Australia’s future relies on getting it right for our young researchers

Professor Emma Johnston. Picture: John Appleyard

According to the latest research, the world is more than likely to cross the 1.5C global warming threshold by 2027 and our State of the Environment Report paints a dire picture of the impacts, on all Australians, of the accelerating biodiversity and climate crises.

These are enormous challenges and it will take a collective effort to turn our fortunes around. We are going to need many brilliant ideas and innovations.

So, who are the solution makers? They are the next generation of research talent; vital members of our knowledge economy, researchers are our best bet of tackling growing global challenges in climate, health and sustainability.

Our future relies on a system that can support the next generation of researchers.

Research insights do not happen overnight. In fact, being a researcher is a long, hard slog of accumulating knowledge, collaborating, experimenting, and bringing together multiple lines of evidence to create a coherent picture.

Professor Deanna D’Alessandro is a chemist with a twenty-year research career who is examining methods to remove historical carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere.

For a long time carbon removal technologies were considered a pipe dream. But now, thanks to the efforts of researchers like D’Alessandro, they’re entering the mainstream. Working alongside industry partners, she and her team are developing materials for a solar-powered direct air capture project that buries captured carbon in underground permanent storage.

There’s no silver bullet to addressing climate change. Even if the world achieved net-zero emissions tomorrow we wouldn’t immediately halt global warming. That’s why innovations in direct air capture and other such technologies are vital for tackling the sins of our past.

To develop these solutions we must give our researchers the time to innovate, explore and take risks.

We know funding opportunities for our early career researchers are rare and the competition is extreme.

A 2019 survey of around 650 early-career researchers in Australia looked at job satisfaction and how this affected future career plans. Only 51 per cent of respondents indicated they were satisfied with their workplace culture and the majority said they considered making a major career change or leaving academia altogether in the past five years. Lack of job security and lack of funding were common reasons for wanting to leave.

There is currently a petition running on the Australian Parliament House website that is calling for an increase to research scholarship rates for PhD students asking for it to match the minimum wage. It gained close to 15,000 signatures.

We are at risk of losing a generation of scientists at a vital point in our global history.

That is why, in our submission to the Australian Universities Accord, we called on the government to reimagine what a PhD might look like in 2030 or 2040. As we said in our submission we must think deeply about how we can ensure our teaching and research remain strong, and that Australia’s diversified and increasingly knowledge-based industries have access to the higher-order skills they will need to remain competitive.

As many have said before, passion isn’t enough.

As Australia’s first university and one of the top 30 universities for research in the world, we know we have an important role to play.

As part of our 2032 Strategy we have a suite of initiatives aimed at supporting the next generation of researchers – including our new Horizon Fellowships – announced recently. Under the scheme we are offering early and mid-career researchers up to 40 continuing academic positions, commencing with a five-year research-focused fellowship which includes training and mentoring, a competitive salary and research funding. The fellowships are open to researchers from any academic discipline, but they must be tackling a major global challenge in climate, health or sustainability.

In addition, we are investing in a graduate research school to better support higher-degree research students, new programs to support research commercialisation and translation, and a training and development program to support early-career researchers to thrive.

This is only part of the response needed to face these significant challenges, but supporting the next generation of researchers is a critical step towards building Australia’s knowledge economy and a liveable future.

Professor Emma Johnston is deputy vice-chancellor (research) at the University of Sydney.