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November 2017 Newsletter You know that old saying ‘when it rains it pours’? Well that was November for me. It was such a big month on all fronts – work, home and Franklin Women – that I had to do some serious prioritisation, I practised the word 'no' a lot more, and of course I dropped a fair few balls. But it was all worth it because there is a pretty big goal that I am working towards. You see, at the last FW meeting, the team realised that we need to divert our focus to ensuring our organisation is sustainable so we can stay around but also grow to reach more women across Australia. This means, in addition to our routine activities like events, mentoring program, newsletters and career blog, the team is applying for grants and developing Sponsor Packs to seek out partner organisations who see value in what we do, and want to invest in it. This has forced us to articulate the 'Value Proposition' of Franklin Women (a new term for me that I picked up in my new role, thanks Bupa!). This was hard for us to articulate at first, but a few things happened this month which has made it a lot easier. Like, hearing from the mentees and mentors at our Mentoring Program finale on how it has changed the course of their careers, or seeing the buzz in the room as attendees at our end of year networking event chatted with each other building new connections, and reading the stories of researchers like Sally, who are changing the world through their research and who we are helping in a small way through our Carers Travel Scholarship.

These are the things we can see, but we would love to hear from you if we have made a small difference to you, your career or the sector. So please drop us a line to let us know. It will not only make us feel all warm and fuzzy but also remind us why crazy months like November are worth it to build something bigger. Thanks for being part of it.

Melina and the FW Team

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● Applications opened for the Women In Technology 2018 Board Readiness Program.

● The Academy of Science EMCR Forum launched their Kick-Starting Collaboration.

● Recipients of the Academy of Science 2018 honorific awards were announced, including some very talented women in health!

● Australia’s gender equality scorecard was released.

● Nominations are open for the Bupa Health Foundation Emerging Health Researcher

Award, closing 8 December 2017.

● We celebrated the completion of the inaugural year of the Franklin Women Mentoring Program - hoorah!

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Meet Sally Gainsbury, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney and Deputy Director to the Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic within the Brain and Mind Centre. She is currently fascinated with behavioural economics and implications of new technology. Sally was also the successful recipient of the second 2017 Franklin Women Carers Travel Scholarship – congratulations!

What is your background in the health or medical science field?I have a Doctorate of Clinical Psychology and PhD in Psychology, which followed a Bachelor in Psychology, all from the University of Sydney. I have always sought out and taken advantage of relevant workshops, training, conferences and seminars, both nationally and internationally. These opportunities are great for learning new skills but also for meeting new people, reflecting on my own interests and helping to apply multidisciplinary concepts and ideas to my own area of research.

What is your role, and how did you get to be the Deputy Director at the Gambling Treatment and Research Clinic? I am really happy with my current role, which I came to with an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA).

Although research-only roles have a degree of instability with ongoing pressure to bring in the next grant, I really enjoy research within an academic institution. To achieve this position I have worked hard, and I have also greatly benefited from several internationally renowned mentors. My various supervisors have generously included me in a wide range of opportunities. Research is much more than academic publications, and I have had the opportunity to inform policy decisions and corporate strategy by translating my research into practical outputs as well as to present my research to a variety of different stakeholders.

What is one of your favourite projects you are currently working on?My DECRA study is really interesting – it goes beyond gambling and looks at why people take risks online and how environmental and social cues influence online risk-taking. This includes a wide variety of behaviours and outcomes including excessive or unintended expenditure, oversharing on social networks leading to regret, and becoming a victim or perpetrator of cybercrime. I’m using a variety of techniques to explore this topic including large surveys, experimental paradigms with abstract tasks, audits of online cues used by various sites and apps, and real mobile gambling games. I hope that the results will inform the development of online

cues that could encourage appropriate consideration and decision-making, and identify and prevent deceptive practices online.

