The Cosmos Podcast

Over the next decade, the Australian manufacturing industry will need to change its practices to continue making things for the rest of the world. Dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, AI and smart technologies have the potential to make the sector more productive and less wasteful, but the implementation needs to be done right. How will AI change our manufacturing sector, and what skills will we need to stay competitive?

Professor Giselle Rampersad, Professor of Innovation at Flinders University, leads a digital upskilling program for BAE Systems, SMEs and STEM teachers. It won the Training and Mentorship Program for 2020 in the Australian Defence Industry Awards. She also leads industry 4.0 research with Naval Group Pacific, on exoskeletons and machining robots.

Martin Guenzl is a senior executive with Boral, focussing on digital transformation and disruption in industrial settings. He has founded, developed and successfully led digital solutions businesses over the last twenty years, including AI-centric solutions. He holds an Electronics Engineering degree from University of WA and an MBA from London Business School.

They join our host, Dr Deborah Devis of The Royal Institution of Australia to discuss this key issue. 

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Water is the most vital resource on Earth and underpins all areas of survival. Over the next ten years, we will need more fresh water to sustain us – even as drought and contamination make our current resources dwindle. How do we protect our most precious resource?

Assoc. Professor Bradley Moggridge is a Kamilaroi Man with over 20 years’ experience in Aboriginal engagement, water & environmental science. Bradley is currently an Associate Professor in Indigenous Water Science (hydrogeology & environmental science) P/T PhD candidate at University of Canberra & the Indigenous Liaison Officer for the Threatened Species Recovery Hub.

Warwick Ragg was raised on a farm in the NSW Southern Highlands and has almost 30 years experience in rural and regional advocacy. Prior to joining NFF Warwick had been working in the Commonwealth Government in stakeholder engagement roles and had previously spent a decade with NSW Farmers’ Association and a further decade as chief executive of Australian Forest Growers.

Dr Erin O’Donnell is a water law and policy specialist. She has worked in water management since 2002, focusing on water markets, environmental flows, and water governance. Erin is recognized internationally for her research into the groundbreaking new field of legal rights for rivers, and the challenges and opportunities these new rights create for protecting the multiple social, cultural and natural values of rivers. In 2018, Erin was appointed to the inaugural Birrarung Council, the voice of the Yarra River.

They join our host, Dr Deborah Devis of The Royal Institution of Australia to discuss this key issue. 

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Dr Deborah Devis, a science journalist with the Royal Institution of Australia,  talks to Philippa Sjoquist, principal advisor of sustainability strategy and development at Rio Tinto, about Rio Tinto’s proposed strategy to address the environmental costs of mining. 

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Dr Alan Finkel AO FAA FTSE is an Australian neuroscientist, engineer, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He served as Chancellor of Monash University from 2008 to 2016 and was Chief Scientist of Australia from 2016 to 2020. He is also President of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ex-officio) and Patron of the Australian Science Media Centre, and he contributes to a number of research institutes. A neuroscientist, entrepreneur and philanthropist, he invented a commercially successful device which substantially speeds up drug research and founded the science magazines Cosmos and G: The Green Lifestyle Magazine.

Dr Finkel talks with Ian Connellan, The Royal Institution of Australia's Editor-In-Chief about how we’ll shift greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

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Think of a computing process underpinned by masses of complex data – such as modelling planet-wide shifts in climate or simulating the detonation of an atomic bomb. The process is known as supercomputing, and it’s run on a powerful system working at its maximum potential performance – a supercomputer.

Dr Karen Lee-Waddell (Director of the Australian SKA regional centre, and Project Scientist for WALLABY, the all-sky neutral hydrogen survey that is being conducted on the CSIRO’s new telescope, the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder), Professor Sean Smith (Director of the NCI and conjointly Professor of computational nanomaterials science and technology at the ANU) and Ivan Galea (Vice President, Analytics and Data Science at Atlassian) join our host Professor Alan Duffy (Director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute at Swinburne University of Technology and Lead Scientist of the Royal Institution of Australia) to discuss the very big analysis machines we turn to in order consider the world’s, and science’s, very big questions.

