific voyage to Antarctica, battling the brutal icy winds and hurling swells of the great Southern Ocean.

For 32-year-old Jodie Smith, the trip on the RSV Aurora Australis was her first to Antarctica, but Jodie hopes it will not be her last.

“I’m absolutely hooked, I’m hoping to get back down there as soon as I can,” Jodie said.

Working in collaboration with Australian Antarctic Division scientists and under the direction of survey leader Dr Steve Rintoul from the CSIRO Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research, Jodie was part of a marine science survey to the Mertz Glacier region. The survey studied a previously inaccessible area of the seafloor which was exposed after a 78 kilometre long section of the Mertz Glacier broke off in early 2010.

“We essentially wanted to investigate three things. The first was to find out what, if anything was living underneath the Mertz Glacier.

“The second was to look at areas scoured by icebergs, which can wipe out entire regions of the sea floor.  We wanted to know how quickly ecosystems could re-establish after being scoured by drifting icebergs.

“And the third thing was to study cold-water corals that grow in canyons along the shelf break below the depth of icebergs,” she said

By using an array of underwater cameras and sensors, the team made discoveries with implications for environmental protection policy and marine science worldwide.

The cold water coral communities, for example, were first identified in 2007 off the shelf of George V Land and were later identified as Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems.

This work has since been able to confirm that the corals are fuelled by nutrient-rich water as it cascades off the continental shelf.  This finding enables scientists to predict the likely location of other coral communities, and inform policy agencies, enabling them to take the necessary steps to help improve biodiversity conservation and fisheries management in the Southern Ocean.

On investigating the area uncovered by the Mertz Glacier, the team discovered that life did indeed exist on the seafloor in the area previously covered by the glacier and they gathered data in this area never before seen by humans. This data provides valuable baseline information of the area and will be used to see how ecosystems that were previously living under an ice tongue respond and adapt over time.

They also used satellite imagery and bathymetry data to predict where iceberg scours may have occurred and collected photos in these areas to see if there had been any recolonisation by marine life.

“Unfortunately, some very large icebergs prevented us getting to several areas of interest, but this is just one of those things you have to contend with when working in a place like Antarctica”.

For Jodie, the voyage opened her eyes to an exciting, mysterious world of Antarctic science.

“I’ve always been interested in Antarctic science, but never really pursued it.  It was only as I was finishing a project studying human impacts on nutrient cycles up in Darwin that the opportunity came up to join the Antarctic Geoscience Project at Geoscience Australia,” she said.

Since then, she’s never looked back and hopes to do more work in Antarctica in the future.

“It would be nice to be on land next time.  The cold I could handle, it was the Southern Ocean I was terrified of.  On the way home, we experienced 7 – 10 metre swells for two days straight, it’s almost impossible not to be sea sick in those conditions!”

Jodie commenced her career with a Bachelor of Environmental Science and a PhD at the University of New South Wales.

“My interest in science was sparked from a young age which I spent growing up on Norfolk Island. We spent a lot of time exploring the island, from beaches and coral reefs, to mountains and lush rainforest. I was always fascinated by the variety of landscapes and how they got there. Studying environmental science was a perfect fit for me. And I loved research and looking for ways to manage environmental problems so continuing on to do my PhD was a natural progression”.

Since then, Jodie has applied her knowledge of environmental geochemistry to water bodies around the world – from Vietnamese water supplies, to Darwin Harbour and now to the Southern Ocean.

As a woman in science, Jodie feels there have been few barriers to her career in Australia, and in her field there are plenty of women.

However she did face some limitations on what she could do as a woman during her time as a volunteer water quality officer in Vietnam, but she acknowledges this was due to cultural differences and was part of the experience of working in a foreign country.

“Being flexible and willing to try new things is definitely an advantage, and I have been fortunate enough to work in some amazing places around the world”.

To learn more about Jodie’s research on the Antarctic marine science voyage visit the Geoscience Australia news page.

Image: Copyright Geoscience Australia

The only reliable way to find out whether the internal structures of an aircraft are corroded is to pull the plan apart and look.  But new nanotechnology-based techniques being developed by physicists including Professor Tanya Monro, of the University of Adelaide could make costly visual inspection in preventative aircraft maintenance a thing of the past.

SCIENCE AT THE BOUNDARIES

L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships

Professor Sackett recently sent a congratulatory video message to the winners of the L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships.