What are some of the major ‘outputs’ from your work? Recognising the applied nature of my work, my outputs are highly varied. I have published many academic papers, and even a few books, but I really enjoy translating my research to a broader audience. For example, I recently gave a Raising the Bar address in a pub on addictive design aspects of games and gambling. In December, I am heading to London to speak at a conference about the impact of Internet gambling on young people (thanks for the Carer’s funding support FW!). I’ve also recorded a few podcasts, which is a great new way to communicate to people who want a little more detail, but not necessarily through an academic journal article.

How do you think your work contributes to the field and/or the overall health of the community? Gambling-related problems have a huge impact on Australian society with around 1% of the population experiencing severe gambling problems and another 4–5% having some serious problems. But gambling problems are not contained within an individual and related problems affect family members, friends, colleagues and the broader community. My work focuses on understanding gambling and designing, implementing and evaluating interventions to minimise and prevent gambling-related harms, and also translating research findings into policy and practice. This involves multiple stakeholders and a balance between minimising harms, protecting vulnerable people, but recognising that gambling is a legal activity enjoyed by many.

Who do you collaborate with and how did those work relationships come about? In my experience, the gambling field is very collegial and small enough that you can get to know various people at international conferences over time. At the moment I am concentrating on collaborating with colleagues from different disciplines beyond psychology – marketing, policy, business and economics. Multi-disciplinary collaboration is great as it allows different perspectives to be applied to address a common problem.

Do you have any side interests or passions that you are looking to develop? Encouraging early career researchers has always been a passion of mine (including when I was one!) so I offer internships and provide training opportunities where I can. I also contribute where I can to the SAGE initiative. In addition to my family (my two-year-old daughter, husband and ten-year-old lab-kelpie), I try and squeeze in exercise, preferably in green spaces without a phone.

What food have you eaten too much of? I am a bit of a health nut, my ‘cookies’ are never stolen from the fridge. But I always have good quality dark chocolate and peanut butter around somewhere!

The Franklin Women Carers Travel Scholarship is awarded twice a year to female researchers to assist with additional expenses related to child care when travelling for national or international conferences. Applications for Round One 2018 (for conference travel between 1 January and 30 June 2018) will open in January 2018.

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Get out of your bubble Here at FW, we love intersectoral collaboration for better research translation, and Inspiring Australia does this by building bridges between scientists and the public – including decision-makers who may know little about what goes on in universities and research institutes. Inspiring Australia’s Manager Jackie Randles tells us more:

Inspiring Australia is the national strategy for public engagement with science, technology and innovation. We recently developed a Commercialising Research forum to provide a chance for researchers working in both commercial and academic settings to join businesses to discover the

range of assistance available to help commercialise

research knowledge. Sessions explored the industry potential for current and future researchers and reasons why many would prefer to remain in academic rather than commercial settings.

A recurring message to researchers seeking to find new opportunities was to network, knock on doors and tell others about their discoveries. Issues of culture change, willingness to share and business know-how were discussed frankly and openly, with Atlassian’s Head of R & D Dom Price making an impassioned plea to researchers to “…stop hoarding, let go and act now!”

More broadly, Inspiring Australia works with scientists around the country to connect them to the general public. There are three reasons why researchers and academics should take the time to develop an interesting story about what they do and get involved in our programs.

1. It’s good for the community: Sharing stories creates connections. A memorable interaction with you might have a positive impact in someone’s life later on. This may help redress the serious STEM skills shortage that begins at school, with Australia lagging in maths and science on many international benchmarks. It will also help improve gender equity in STEM, as each time you discuss your work with non-scientists, you provide a role model for young people and their advisers.

2. It’s good for science: Researchers have an important role to play in helping improve awareness of Australia’s research capability. While research and academia are at the heart of Australia’s innovation agenda, scientists are not yet prominently featured alongside entrepreneurs and start-ups in public discourse.

Image: Inspiring Australia’s Commercialising Research event brought scientists into the Spark Festival. Image by David Vagg

3. It’s good for you: New opportunities unfold when you meet people from other sectors and get involved in new things. This sounds like more work – and it is. But the benefits are worth the effort. There’s huge value in developing new networks.

