Ms Aditi Subramanya1, Jana Makar2, Jane Gifford3, Ms Jo Condon4
1Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, Perth, Australia, 2New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, Auckland, New Zealand, 3AARNet, 4AuScope
Australasia is an established global leader in world-class research. The Australian Government helps maintain this reputation by ensuring researchers have access to cutting edge national research infrastructure supported through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) program with over twenty funded projects.
These projects range across astronomy, biodiversity, geoscience, climate science, nuclear science, health science, data and digital skills (and support), marine science, supercomputing and more.
Within Australasia’s eResearch sector, there is a large community of practice for science and technology communicators and outreach practitioners. Last year an idea was pitched to use the eResearch conference as an annual meetup and gathering opportunity. That initial session attracted attendees from a range of research institutions and projects, and all indicated support to make it an annual meetup.
This Birds of a Feather (BoF) aims to bring professionals inside and outside of marketing, communications, engagement, media and creative fields, who work across the Australian research innovation ecosystem to discuss the unique challenges, opportunities and best practices they face in maximising engagement, collaboration and effective communications in Australia’s eResearch industry.
From a research enabler perspective, we —as communicators, data scientists, engineers, leaders, and professionals of many other diverse shades — are faced with a central ongoing question: how do we better support researchers to address pressing national challenges?
This BoF will drive conversation on a better way of communicating, using four focus questions (come prepared with your thoughts!):
- Sharing – What is something ‘new’ you’ve tried this year? (new comms tool, new outreach approach)
- Learning – What is something you’d like to learn more about or learn to do better?
- Exploring – What opportunity(ies) do you see for collaboration or knowledge-sharing in the communications and outreach space?
- Connecting – Are there particular community members or organisations you’d like to better connect with or learn more about?
Open to one and all, this is an ideas share on communications and engagement in the industry. See you there!
Biography:
Ms. Aditi Subramanya: Pawsey Supercomputing Research Centre, Perth, Australia
Aditi is a creative marketing and communications professional with speciality in digital communications.
She is instrumental in providing global visibility in order to showcase organisational capabilities and services via key exhibitions at conferences worldwide, and plays a pivotal role in increasing market presence and overall brand awareness.
Jana Makar: New Zealand eScience Infrastructure, Auckland, New Zealand
Based at the University of Auckland, Jana Makar coordinates a range of engagement initiatives and external communications for New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI). Prior to joining NeSI, Jana worked as a communications professional for multiple organisations in Canada’s cyberinfrastructure sector, including Cybera (provincial research & education network), WestGrid (regional HPC consortium), and Compute Canada (national HPC platform). She has a degree in Communications from the University of Calgary and spent the early part of her career working as a journalist for weekly and daily newspapers in Western Canada.