Tuesday 8 March
1.00pm AEDT
Breaking the bias to build equality for a sustainable tomorrow
The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering and its STELR, IMNIS, and CS in Schools programs are hosting a webinar to bring Women in STEM directly into Australian secondary school classrooms to share their experiences and discuss how they break the bias in communities, workplaces, and in fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
This free event will give students a live and interactive opportunity to hear from women working in research, the public sector, and private industry about their careers. They will discuss the opportunities and pathways made possible by science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).
This one-off special event will follow a similar format to the Shape Your Future weekly webinars that feature diverse young STEM professionals.
The one-hour session will include presentations from three speakers and includes time for questions:
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker
Dr Samantha Papavasiliou
Nancy Do
ATSE Fellow Dr Marlene Kanga AM FTSE will be moderator for the session.
Speakers
Nancy Do
Senior Software Developer - Seek Jobs
Nancy Do is a Senior Software Developer for Seek Jobs, Australia’s #1 employment marketplace. She graduated from RMIT University with a degree in Computer Science, after stumbling upon a coding subject at her previous University course in Science. Nancy became interested in coding because it uses the logical and creative sides of the brain to create software. She’s passionate about giving back to the community, empowering and teaching others how to code. Nancy is a strong advocate in a growth mindset through pushing the boundaries of your comfort zone. In her spare time she likes to hike, watch her favourite show (The Office) on repeat and tries to conquer her fear of heights by bouldering.
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker
Extragalactic Radio Astronomer - International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research and Curtin University
Dr Natasha Hurley-Walker uses novel radio telescopes to explore the Universe at some of the longest wavelengths of light. After receiving her PhD in Radio Astronomy from the University of Cambridge, she moved to Australia to help commission the Murchison Widefield Array, a precursor instrument to the Square Kilometer Array, which willl be the world’s largest radio telescope. Her work has revealed the radio glow of our own Milky Way galaxy, ancient cosmic explosions, as well as hundreds of thousands of distant galaxies via “radio color” surveys, observed across such a wide range of frequencies that the unique spectrum of every object can be used to understand its underlying physics. For her science, work in gender equity, and outreach activities, she has been named a WA Tall Poppies Scientist of the Year (2017), an ABC Top 5 Scientist (2018) and a Superstar of STEM (2019–2020). She is head of the extragalactic radio astronomy group at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, and is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow leading the GLEAM-X survey to explore the radio sky in new ways, leading to the recent discovery of a new and unexpected kind of transient periodic radio source.
Dr Samantha Papavasiliou
Service Review and Redesign Project Manager and Data Analyst - Australian Taxation Office
Samantha completed her PhD specialising in digital transformation and adoption in the Australian Public Sector. She also holds a Bachelor of Psychological Science (2014) and Bachelor of Social Science with Honours (2015), from the University of Adelaide. In 2017, Samantha completed her Master of Project Management Project Systems, and in 2018 her Master of International Trade and Development, also from the University of Adelaide.
She currently works at the Australian Taxation Office as a Service Review and Redesign Project Manager and data analyst, focusing on service redesign and digital transformation. Samantha also teaches at the University of Adelaide, focusing on post graduate project management, system design and research methods. Her key field of research is understanding digital adoption behaviours in the Australian Public Sector (APS). Her research aims at informing and tailoring communication channels used by the APS moving forward.
Samantha’s other areas of interest are behavioural analytics in public sector digital adoption and the application of predictive modelling to tailor communications between organisations and users.
Moderator
Dr Marlene Kanga AM FTSE
Dr. Marlene Kanga is listed as one of the Top 10 women engineers in Australia. She was the President of the World Federation of Engineering Organisations (WFEO) 2017-2019, with members from 100 engineering institutions and approximately 30 million engineers. A chemical engineer, she was the 2013 National President of Engineers Australia. She has been a champion for young engineers and encourages young people to consider science, technology and engineering as career choices in her leadership roles, especially on World Engineering Day, which was declared by UNESCO during her term, as President of WFEO. She is a Member of the Order of Australia, a national honor, in recognition of her leadership of the engineering profession.
Dr Kanga has been listed among the 100 engineers making a contribution to Australia in the last 100 years as part of Engineers Australia Centenary celebrations in 2019. She is a board member of large organizations in Australia in utilities, transport and innovation. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Engineering and Technology an Honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia, an Honorary Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (UK) and a Foreign Fellow of the ASEAN Academy of Engineering and Technology.
