When Jumana Saleh moved to Oman in 2004, obesity simply wasn’t a public health issue in the sultanate. “You could hardly find anyone who was even just overweight, never mind obese,” she says
The Middle East might not be the most obvious place to go to escape sexism and political instability, but that’s exactly what Susu Zughaier did in 2017. She left the United States – where she had a research position at Emory University searching for new ways to stop bacterial infections – because she says the country’s politics had become so febrile.
Turning 82 this year, this Nobel laureate and former Australian of the Year underscores a deep involvement in communicating evidence-based science and combating misinformation with a refreshing irreverence.
Regina Honu is a leading light for African women in STEM. At home, she is involved in driving government policy, and globally, she has been recognised as one of the BBC’s hundred most inspirational and innovative women. In 2017 she took home emerging global leaders award from the US’s Northwestern University Roberta Buffet Institute. There are many more to name, but it is not these awards, nor the boards she sits on, of which she is most proud. That distinction falls to the Soronko Academy.
For Abdulrahman Bamerni, science is an act of resistance and defiance against the Islamic extremists who once tried to kill him.
A talented cellist at an early age, she had her sights set on the Sydney Conservatorium High School. But her mother saw that the emphasis on music translated into a reduced school curriculum, and her daughter would not be able to study her other passion: science. “She said to me, ‘Tanya, you’re too young to narrow yourself and rule out science.’ It was the biggest trauma to hit my 11-year-old self, but I’m so grateful now,” says Monro.
If you look up at any one of the three million roofs in Australia with solar panels that have been recently installed, you’re almost certainly looking at the work of Sydney-based engineer, Professor Martin Green. It’s fair to say that, without his contribution, the solar-energy industry as we know it would not exist.
A professor of chemistry at the University of Sydney, Thomas Maschmeyer co-invented a technology that turns plastic waste into oil to be used in fuel, chemicals or new plastic products in less than 20 minutes. That’s impressive, considering it takes nature millions of years to create the oil from scratch.
And even better, his invention, called the catalytic hydrothermal reactor (Cat-HTR), can process plastics that were previously considered un-recyclable.