Australia's Chief Scientist and the Brain Bee Challenge. (August 2, 2010)

Just a fortnight ago Australia's Chief Scientist, Professor Penny Sackett spoke to the secondary school students who made the finals of the Queensland and Northern Territory 2010 Brain Bee Challenge.

According to the organisers the "Australian Brain Bee Challenge (ABBC) motivates young people to learn about the brain - and has been created to inspire students to pursue careers in neuroscience research. As Australia's only neuroscience competition for high school students, the ABBC is an event that will have you expanding your hemispheres! The Brain Bee Challenge is a test of knowledge about important facts concerning intelligence, memory, emotions, sensations, movement, stress, aging, sleep, Alzheimer's disease and stroke".

Here we excerpt what Professor Sackett said to her young audience at the University of Queensland's Queensland Brain Institute after first describing how she got started in science and eventually choose astronomy as her field of study.

Competitions like the Brain Bee Challenge are an opportunity to visit world-class science labs, meet famous Australian scientists, and discover new ways you can contribute to science of the future. I'm most in interested in how you will connect from this present to that future.

[A]s Chief Scientist, I have very little time for research. Instead, I contribute to science by communicating with the public, helping to inform government policy and meeting students like you whenever I can. Which of the paths I took was most valuable? It's impossible to say.

[H]aving the opportunity to ensure government policies about health, education and the environment are all informed by the best science is one I do not take lightly. It is a great honour to serve Australia in this way.

 Science is not just about facts and figures and data. It is a rigorous and yet creative way of thinking that can be used in so many other ways - in anthropology to study ancient civilisations, in engineering to create earthquake resilient buildings, and in kitchens to create the lightest cakes.

You wouldn't be here today if you didn't have the potential to travel any path you choose. Most of the limitations you experience or perceive will be those you place upon yourself. So allow yourself to imagine that which has not been done before. To blaze a new trail. Your attitude to your travel will be more important than the precise path you choose. Grasp and learn from every new opportunity, like this Brain Bee Challenge.

Professor Sackett than posed these questions for her young audience to ponder: "If you could change the world, what would
you change? And what role does science play in that?"

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