Research from universities, research institutes and hospitals are impacting and improving every part of your life. But how many do you actually know?

Nicola Stokes, a powerhouse in corporate leadership is changing the face of philanthropy by helping direct more money from the world’s wealthy into better lives for sick kids.

In almost 50 years of broadcasting, he’s interviewed more than 10,000 scientists, including scores of Nobel laureates, written ten books, inspired countless young Australians to study science, and been voted one of Australia’s Living National Treasures.

Today, 28-year-old Tutt has Young Australian of the Year for NSW 2020 on his resumé. He’s the CSIRO Indigenous STEM Champion 2019, the AMP Tomorrow Maker 2019 and the ABC Trailblazer 2019, all awarded in recognition of his work as the founder and CEO of DeadlyScience.

Dr Syra Madad remembers watching the movie Outbreak, enthralled by watching Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo play doctors seeking a cure for a deadly, Ebola-like pandemic. Madad told her parents this would be her future career. “I was interested not just in infectious disease, but in highly infectious diseases,” she told The Brilliant.

Today Madad is the senior director of New York City’s (NYC) Health and Hospitals System-wide Special Pathogens Program, and a key figure in managing NYC’s response to infectious diseases like measles, Ebola—and Covid-19.

If you want evidence of the public’s appetite for science, look no further than YouTube powerhouse, Veritasium, which has clocked over one billion views and turned founder Dr Derek Muller into one of the world’s most influential science communicators.

The Tibees YouTube channel, started as a hobby, originally featured kittens and squeaking baby sloths. “I remember getting a hundred subscribers,” founder Toby Hendy tells The Brilliant. “It was a really big moment for me.”

Today there isn’t a sloth to be seen, although there is the occasional cat. Tibees is now a physics and mathematics channel with more than 610,000 subscribers and 65 million total views. And it’s a full-time occupation.

In just three years, Dr Becky Smethurst has built an enviable following on YouTube, all while holding down a full-time career as an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford. What she’s learned can help other researchers to build their own audience.

In 1975, IBM built a typewriter plant on the outskirts of Wangaratta in Victoria. Three hours away, students were attending Ballarat University. No one realised it yet, but the proximity of the two was to drive a new wave of regional prosperity, and open up new pathways for private and public collaboration.