WOMEN ACHIEVING IN SCIENCE
Compiled by
Diana Temple
Catherine Livingstone is the new Chairperson of CSIRO, who was appointed to its Board on January 1 this year. Her appointment, which is part-time, was welcomed by the new chief executive Dr Geoff Garrett. Catherine Livingstone made her name as chief executive of Cochlear, the company which commercialised the bionic ear and holds 65% of the world market. She retains her membership of other boards - Telstra, on whose board she is a government appointee, also Goodman-Fielder, Rural press and Q-Vis. She is not the first woman to chair CSIRO; Professor Adrienne Clarke had this honour some years ago.
Source: Weekend Australian Sept 29, 2001
Dr Mary White of Sydney has been awarded the 2001 Mueller Medal by the national Council of ANZAAS. This medal, named after Ferdinand von Mueller, has a record of famous recipients, having for many years been awarded annually to a distinguished Australian natural scientist. Mary White is a palaeobotanist, well known as the author of splendid books on the prehistory of Australia: The Greening of Gondwana; After the Greening; Listen, Our Land is Crying; Running Down, Water in a Changing Land. Mary worked as a consultant for the Bureau of Mineral Resources and for companies exploring for coal, oil and gas; she was also curator of botanical fossils at the Australian Museum. She commenced her career as an author and lecturer at a stage in her life when most scientists retire. The Mueller Medal will be presented to Mary White at an ANZAAS ceremony in Hobart on November1; it is planned that she will also speak in Sydney at a later date.
Professor Kerin O'Dea has been appointed as new Director of the
Menzies School of Health Research in Darwin. Dr O'Dea's studies have centred
on research and education programs related to Aboriginal people, and tropical
health in rural and remote communities, which have been undertaken during her
tenure of senior positions at Deakin then at Monash Universities. She is thus
a most suitable appointee. Congratulations to Professor O'Dea.
Source: Today's Life Science, 13, July/Aug 2001
Galina Kaseko is a graduate of the Moscow Medical Academy, described as
one of the top six medical schools in Europe. She came to Australia to UNSW
and is now Research & Development Manager, Biomedical, of FuCell, a company
formed to commercialise UNSW's production of human-based antibodies. Dr Kaseko
speaks of the tragedy of young researchers having to leave Russia for economic
reasons.
Sheila Messer is also part of a reverse brain drain for Australia. An
electrical engineering graduate from California, she came back to Adelaide
with a Rotary Ambassadorial (post-graduate) scholarship, having earlier been
an exchange student in Adelaide. She is working on the Heard Heart Sound
Biomonitor Project at Adelaide University's Centre for Biomedical Engineering.
Electronic stethoscopes record phonocardiograms which are used as a diagnostic
tool for heart problems; the project's aim is to improve these records by
reducing extraneous sounds.
Source of above two items: Australasian Science 22, March 2001
Two women scientists in Sydney are researching from quite different angles
potential treatments for Mesothelioma, a rare but very serious form of lung
cancer caused by asbestos dust. Professor Judith Black and her
group, at Sydney University, are studying matrix metallinproteinase enzymes in
lung, which may affect the migration of the cancer cells in lung. Dr
Helen Wheeler at Royal North Shore Hospital heads a group which is
studying the use of thalidomide in the lung; thalidomide has the potential to
block blood vessel growth within tumours.
Source: Today's Life Science 13, July/Aug 2001
Dr Sandra Webb has been appointed Managing Director of the Melbourne
firm AMRAD, which focuses on biotechnology research and development.
Melbourne born and educated, Sandy's career has been as a clinical trials and
drug development executive with international experience; her previous post
was Executive Vice-President with Cromedica Global Inc, based in Canada.
Source: AMRAD Website
Dr Judith Slocombe of Melbourne has won the Australian Business
Woman of the Year award, from more than 1000 entries Australia wide. In 1989,
Dr Slocombe established a company called Veterinary Pathology Services; she
sold out to the Gribbles Group and stayed on as managing director of what is
now the National Testing Authority of Australia. It trains veterinary
diagnosticians and serves cleints like the Melbourne Zoo and Healesville
Sanctuary. Dr Slocombe also has nine children aged from 21 to 4.
Source: Sun-Herald, Oct 7 2001
Professor Dame Julia Higgins, FRS is an eminent English scientist
visiting most states of Australia in November this year as Solomon Lecturer,
sponsored by the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering
and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute. Professor Higgins holds the Chair
of Polymer Science in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial
College, London. She is the first female Foreign Secretary of the Royal
Society; she is a member of the UK Council for Science and Technology and
chairs the Steering committee of the Athena project, which is funded by the UK
government to improve recruitment, retention and advancement of women in
academic Science, technology and medicine. WISENET is to co-host, together
with the Deans of Science and Engineering, a Forum in her honour on women in
science at Sydney University on November 13.
Obituaries
JUDY MACKINOLTYA great debt is owed by WISENET to Judy Mackinolty, who died on August 2. Judy helped this network, mostly in an unpaid capacity, for nearly 5 years from 1995.
She was not a scientist but an academic historian with editorial experience, which was most valuable. This liaison started after WISENET received in 1995 a modest grant from the Office of the Status of Women and Judy overheard a casual remark about WISENET needing a part-time officer. She expressed interest and was employed on an hourly basis as Administration Officer for a period of less than a year; when the money ran out, she stayed on, acting as a membership secretary - clearing the Post Office box, banking subscriptions and sending receipts, as well as contributing to the Wisenet Journal. WISENET won another grant in 1998 from the Science and Technology Awareness Program, to produce a publication for schools on science careers ("Science Futures"), and Judy came back on the payroll.
For five years, Judy was a member of the volunteer Editorial Committee for the WISENET Journal. She collected and compiled items of news for the Journal and wrote a number of articles, commentaries and book reviews - in fact in the November 1998 and February 1999 issues of the Journal, Judy was responsible for between a quarter and a third of the content. She wrote so well, she put most of us more amateur science-writers to shame.
When she retired from this work late in 1999, prior to a long visit to France, her emailed comment was "You don't need to thank me, I enjoyed it all"! What an asset and a good friend Judy was.
Dr Marie Louise UHR was a biochemist who lectured at University of Canberra until the early 90s, and a long-term member of WISENET. Her Obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald of 23 August was headed "A Mission to open Catholic Priesthood to Women".
Helen Leonard died while this journal was being compiled. We decided it would be too rushed to just add a short piece about her because of time constraints. A more appreciative article about her life and times will be published in the next journal. To those of you who would like to see it, Marie Coleman wrote about Helen’s life in an obituary that can found at www.canberratimes.com