Ep.78 Driving change in STEM: Insights from CAETS

Maria Rampa: Hello, I’m Maria Rampa, and welcome to this special episode of Aurecon’s Engineering Reimagined podcast, produced as part of a series in partnership with the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, or ATSE for short.

Over the coming months we’ll be releasing a number of conversations that we recorded live in Brisbane at the conference for the International Council of Academies of Engineering and Technological Sciences, or CAETS.

The event was the first time in over 20 years that CAETS held its annual conference in Australia, bringing together global experts in technology, engineering, and applied science to swap ideas and exchange knowledge. We were lucky enough to sit down with some of the brightest minds across industry and academia, for their insights into the biggest issues and opportunities facing our future.

Today is the first of those conversations featuring Aurecon’s Director – Eminence and Sustainability Evelyn Storey interviewing ATSE CEO Kylie Walker.

Kylie’s admiration of science began with her upbringing on a farm where she was interested in how everything worked and peaked when she was diagnosed with advanced cancer as an adult when science literally saved her life.

Now as CEO of ATSE, Kylie is an influential leader shaping a powerful legacy of scientific excellence at a time when societies around the world are grappling with challenges that are more complex and interconnected than ever before. From rapid advances in digital technologies and artificial intelligence, to the pressing needs of healthcare, food and water security, resilient infrastructure and an ageing population – the scale of change is immense.

Evelyn and Kylie discuss how solving these problems requires diverse perspectives, interdisciplinary collaboration and leadership that connects scientific and engineering thinking with real-world decision-making. That means asking big questions around who do we want solving the problems of the future? What skills will they need and how do we balance STEM with STEAM to build well-rounded problem solvers?

Let’s find out what they have to say.

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Evelyn Storey: I'm joined by Kylie Walker. Welcome and thanks for joining us on the podcast today.

Kylie Walker: Thanks so much for having me.

Evelyn Storey: You've built a career at the intersection of science and technology and public engagement. What led you to go down that path?

Kylie Walker: There were a few key moments in my life. I've always been fascinated by science and technology and engineering right from when I was a little girl growing up on the farm and working out how things worked. But I actually originally pursued a career as a journalist and my key aim in that career was to speak truth to power. There's a real connection between the necessity to have a thriving free press and the ability and the necessity for knowledge makers and knowledge appliers to quest for truth and then find a way to make a better world by using and applying that truth.

So for me, it was a natural segue. Also as a lifelong fan of science fiction, it is just thrilling to work with people who are bringing some of the things that we read about and looked at as young people to life. But then, I was also diagnosed with advanced cancer in my mid 30s and coming through that and I was the beneficiary of what was then a very new treatment but has since become standard protocol, really cemented for me that absolute depth of commitment to making sure that we could continue to do good science and engineering and apply it in real world scenarios to the benefit of humanity.

Evelyn Storey: That's such a lovely, wonderful story and so interesting to hear about the importance of communication and telling the stories of engineers and scientists or helping them along that path. So, look here we are at CAETS today and it's the first time in 20 years that the CAETS conference has been held in Australia. Why do you think it's significant that the global science and technology community, their leaders, are gathering here now and what does that say about Australia's position in the global conversation at the moment?

Kylie Walker: I think it's a really pivotal moment for Australia on a couple of fronts. We stand on the precipice of great challenge and opportunity. Our geographic location globally makes us very, very important, not just to geopolitics and economics, but also to science and technology. We have the potential here in Australia to be leaders globally in the clean energy revolution and to be exporters of clean energy technologies and clean fuels, but we also have the imperative to build the infrastructure to grow the workforce and to ensure that we continue to innovate and transition from being a net digger up and exporter of the raw materials to being a country that really knows how to bring those up the value chain, apply them and grow our own technology. I think as well, with the power-base shifting when it comes to R&D around the world, we have in China our biggest trading partner, we have in America our biggest research partner. It puts us in an interesting position, so to be able to bring people from those two nations as well as from around the world here, to think about how to position Australia in our collaborations and the contributions that we can make. I think it's a good time to do it.