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Dr Cathy Foley is a physicist and commenced her term as Australia’s ninth chief scientist in January 2021. Before that she had a long and distinguished career at CSIRO, where she was appointed chief scientist in August 2018 – only the second woman in that role.

Over the course of her career, she has made significant contributions to the understanding of semiconductors and high-temperature superconductors. Her work led to the development of field-deployable superconducting devices that locate valuable mineral deposits by detecting minute magnetic fields (ten million times weaker than the Earth’s field).

Dr Vikram Sharma is a quantum physicist and the founder and CEO of Canberra-based QuintessenceLabs, which is a world leader in the quantum cybersecurity industry. Vikram is a dual MSc holder – in computer science (from ANU), and management (from Stanford University, California). His doctorate in quantum physics was also awarded by ANU.

Dr Johan Verjans is a cardiologist who combines clinical and research work. He’s deputy director, Medical Machine Learning, at the Australian Institute for Machine Learning; a senior lecturer at the University of Adelaide attached to South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute; an associate investigator at Adelaide Uni’s Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics; and a consultant cardiologist at Royal Adelaide Hospital.

Our guests join moderator Tory Shepherd, an Adelaide-based journalist and broadcaster, to discuss what AI is, its certain prevalence in our future, the variety of real-world applications for which it’s already used, and future applications, both already in development and as yet only imagined

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Papua New Guinea has been somewhat sheltered from the COVID-19 pandemic, with relatively low numbers throughout 2020. Since late February, however, the country has experienced a spike in new cases.

Dr Deborah Devis, a science journalist with the Royal Institution of Australia,  talks to Professor Leanne Robinson, Program Director of Health Security and Group Leader and Vector-Borne Diseases & Tropical Public Health at the Burnet Institute, to discuss the situation.

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The global economy sees unprecedented levels of resources extracted at great expense and effort, as well as polluting emissions in the process, to forge new products but all too often these then go to landfill at the end of their lives. A revolutionary, yet beguilingly simple, idea known as the circular economy would see all these products entirely recycled and their resources returned to form new products in turn. Just how realistic is the intention to transform the entire economy to realise this? And what role can Australia play in forging a new, more sustainable, approach to consumerism?

Scientia Professor Veena Sahajwalla (internationally recognised materials scientist, engineer, and inventor revolutionising recycling science, and inaugural Director of the Circular Economy Innovation Network by the NSW Government through its Office of Chief Scientist and Engineer) and Professor Thomas Maschmeyer (Professor of Chemistry at the University of Sydney and recipient of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation (2020) – Australia’s top prize in the field) join our host Professor Alan Duffy (Director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute at Swinburne University of Technology and Lead Scientist of the Royal Institution of Australia) to discuss the circular economy and what it means for business in Australia. 

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Australian-born Professor Peter Goadsby is the NIHR-Wellcome Trust King’s Clinical Research Facility at King’s College London in the United Kingdom and is Professor of Neurology at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. He is also Honorary Consultant Neurologist at King’s College Hospital and the Hospital for Sick Children, Great Ormond St, London. Professor Goadsby is one of four neuroscientists who have won this year’s prestigious international Brain Prize. The group has been recognised for discovering a key mechanism that causes migraines. 

Dr Deborah Devis, a science journalist with the Royal Institution of Australia,  talks to Professor Goadsby about the culmination of four decades of developing new classes of migraine-specific drugs that are informed by the neurology of the brain.

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To combat the climate crisis, the world needs to decarbonise its economy, and that means finding ways to store and transport renewable electricity. Hydrogen has the potential to be a completely clean supply of energy, but it could just as easily become the next emissions and resource-intensive industry. If hydrogen takes off, where can we expect it to go?

Dr Jessica Allen (an electrochemist and an engineer working in chemical engineering at the University of Newcastle) and Associate Professor Adam Osseiran (President of the Hydrogen Society of Australia) join our host Professor Alan Duffy (Director of the Space Technology and Industry Institute at Swinburne University of Technology and Lead Scientist of the Royal Institution of Australia) to discuss the future of hydrogen as an energy source. 

Find the science of everything at cosmosmagazine.com