Greetings

A reminder that all FASTS members are invited to attend the FASTS and ANU policy workshop called supporting risk aware research (see details below). There is no charge for FASTS members to attend but I would be grateful if people could e-mail me ASAP and certainly before COB next Monday, July 7th to confirm attendance.

In addition, please click here FYI our submission to the ARC on the Future Fellowship program (and thanks to the people you sent us their views on the proposal – they were very valuable in helping FASTS develop our position).

Regards

Bradley Smith
Executive Director
FASTS

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Supporting Risk-aware research.
On Friday 11th of July, FASTS and the ANU are co-hosting a policy workshop called “Supporting Risk-aware research”, 9.00am – 5.00pm. Members Dining Room, Old Parliament House, Canberra.

The workshop was set up as a direct response to issues raised by Minister Carr’s office and will help inform the review of the National Innovation System.

Research is undertaken to deliberately explore the unknown and its outcomes are unpredictable. Research entails intrinsic risk that must be managed, not mitigated. Research risk may manifest in a number of ways including the unpredictability of outcomes, the possibility of ‘failure’, the nature of research into risk-rich topics such as natural hazards, and the potential that research findings may be accurate but uncomfortably challenge some moral frameworks.

Given this:
* how do we know whether existing federal and state/territory programs support a sufficiently risk-aware research portfolio – both within institutions and across national competitive schemes?;
* how might we improve support for risk-aware research?

To tackle these and other questions, on Friday 11th of July, ANU and FASTS are co-hosting a policy workshop called Supporting Risk-aware research.

The keynote international speaker is Dr Paul Stolorz, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who formerly was Google’s first Director of Production Software and Program Manager for Autonomy and Datamining at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at CalTech.

Other speakers include:

• Professor Warwick Anderson AM, CEO, National Health And Medical Research Council
• Professor Ken Baldwin, President, FASTS
• Professor Gabriele Bammer, Professor, National Centre For Epidemiology And Population Health, ANU
• Duncan Buckeridge, Partner - Economics, Deloitte
• Professor Steve Dowrick, Professor Of Economics And Commerce, ANU
• Dr Ian Elsum, Principal Advisor, CSIRO
• Ian Harris, Director, Research And Research Training Division, University Of Queensland
• Dr Mark Matthews, Director, Research And Innovation Policy Project, ANU
• Professor Tanya Munro, Chair Of Photonics And Director, Centre Of Expertise In Photonics, University Of Adelaide
• Steve Parker, Group General Manager - Sales, Marketing And R&D, Aristocrat Leisure
• Professor Margaret Sheil, CEO, Australian Research Council
• Dr Bob Watts, Technology Consultant
• Mike Whelan, Deputy Chief Executive, Operations, CSIRO

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Program
9.00am - Registration and arrival tea and coffee

9.30am  -  Introduction: Welcome and Overview; Why is this an Issue?; What do we need to do and know to move forward

• Welcome and overview – Why is this an issue? Professor Ken Baldwin, President of FASTS       
• What do we need to know, and do, to move forward? Dr Mark Matthews, Research School of Social Science, ANU

10.00am – Keynote Address: An international perspective

• Dr Paul Stolorz – Silicon Valley entrepreneur, former VP of Google; Jet Propulsion Lab, NASA/Caltech

10.50am            Morning Tea

11.15pm - View from the funders

• Fine tuning assessment: Can we achieve a better balance? Professor Margaret Sheil, CEO, ARC
• The variety of risks for a government health research funding body - Professor Warwick Anderson, CEO, NHMRC

Noon - Risk aware approaches in the real world – a business perspective, a research centre perspective and risks faced by institutions

• Steve Parker, Group General Manager – Sales, Marketing and R&D, Aristocrat Leisure Ltd
• Professor Tanya Munro, Chair of Photonics & Director, Centre of Photonics, University of Adelaide
• Ian Harris, Research and Research Training Division, University of Queensland

1.00pm lunch

1.45pm  - Relevant business methods

• Real options and portfolio approaches -  Mike Whelan, Deputy Chief Executive – operations, CSIRO
• Project selection and Stage gate methods - Dr Bob Watts, Technology Consultant
• Project evaluation and learning - Duncan Buckeridge, Partner, Deloitte Consulting

2.45pm View from the researchers

• Response from a multi-disciplinary perspective - Professor Gabriele Bammer, ANU and co-editor of the recently released Uncertainty and risk: multidisciplinary perspectives
• ‘Managing’ high uncertainty innovation – Dr Ian Elsum, Principal advisor, CSIRO
• Response from an economic perspective – Professor Steve Dowrick, Professor of Economics, and Panel member, Review of the National Innovation System

3.45pm – afternoon tea

4.00pm – wrap up and discussion,

4.45pm – refreshments

Dr Paul Stolorz
Dr Paul Stolorz is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur with executive experience in a range of companies and institutions across the technology spectrum within both the public and private sectors. He is currently Co-founder and CEO of search engine start-up Kyluka. Immediately prior to Kyluka he served as Google's first Director of Production Software, where he was responsible for the development and deployment of the software underpinning Google's global production infrastructure. Prior to this he served as Director of Product Management for Content Delivery Network Services at Cable & Wireless, where he led the growth of annual revenue for the CDN product line to $30 million and profitability for the first time in the company's history.

Earlier in his career Dr Stolorz served as the Program Manager for Autonomy and Datamining at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In this capacity he was heavily engaged in programmatic interactions with federal US R&D funding agencies including NASA, NSF, DARPA and NIH. At the same time he helped pioneer the development of datamining as a recognized field during a period of explosive growth, serving as Program Chair for KDD98 and Publicity Chair for KDD97, the major international conference in this field. His research contributions include work in large-scale data analysis and data mining, machine learning, computational biology and massively parallel computing, dating back to participation in the development of the world's first massively parallel MIMD computer, the Cosmic Cube at Caltech.

Dr Stolorz holds an MBA from Pepperdine University, a PhD in theoretical physics from the California Institute of Technology, a DIC in mathematical physics from Imperial College, University of London, and a BSc(Hons) from the University of Tasmania in mathematics and physics.