Evelyn Storey: The 2025 theme for the CAETS Conference is 'Generations', how STEM can help shape that sustainable future over the next 50 years. What do you think are the problems that we most urgently need to solve that will be part of the conversation over the next couple of days and who do we need at the table to solve them?

Kylie Walker: Climate change is the obvious one, right? We've got to build systems, structures, infrastructure, and I suppose shifting societal organisation in such a way that we can manage the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events, looking at where our populations might need to be living in the future, and thinking about that incredibly important technology to both reduce the amount of carbon we're putting into the atmosphere and perhaps capture some of the stuff that's already up there so that we can mitigate the even worse effects that might come if we don't do this urgently. So that's obviously a challenge that we all understand and know about.

Obviously as well, the very rapidly evolving digital technologies. Systems regulators and legislators around the world are scrambling to catch up with the reality of what that new technology is doing already, let alone what it might be doing in the next 10 or 20 or 50 years. It is utterly transformative, AI, and once quantum computing and that really incredibly powerful computing comes online as well, that combined with AI, it'll be like the steam engine in terms of its transformative effect. In much the same way that the steam engine precipitated the industrial revolution, AI is going change the way that we work, live, play, socialise, organise ourselves, and all of the rest. So, we're not going to know until after it's happened how that has affected us, but we can think about at this time, how do we put the right kind of values, systems in place? How do we ensure that we have consumer protections, that we protect individual and sensitive data and privacy? And who's at that build table to make sure that those technologies are sensitive to the genuine diversity and vulnerabilities of the full breadth of our human communities, so that we ensure that we don't accidentally exclude whole populations of people or craft systems that are not by design but almost by accident, going to make things worse for particularly vulnerable populations.

Evelyn Storey: ATSE and you personally have been tireless advocates for the importance of diversity in STEM and through science and engineering and technology. What are your thoughts on the kind of workforce that we're going to need to develop to tackle these future challenges and how do we ensure inclusivity across the full range of diversity, so age and gender, geography, social types?

Kylie Walker: There are a couple of things that we need to do very urgently. I think we need elevate the role of engineering as a profession and applied science as a profession to aspire to. Something that parents would be very, very proud that their children pursue, and that is seen as a problem solving and a world building profession. We know that schools, parents are more likely still to steer the maths and science savvy folk towards medicine, for example.

But engineering is so crucial and we have tens of thousands of jobs available now and that's only going to grow. That's across all the different kinds of engineering. In terms of inclusivity, well I think the more different people with different experiences, different world views, different ways of being in the world that we can bring to engineering, technology and science, the better our engineering technology and science will be. You don't know what you've never experienced, you don't even know how to ask the questions, and so as well as trying to mitigate those inherent biases by teaching people how to think more expansively and laterally and understand the biases that they bring with them, we also need to ameliorate those biases by having different people and perspectives around the table. Because all of us have them, right? We might think we don't, but of course we all do. We all are necessarily anchored in our own bodies, our own upbringings, our own education and our own world and life experience.

So if we can bring people from First Nations, people who are the first in their family to come to university, people with neurodiversity, people who are immigrants, people who have disability, people who are LGBTIQ, people with different life experiences to the table to build, then we are going to have a much more robust product, in the same way that if you have an ecosystem with a diversity, it thrives and all of the different parts of the ecosystem support each other to grow and to live and to thrive. If we have a whole lot of people who are the same, who've gone through the same educational pathway and have the same cultural background and perhaps the same gender, they’re almost necessarily going to be thinking about problems in the same way, and we really narrow our potential scope to solve those problems.

Evelyn Storey: We've seen a challenge in getting engineers represented at boardroom level and at C-suite level. How do you think we can elevate engineering voices to get aligned alongside the political system, but also those senior executives who might have come through legal and financial backgrounds? Which are the far more common sources of directors in the boardroom these days.

