An Interview with Felice Driver
of C-Qentec Diagnostics
Andrea Mettenmeyer
CSIRO Entomology
As a recent Science graduate, now working for CSIRO, I have a great interest in the career paths of fellow female scientists. In a recent interview with Felice Driver of C-Qentec Diagnostics I discovered that not all women in Science follow a direct path through postgraduate research degrees to post doctoral and higher research positions in academic environments.
Felice Driver is the R&D Manager of C-Qentec Diagnostics, a newly formed subsidiary of Aventis CropScience. Their business is to produce diagnostic tests and techniques for Australian farmers, being involved in all stages of research and development through to production and marketing. To pursue her current role, Felice left behind a research position at CSIRO Entomology, where she spent 10 years working with a team on a project that led to the formation of C-Qentec Diagnostics. She sees her new role in research and development as a bridging position created for the purpose of transferring technology from the laboratory to the marketplace.
Felice began her career by studying toward an Honours Degree in Science at the Australian National University in Canberra, in the field of Biochemistry. After graduating she combined work as research assistant at the ANU with raising two young children. She later commenced a PhD at the Research School of Biological Sciences at ANU during which she studied oncogenes in relation to Burkitt’s lymphoma. During the thesis writing phase of her PhD (which became an unfinished symphony), Felice was appointed as a technical officer at CSIRO under John Curran. She quickly applied her energies to her new field, working with a team that involved staff at CSIRO and SARDI (South Australian Research and Development Institute) developing a range of DNA-based diagnostic tests for soil pathogens which are now marketed by C-Qentec under the name PreDicta B.
PreDicta B is a set of root disease tests which provide a risk management tool for farmers of broadacre crops by identifying which of a range of soil pathogens are present in a soil sample. The name C-Qentec was formed from sequence technology, referring to the DNA sequence technology on which the tests are based, and the B in PreDicta B refers to broadacre. The PreDicta B tests grew out of investigations into diagnosis of entomopathogenic nematodes. An obvious link to nematodes that parasitise plants arose and the development of DNA sequence databases used to characterise soil-borne pathogens began. The goal of this research was to develop diagnostic techniques based on DNA sequence technology. The next step was to measure the levels of disease-causing organisms present and to associate this with the risk of crop damage. In this way PreDicta B tests are a world first – they aim to quantitate risk, to diagnose potential problems before they occur.
Felice stresses the importance of understanding the relevance of scientific developments to the Australian economy. In the knowledge-based market of the future, Intellectual Property will feature more and more strongly as a marketable resource of increasing economic importance. In the future agricultural diagnostics will play an increasingly important role in crop management, enabling fast and accurate diagnosis of problem pests, providing means for better risk management and planning, and increasing our understanding of the distribution of pest species.
Her belief in the technology and its importance has led Felice to move from the laboratory to the office, and to relocate to Sydney from Canberra. Although she found it difficult at first to let go of hands on laboratory based research, she is excited by the opportunities that change and challenge provide. For Felice, the CSIRO environment allowed career development and opportunity. The flexibility in the system allowed her to build a job that didn't entirely fit the conventional scenario. As R&D Manager of C-Qentec, Felice is taking her career development even further, learning about the other side of science: budgets, commercial realities, project management. Felice also acknowledges that the reward structure in the commercial environment means that the potential exists for higher personal returns than available to scientists in the laboratory, although this is coupled to greater personal risks. Along the way she is appreciating that her new role enables her to follow the technology she helped to develop.