Globally L’Oreal’s support For Women in Science has three tiers:

1. $100,000 L’OREAL-UNESCO For Women in Science Awards -- awarded annually to five outstanding female scientists chosen across the world.
2. $40,000 UNESCO-L’OREAL Women in Science International Fellowships -- awarded annually to 15 young life scientists across the world.
3. $20,000 L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships -- awarded annually to three Australian scientists.

This year (2009) the L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships winners are:

• Tamara Davis, University of Queensland, Brisbane/University of Copenhagen
• Marnie Blewitt, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne
• Zenobia Jacobs, University of Wollongong

Zenobia Jacobs

University of Wollongong

Zenobia Jacobs wants to know where we came from, and how we got here. When did our distant ancestors leave Africa and spread across the world? Why? And when was Australia first settled?

These are difficult and controversial questions. But Zenobia has a deep understanding of time and how to measure it. She has developed a way of accurately dating when individual grains of sand were buried with human artefacts. And that technique is transforming our understanding of human evolution.

As a child growing up in the shadow of the Kruger National Park, Zenobia Jacobs was surrounded by archaeological artefacts ‘lying around’. At university she ‘fell in love’ with archaeology and became an expert in chronology.

She uses a dating technique known as optically stimulated luminescence (OSL). It relies on subtle changes in sand grains due to the decay of tiny amounts of radioactive elements present in all natural deposits. The energy of some of these reactions is stored and only released when light strikes the grain. If the sand is buried then the energy is trapped and can be released in Zenobia’s laboratory- revealing how long the sand, and the human artefacts it was associated with, were buried.

Zenobia has fine tuned OSL, turning it into a robust tool that she used to reveal the appearance and disappearance of communities at caves along the southern coastline of South Africa.

She found a community that had been living relatively sophisticated lives-harvesting shellfish and using ochre pigments for decoration-more than 160,000 years ago, about 120,000 years earlier than previously thought.

These studies also helped win Zenobia and her colleagues a US$2.5 million National Science Foundation grant in 2006 to develop a detailed archaeological, climate and environmental record for South Africa from 400,000 to 30,000 years ago.

Now her work has brought her to the University of Wollongong to work with Prof Bert Roberts, one of the team who discovered the Flores ‘hobbit’.

“Bert has done more than any other to develop single-grain OSL dating. It’s simply the best lab in the world for my work. I could not ask for more anywhere else.”

And settling in Australia has also allowed her to expand her work. Already she and Bert have used OSL to suggest that the giant marsupials of Tasmania became extinct within a few thousand years of human migration into the area via a land bridge about 43,000 years ago.

And now, with her $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship, she wants to track the movement of the Aboriginal people into and throughout Australia.

“It’s of incredible relevance to the whole ‘Out of Africa’ theory. When did our ancestors leave Africa? Why? Which routes did they chose and how quickly did they disperse?”

Background

Qualifications

2004                     PhD (Science), University of Wales, Aberystwyth, UK

1999                     Bachelor of Arts, Honours (Archaeology), University of Stellenbosch, South Africa

Career highlights, awards, fellowships and grants

2009                    Senior Research Fellow, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong

2008                    Australian Research Council grant: The future of palaeolimate and archaeological research in Australia: next generation instrumentation for chronology and environmental reconstruction

2008                    Vice Chancellor’s Emerging Researcher Award, University of Wollongong

2007                    Australian Research Council grant: A stable-isotope mass spectrometer for novel determinations of past temperatures

2006                   Australian Research Council grant: Out of Africa and into Australia: Robust chronologies for turning points in modern human evolution and dispersal

2006                   National Science Foundation (USA) HOMINID Grant: Palaeoclimatic and palaeoenvironmental context of the origins of modern humans in South Africa: Constructing a detailed record from 400,000 – 30,000 years ago

2006 -2008          Research Fellow, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Wollongong

2003 -2005          Scientist, Environmentek, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Pretoria, South Africa

2001-2003           British Council Overseas Research Student Scholarship for PhD studies in the UK

Research highlights

• 25 journal articles and reviews including 15 as first author, and two book chapters
• More than 30 presentations at Australian and international conferences and institutions including six invited conference presentations
• Part of the team whose discoveries at Blombos Cave, South Africa, have forced a reassessment of when and where Homo sapiens first developed modern behaviour
• In 2007, she co-authored a publication in Nature, reporting evidence that modern humans living 165,000 years ago along the southern Cape coast of South Africa had a far more complex lifestyle than seen anywhere else in the world at that time

For further detail on the L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships, please visit http://www.scienceinpublic.com/blog/category/loreal

Tamara Davis

University of Queensland/University of Copenhagen

In 1998 astronomers made an astonishing discovery-the expansion of the Universe is not happening at a steady rate, nor is it slowing down toward eventual collapse. Instead, it is accelerating. The discovery required a complete rethink of the standard model used to explain how the Universe works.