Kylie Walker: I was sitting at a really interesting conversation about this not too long ago. We had the Australian Institute of Company Directors, Engineers Australia, ATSE, and Consult Australia sitting around the table with maybe 10 or so engineers who are also company directors and really big, listed companies, thinking about how do we bring more engineers onto boards, listed boards and also private boards. Because that perspective that you bring as an engineer, that technical capability, as well as that problem-solving mindset, that ability to look at the minute detail and also see the big picture, it's incredibly useful, even for sectors and industries that aren't specifically about engineering.

One of the things we talked about was naming and faming, not just companies and boards that have engineers on them, but also the engineers themselves who are sitting on boards and have been incredibly successful because we don't talk about them in those terms once they've got through that successful directorship career. We talk about them as a director of a board. We don't talk about their background as an engineer. And demonstrating also from an economic perspective, the success of the companies that have had engineering at the leadership level versus the success of the companies who perhaps haven't had engineering at the leadership level, in the same way that we did for women 20 years ago. And it was phenomenally successful in terms of saying, well, the numbers don't lie. It's not about ‘feel good’, it's not about 'a nice to have', this is actually about making sure that we have the right people to solve the problems and guide the strategy for the context that we are living and operating in today.

Evelyn Storey: Trust and expertise in all forms of authority has been waning over recent years, and that could step over into science and engineering, how do we ensure that engineers and scientists do remain that trusted voice that people can rely on?

Kylie Walker: This is the time for science and engineering to really step up and to demonstrate that there is a voice of evidence-based reason. Now more than ever, we need the voice of evidence. It is an incredibly confusing world. You can't trust what you look at online anymore and that, I think, is foundationally shaking. There are a couple of things we also need to do. We need to teach people, not just school children, but people at all ages, how to be discerning, how to think critically, and how to work out for themselves what sources to trust. And science and engineering can play a really important part in that. Those trusted institutions that we have, like the learned academies, like our top universities, like our trusted companies that have been around for many years, can play and should play a really important role at the forefront of demonstrating that voice of trust and truth. And I think we also need to think very carefully about how we protect data integrity.

We need to make sure that the digital technologies that are learning on data sets are doing so on good quality data because that's going to be the thing that builds trust in the technologies over time as well. The better quality you put in, the better you get out and it's up to us to demonstrate that that is not just desirable but eminently possible. I think we've moved past the language of belief when it comes to climate change. There is now global acceptance that this is happening, that it is real, and that the science is telling us what we need to hear. This hasn't always been the case, unfortunately. There were some vested interests but also science missed a trick by buying into the language of belief in the early days of discussion about climate change. We've got to let that go and stand on our own two feet and be very proud of the work that we do. And ensure that we continue to protect the integrity of the systems, the structures and the information that we are basing our work on, so that we can continue to be that beacon of trust and hope.

Evelyn Storey: There's actually an imperative for engineers to step forward and not just sit in the background and go about our innovation, our creativity, but actually be very proud and vocal about what the challenges are and what we can do. There's a discussion around STEM and STEAM, and the contribution of arts and humanities to a flourishing STEM environment. What's your view on the role of arts in the humanities in broadening out the input level of our students as they move in and then as we move through and think about STEM solutions and solving complex problems?

Kylie Walker: The arts and humanities are what makes us human, so we can't dismiss them. We can't focus exclusively on STEM to the exclusion of the creative, the cultural, the connection. These two are inherently intertwined and ought to be. I've got a couple of thoughts on it. One, there's always gonna be a call for specialists, so I don't think that we should ask every single person to be a generalist. There are going to be people who are incredibly technically competent and should be supported to continue to be incredibly technically competent. They shouldn't have to be cultural ambassadors and communicators if that's not their comfort zone. But at the same time, we want them to be thinking about how do I bring the right people in, the right advisers, how do I consider those cultural and artistic considerations? The pieces that make us human, they have to be really highly prized and valued and centred as we develop those technologies because there's no point in having technology if it's not in service of humanity.

