It's a bug's life

As a child, I had the image of myself as a scientist in a white lab coat, dealing with glass tubes with different coloured liquids, and wearing a pair of thick glasses.

While I put on lab coats and safety glasses, there are no glass tubes in the lab (all disposable plastic ware). On reflection, the Seven Up series directed by Paul Almond that we watched in Year 10 English class with Mrs Tuckerman now seems prophetic and uncannily accurate!

My first experience with Trinity was, in fact, in Malaysia in 1982, when my parents told me that we were to travel from my hometown Muar (a town in Johor State) to meet Mr Munroe in Malacca (approximately 42 km north of Muar) for an interview. The meeting went surprisingly well, or so I thought, despite barely speaking a word!

Having attended Mandarin-speaking schools before commencing at Trinity in Year 8, subjects taught in English, let alone French, were initially a challenge for me. Though at the time I dreaded language classes, I now look back with fondness at my French teacher, Mr Pearson, playing tape recordings of French train station announcements. Funnily enough, while I was working in Edinburgh in the early 2000s at the Roslin Institute (famed for creating the very first cloned sheep ‘Dolly’; and yes, I also had the opportunity to see her in real life!), I picked up French classes for a second time.

After graduating from Trinity, I started my journey to become a scientist, a dream I had had since I was a kid in Muar. I enrolled at La Trobe University’s Bundoora Campus for a Biological Sciences degree majoring in Microbiology and Genetics (much to the disappointment of my father, who had instead encouraged me to do a degree in accounting). I then pursued an Honours degree studying the evolutionary genetics of the Australian bull ant genus Myrmecia, followed by a PhD degree on the population genetics of an unnamed ant species – Rhytidoponera sp. 12- found in the semi-arid zone of Australia.

My job has taken me around the world, including post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Helsinki (Finland) and the University of Oulu (just below the Arctic Circle), followed by Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, Queen’s University Belfast in Northern Ireland, the University of Melbourne, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Germany, and now the CSIRO in Canberra.

The years in Finland were some of the most exciting years I have had; ice dipping in frozen lakes and cross-country skiing in Lapland, experiencing the endless long winter dark nights brightened only by the snow, the northern lights, and by the sun briefly rising above the horizon for just a few minutes when the weather was fine and the sky clear. Winter lasted seven months but was followed by the most amazing 24 hours of daylight as summer arrived, when we would eat strawberries by the harbour, wander through the fish markets, and island hop in Åland to pick mushrooms and blueberries.

My role as a scientist has evolved, from the early years of spending long hours in laboratories to now engaging collaborators, securing funding, mentoring team members, interpreting findings and communicating implications with Government officers and the media.

I’ve worked on plenty of interesting projects, including on the spread of internal parasites of bumblebees that affect the tomato industry, on population genomics of some of the most important crop pests – the fall armyworm Spodoptera frugiperda and the cotton bollworm Helicoverpa armigera, and hunting down resistance genes crucial to Australia’s primary industries.

Insects are of global importance, and when they become invasive, they can affect food security, farmers’ livelihoods, trade access and agricultural productivity. In essence, my job helps identify potential gaps in national biosecurity policies and emerging priority plant pests, and to help develop and improve solutions for their sustainable management.

What motivates and inspires me is knowing that by working as a team I can help solve biosecurity challenges impacting our country and global communities. It’s a very satisfying role, and being a scientist allows one to be the first to see the truth in what is otherwise a complex and complicated world.