Talking about yourself does not come naturally to everyone, but these skills can be developed and there are people who can help. Most universities have professional staff and science communicators who provide advice and training for academics. Inspiring Australia is also here to help.

Craft a story about your work that’s simple enough for someone to not only remember it, but also tell someone else. Talk to people outside your peer network and you might be surprised to see how interested they are when you take some time to let them in.

Find out more about Inspiring Australia (NSW) and how to get involved at their website. You can also visit Inspiring Australia’s Research Futures channel for articles from the recent Commercialising Research forum and watch their video series: Research and industry – A relationship guide.

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Time to send art and science on a blind date Could interdisciplinary connections be the real key to addressing or communicating the messy problems and inequities of today’s world? Laura Crocco thinks so, and tells us about it below.

“You’re a hybrid. We don’t yet know what to do with researchers like you.” While jet-setting across North America to find a home for my PhD, this is the common thing I have been told by academics. Should I happily feel unique, or does this comment ruin the academic wanderlust? I’ve been told, “You have to choose whether to base your PhD in music, education, psychology, neuroscience, etc.” This “hybrid” wants to improve an artistic field through scientific methods, so where do I belong?

Finding a home for postgraduate studies can be difficult for those of us in interdisciplinary

research, not to mention the trial of explaining what it is you do to every Uber driver you ride with. While undergoing my masters degree, I learnt that the realisation of an alliance between art and science isn’t as natural as it may have been in da Vinci’s time. Why the divorce? Surely we are long past the days when artists criticised scientists for disturbing their romantic notions about the moon simply by landing on it. Perhaps the power of stereotyping has caused the almost Keynes vs Friedman-like separation between art and science: logical thinking vs artistic creativity, or convergent vs divergent thinking.

Or perhaps it was caused by the lack of interdisciplinary interaction in formal education. Though art and science have underlying differences, there are also fundamental similarities. Both fields are creative. The imaginative minds of scientists and artists are characterised by innovation and revolution. They are both aiming to answer questions about the human condition and experience, and ultimately tell a story. The difference lies in how we form and tell these stories.

Today, unconventional problems in our world shout out for art and science to go on a few romantic blind dates and rekindle their relationship. For example, our performing artists are experiencing a rise in the risk of physical and psychological injury during both their education and professional careers. Does this not suggest the need for a stronger relationship between performing artists, and health and medical professionals? It’s not to say that art and science aren’t having the odd spontaneous affair. Institutions and funding agencies are gradually creating initiatives that encourage interdisciplinary research. However, for students embarking on interdisciplinary research careers across arts and sciences, those initiatives are limited.

So, what can you do to change the relationship between art and science? Engage in and encourage interdisciplinary research in your field; get to know artists and learn about their craft, see how they can be partners in communicating scientific research, then sit back and observe the astonishing effect a bridge between art and science can have on our world.

Laura is a masters by research student at the University of Sydney, studying how the science of learning can improve one-to-one teaching in higher music education. She often presses buttons on an accordion and one day hopes to convert an old upright piano to a mini-bar!

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The holiday season!! 2017 has flitted away in the blink of an eye, but we think the holiday season is the best time of the year! So here are some of our favourite tidbits to get you in the spirit:

• You’ll be the office favourite if you bring in one of these cute holiday treats • Ever wanted an ugly Christmas sweater? Try making one yourself! • When the holiday season isn’t all joy or frivolity, refer to this survival guide • For gifts this year try some of these gifts for young scientists or these for women in

STEM (the Marie Curie tote is a fav!) • But this might be the best present to find under the Christmas tree!

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We want to include your contributions in our newsletter. If you have published your work recently or are doing (or know of) something that other women in our field would be interested in, drop us a line. Want to receive our newsletters directly to your in-box? Subscribe here.