One of my previous roles was as Australia's chair for UNESCO. And I think there's a reason that the UN Peace Agency has both culture, education and science at its heart. These three things together make an incredibly powerful alliance and I think help us understand ourselves, the contexts that we're operating in and that beautiful, creative but informed imagining for the future because I fundamentally believe that science and engineering and technology are creative endeavours and they flourish and are at their best when they pay consideration to humanity and to culture.

Evelyn Storey: We often think of innovation as being these eureka moments, but in actual fact, the best innovations are these small incremental improvements all the time. How do you think we are best able to celebrate what may not be quite as exciting as a monumental technological breakthrough, but is a really important incremental step change in improving our quality of life or how we're living?

Kylie Walker: Innovation is necessarily a long-term game, and it does take many, many people and many players. Sometimes it can be five, 10, 20 years. I've heard of incredible innovations that have taken 60 or 70 years from original theory through to practical application. For that reason, it is incredibly important to take a long-term and visionary approach to investing in and supporting the teams and the institutions that enable these thinkers and knowledge makers to flourish and to create. One of the ways that we can do that is to speak about those incremental gains in a celebratory way and to showcase the incredible brains that are coming together to bring them to life. Telling the stories of people at a range of different places in the sector is a good thing to do. Helping people with the tools, the platforms, the connections to be able to be public role models is incredibly important. Just giving people the opportunity to speak about their work, to ignite in others the excitement that they feel for the passions that they're pursuing.

And then putting them in front of people who are decision-makers. Equally important to speak to schools and help children understand that they too can have a place and play a part in innovating, in creating, and in advancing the sum of knowledge and technological evolution, because very, very few people are Nobel laureates. Very, very few people get to be the person whose name is immortalised on a particular innovation. But millions and millions of people have the opportunity to be part of that building, that imagining, that innovating and that problem solving.

Evelyn Storey: Have you got any advice for young engineers and scientists, from your perspective, on how to build this sort of career based on creativity and innovation, and really contributing to working on these complex societal problems?

Kylie Walker: To have a career in STEM I think you need to be resilient, and part of building that resilience is finding your crew. So, I would suggest to young people starting out that you build some connections and a network that's lateral as well as vertical. Don't just think about the people who are doing your course if you're at university, or working in your team if you're in employment. Find your personal board of directors, who are in other companies or in other courses or in other universities and really proactively curate that group of people so that you've got a crew to go through with. It's a way that you can then check in when you're feeling a little bit disheartened or things aren't going your way or when you've got a great idea and you want to just bounce it off people.

Find those people who you trust, who you like, who you would like to stick with through your career. And after years of running programmes to support young people to build careers in STEM, that's actually been the single most powerful piece of feedback that I've heard from hundreds, if not thousands, actually of people, that having that group of collaborators, that group of personal directors has been the factor that's kept people going when things are difficult. Equally, I would say value yourself. Value your own ideas and thoughts. You don't have to do things the same way that everyone else has done them. In fact, we want you to think differently because that's how we get new ideas and new innovations.

Evelyn Storey: One final question. Many of today's young professionals, they want careers that align with their values. How do you think the STEM sector can better demonstrate its relevance and its purpose to attract and retain those young professionals?

Kylie Walker: We know from our friends in social science that young people, more and more over time, are responding to the language of problem solving rather than the language of technical challenge. If we can start to align our messaging with what resonates with young people, we've got a chance to bring a much broader diversity of young people into the profession. Engineers are problem solvers building the sustainable infrastructure that are going to support us to thrive as a species into the future. So, if we can frame it like that, I think we'll find that we incentivise a whole lot of people to come into the profession.

Evelyn Storey: Well, thank you, Kylie for joining us today.

Kylie Walker: Thank you so much for having me.

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Maria Rampa: I hope you enjoyed this episode of Engineering Reimagined. What an amazing role model Kylie is for all young engineers and scientists.

If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe on Apple or Spotify and don’t forget to follow Aurecon on your favourite social media platform to stay up to date and join the conversation. And look out for our future episodes recorded at CAETS. Until next time, thanks for listening.