ResBaz Key-Stories!
At a typical academic conference keynote presenters will talk about their research. While that’s all well and good, what you don’t get to hear so much about is their story. How did they get to where they are today? Why are they so passionate about what they do? We’ve picked three of the most interesting people we know in academia and have asked them to present a “keystory” instead. Here’s a little about each of them:
Monday
Dr Jee Hyun Kim
@About_Memory
Head, Developmental Psychobiology, The Florey, The University of Melbourne
“Thriving under pressure: Harvest diversity"
Jee is a self-proclaimed queen of nerds whose PhD completion in Psychology at the University of New South Wales was slowed down by her dedication to saving Azeroth 2005-2008. Following a postdoctoral training at Michigan University, she moved to Melbourne to become the youngest laboratory head at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health. Her work focuses on the neuroscience of good and bad memories underlying anxiety and addiction in childhood and adolescence using rodent models.
She has received various awards and major grants including the University Medal in Psychology and the Australian Psychological Society early career research award. Since returning to Australia in 2011, she has won grants totalling 3 million dollars as the Chief Investigator A including Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Early Career Researcher Award, ARC Discovery Project Grant, National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Project Grants, and NHMRC Career Development Fellowship. In 2014 she received the Victorian Young Tall Poppy Science Award.
She strongly believes in the importance of treating mental disorders early in life, a topic she shared at TEDxMelbourne. She features regularly on radio and television to discuss memory and forgetting, and lists Beyonce, Kerrigan, and Ronda Rousey as her inspirations. She believes recruiting a diverse group of people in her laboratory as key in her success in the most difficult period of transitioning from early to mid-career scientist.
Tuesday
Angus Hervey
@angushervey
Co-Founder of Future Crunch, Manager of Random Hacks of Kindness
“What happens when you finish your PhD? Lessons from the frontline (from someone that almost didn’t make it)”
Angus is a science communicator, with a background in environmental economics and international political economy. Using a combination of evolutionary psychology, history and political economy and he analyses science and technology trends and what they mean for business and society.
After an early career in Cape Town as a successful entrepreneur and lecturer, he moved to London where he managed Global Policy, a leading international publication whose advisory board included Nobel Prize winners such as Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen and legendary innovators such as Muhammad Yunus and George Soros. This was an introduction to politics and economics at the highest level, and gave him an insider’s view on issues such as financial regulation, environmental management and international development.
In 2012, following the completion of his PhD as the Ralph Miliband Scholar at the London School of Economics, he moved to Melbourne. Frustrated by the lack of intelligent discussion around future trends in Australia, he co-founded Future Crunch, a forum for critical debate on the transition from the industrial to the digital era. He is also the Australian manager of Random Hacks of Kindness, a global initiative started in 2009 by Google, IBM, Microsoft, NASA and Yahoo which connects technologists with social changemakers.
Today more than ever, he combines a global perspective with the belief that change comes from small groups of people motivated by fairness, optimism and a belief in the transformative power of science and technology.
Wednesday
Alberto Pepe
@AlbertoPepe
Co-founder of Authorea, data consultant, Research Associate at Harvard University.
“On leaving academia, without ever saying goodbye”
Loosely based on, https://www.authorea.com/users/3/articles/5287/_show_article
Alberto Pepe is the co-founder of Authorea, an online place to write research together. He is a “recovering academic” with previous Ph.D. and Postdoc work in Astrophysics and Information Science. He holds degrees and fellowships from Harvard, UCLA, CERN, and University College London. He was born and raised in the wine-making town of Manduria, in Puglia, Southern Italy.