“Now we know that stars, planets, galaxies and all that we can see make up just four per cent of the Universe,” says Tamara Davis, a University of Queensland astrophysicist.

“About 23 per cent is dark matter. The balance is thought to be dark energy, which we know very little about.”

Tamara is on the hunt for this dark energy. By using the Australian National University’s new telescope SkyMapper to measure the movement of supernovae, she hopes to gain a better understanding of dark energy.

“Supernovae are extremely bright stellar explosions. Because we know how bright they are we can use them as ’standard candles’ to accurately measure distance and motion across the Universe,” Tamara says. “By measuring how fast supernovae are moving, and comparing that to what we expect based on current theories, we may be able to trace the dark matter and energy as well as the visible matter.”

And the SkyMapper telescope offers some unique opportunities for mapping the Universe.

“SkyMapper takes images that are 25 times larger than the full moon. This lets it scan the southern sky once every four days,” she says. “Only a few years ago it took the best telescopes a year to cover the same area. This allows us to look at a much bigger region of the nearby Universe, rather than zeroing in on single objects or distant galaxies.”

Using the SkyMapper data generated over the next couple of years, Tamara hopes to detect invisible dark matter by observing the effects of its gravity.

“We can use the motion of supernovae (not just their position) to measure the 3D distribution of all matter in the Universe, not just galaxies,” she explains. “This will allow us to measure previously unexplored properties of dark matter and dark energy.”

But a complicated study like this requires a lot of scientists with expertise in various areas from observational analysis to theoretical physics. Tamara plans to use her $20,000 L’Oréal Australia For Women in Science Fellowship to pull together an international team of scientists to work on this project.

And she has the runs on the board to do this. She’s already collaborated with many of the leaders in the field including Nobel Laureate George Smoot and Shaw and Gruber prize winners Brian Schmidt, Adam Riess and Saul Perlmutter.

“I’ve been privileged enough to be a member of a number of fantastic teams in my career to date. The Fellowship gives me the chance to establish my own all-star team,” Tamara says.

Background

Qualifications

2004                      PhD (Astrophysics), University of New South Wales
(winner of best Science PhD from UNSW that year)

1999                      Bachelor of Science, First Class Honours (Physics and Astronomy), University of New South Wales

1999                      Bachelor of Arts (Philosophy), University of New South Wales

Career highlights, awards, fellowships and grants

2008                      Research Fellow, School of Mathematics and Physics,
University of Queensland

2008                       Associate Professor, Dark Cosmology Centre
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2006-2007              Postdoctoral Fellow, Dark Cosmology Centre,
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Denmark

2005-2009              SuperNova Acceleration Probe team to develop a new space telescope for US Department of Energy/NASA

2004-2005              Postdoctoral Fellow, Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Australian National University

Research highlights

• 24 journal articles and reviews, including six as first author, and two book chapters that in total have over 1,000 citations
• Frequent visits to international laboratories to collaborate and learn new techniques (incl. Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, NASA Goddard Spaceflight Ctr, U. Chicago, Princeton, U. British Columbia, U. Copenhagen, U. Oslo, Imperial College London, Cambridge)
• Participated in the ESSENCE supernova survey which discovered over two hundred supernovae and used these to measure the changing expansion rate of the Universe. Used this data to rule out two of the leading alternative cosmological models based on quantum theories of gravity
• Jointly made the first unambiguous detection of time dilation due to the expanding Universe. This was cited amongst the journal Nature’s research highlights for August 2008
• With the Australian team WiggleZ’ making the largest ever three-dimensional map of the distribution of galaxies in the Universe, in order to test new cosmological theories that explain dark energy

For further detail on the L’OREAL Australia For Women in Science Fellowships, please visit http://www.scienceinpublic.com/blog/category/loreal