Guest writer:

Robyn Williams has been a broadcaster with the ABC Radio Science Unit since 1972 and presents The Science Show each Saturday afternoon. Broadcast on Radio National, the Show turned 25 in August 2000. President of the Australian Science Communicators since 1998, Mr Williams is also Foundation Commissioner for the Future (since 1984). Between 1984 and 1986, he was a member of the National Commission for UNESCO. He has won many awards including the Rostrum Australia Speaker of the Year and the Humanist of the Year in 1993. He is the author of nine books and was a Visiting Fellow to Oxford University's Balliol College between 1995 and 1996. He lists his main interests as "running, music, writing and indolence".

Research team:

Various

Funding:

Various

Email/Web link:

p.greenfield@research.uq.edu.au www.acmc.uq.edu.au www.library.uq.edu.au www.cmr.uq.edu.au www.uq.edu.au/nanoworld www.imb.uq.edu.au www.soms.uq.edu.au

Faculty of Engineering, Physical Sciences & Architecture · Faculty of Biological and Chemical Sciences · Library

From marine research stations to latest supercomputing facilities, UQ's infrastructure is diverse and cutting edge.

It was a posh dinner in 1999 and I found myself at the head table in one of Melbourne's swank ballrooms.

The Premier of Queensland had come south to inform Australia's scientific elite that his State was about to take over as pacesetter.

Remarkably, in a State renowned for the intensity of its politics, the message had bipartisan support.

The room was comfortably sceptical. After a barnstorming speech in which the Premier gave special focus to biotechnology ("it will be the century of biotechnology") he rejoined our table to spectacular applause.

Sir Gustav Nossal, formerly President of the Australian Academy of Science, turned to me and said "Now that really was something".

Twelve months later, at The University of Queensland campus in St Lucia, the political rhetoric has become bricks, mortar—and soon—mortar boards.

The $110 million Institute for Molecular Bioscience (IMB) is taking shape. By 2003 there will be 35,000 square metres of floor-space available and 700-800 staff doing research in three fields: genomics; the structure of proteins; and molecular designs of new drugs.

How Queensland came to this point from virtually scratch is in no small way due to the persuasiveness and articulacy of The University of Queensland's Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay.

The Institute's combination of skills from genetics to pharmacology is unique, at least in Australia", says Professor Peter Andrews, one of the Co-Directors of the new Institute.

I found him in his old office admiring shapely cone shells.

"This species releases a harpoon carrying deadly poison which can paralyse you in hours or even seconds."

His team is extracting the active agent and turning it (they hope) into a powerful analgesic "a thousand times stronger than morphine".

The range of possible source animals from the Great Barrier Reef is extraordinary. Add snake venom, stingers, and the surprising number of different types of funnel-web spider in the north and you have plenty of promising material for the new outfit.

The Institute itself will be shared with the CSIRO. There will be a new CSIRO Livestock Division opening at the University (the old lab at Prospect in NSW will close) bringing the CSIRO's interests in plant and animal genetics on to campus as never before.

Co-Directors Professors Andrews and John Mattick have laboured long and hard to achieve the scale and range of their new lab and point out with some pride that it will be double the size of Melbourne's renowned Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, where Professor Nossal was once Director.

Queensland's political leaders have been as good as their words. As for the sea creatures to be collected from Queensland's marine cornucopia, the University has three research stations offshore.

The newest, opened in June 2000 by the Premier, is on Stradbroke Island, an hour from metropolitan Brisbane.

The facilities allow scientists, students and visiting parties (school children, business groups) to stay, study and explore the range of coastal fauna, from littoral crustacea to Australia's largest population of dugongs.

Heron Island, two hours' cruise off Gladstone, is Australia's prime marine station. It can house nearly 80 visitors who have unrivalled access to the midway point of the Reef and the turtles which come to lay eggs in Spring.

The work done by scientists there will be crucial to the survival of coral reefs everywhere. Low Isles Research Station, located 5km north-east of Port Douglas, is operated on a philosophy of low-impact, non-obtrusive activities.

And, at last, we shall see a synergy between the University stations and those of the Australian Museum (Lizard Island), AIMS, James Cook University and other facilities.

Back on campus I went to the Library. My own previous benchmark had been St John's College, Cambridge, whose library is shiningly modern, wondrously endowed—and so comfy students take their sleeping bags before finals and camp there all night! But now—meet the CYBRARY.

It is The University of Queensland's answer to the new, informal style of information resource. No more will you cringe as a frowning termagant patrols funereal aisles.

In this centre for study you can meet, chat and even order cappuccino. I'd not come across the term "Cybrary" before but the University Librarian, Janine Schmidt assures me she's found 400 perfectly respectable references to it in the literature.

She takes enormous pride in her magnificent facility, with its 14 specialised branches serving 29,000 students, shelving 2kms of books each week, answering more than 200,000 questions a year, doing more than three million database searches, providing 6000 pages on websites and even serving organisations off-campus. The place buzzes.

The same could be said about the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis. So much so that I had to break my sandwich lunch there to record two interviews for The Science Show.

One was with Dr Philippa Uwins whose announcement, last year, of the discovery of "nanobes", went around the world.

The other was with Professor Ken Collerson from the University's Earth Sciences Department who presented me with a chocolate-coloured rock disgorged from between 400–600kms below the Earth's surface (I wasn't allowed to keep it), rarer than moon-rock.

The advantage of the Centre is to have such a variety of state-of- the-art machines in one place to serve all the University's interests—from microbiology to Earth sciences.

This is also the kind of heavy duty capability the High Performance Computing Centre is preparing for.

They are delighted that, in the past 12 months, Australia has "got its act together in supercomputing."

Sydney (the ATP—Australia Technology Park) and the ANU will serve industry while Brisbane will focus on ecology and drug design. Soon you will be able to walk, virtually, around a complex molecule or the waters of Moreton Bay.

This will not only be entertaining (for the public) but compellingly useful. The drug designers from the new IMB and the conservationists from biology will both benefit.

This is the importance of infrastructure. Add brains and you have the combination needed for great achievement—the "Knowledge Society" our leaders bang on about without necessarily backing the rhetoric with substance.

And without sometimes realising the unexpected cross-overs between different branches of science.

Such as at my last port of call: the Centre for Magnetic Resonance. This is where they conjure applied maths into beams of particles that reveal the essence of organisms, from mice to people.

They can even investigate the wetness of concrete—something you'd care about if you thought deeply on the safety of long bridges and tall buildings.

The Ruler Of Resonance, the immensely enthusiastic Professor David Doddrell, tells me this technology is now being used to test patients for suspected Alzheimer's disease.

In one case they were able to tell a patient he had been misdiagnosed and was clear.

They can also use resonance to predict the extent of brain damage during a stroke. This is research still developing and tied to the University's medical strengths.

Such is the resonance of the University's new infrastructure. The promise is exciting. The possibilities remarkable. Has the nation's hope of progress moved north?

On this site

Go to top