We want to find that nerdy, transgender kid, who’s sitting in their room, creating amazing technology, but who may not be confident or think anyone might invest in them at all. We want to go to Indigenous community, the disabled community, the women’s community, the refugee community. We want to support women and minorities who would normally fall out of the funnel somewhere,” says Wallace. “I want to change what an AI entrepreneur looks like.”

Professor Hala Zreiqat is hoping that, one day in the not too distant future, it will be possible to print parts of the jaw; until now, it has been an almost impossible part of the body to rebuild. And all of this will be done within two days, she says.

Dr Sue Keay never expected to end up in robotics. It was a 2014 conversation with her sister, Andra Keay, a Silicon Valley-based robotics entrepreneur, that made her realise robotics was a way to have a greater impact on society. “I saw the potential and I was hooked,” Keay told The Brilliant.

Since then, Keay has created Australia’s first robotics roadmap, brought The Grace Hopper Celebration, the world’s largest gathering of women technologists, to Australia, and is the inaugural CEO of the Queensland AI hub.

Robots and AI have long been a staple of dystopian fiction, either as merciless overlords, or as downtrodden slaves. Sometimes, they just take all the jobs. Professor Simon Lucey says that far from Artificial Intelligence (AI) being a futuristic nightmare, it has the potential to put Australia at the centre of a global revolution involving plenty of new jobs and benefits.Lucey isn’t simply speculating about a possible future – he’s creating it. In October 2020, he joined the Australian Institute of Machine Learning (AIML) at the University of Adelaide, where he is going to help drive Australia’s role as a world leader in machine learning and AI.

To Professor Glenn King, the funnel-web isn’t just a spider. It’s a chemical treasure house whose venom contains riches beyond measure: everything from environmentally friendly insecticides to treatments for neurological diseases to new and more targeted forms of pain relief.

Dr Alison Todd believes that, without mentoring, SpeeDx, the global diagnostics company she co-founded would not exist. “I’m not an entrepreneur. I’m a lucky person, that in the end had the right mentor at the right time,” says Todd.

In her last role, founding and heading the Australian operation of 350.org, and her current endeavour as climate editor at Climate & Capital Media, Palese and her colleagues have spearheaded one of the most effective strategies yet against climate change – convincing investors that putting their money behind fossil fuel companies is a bad idea.

Have you ever wondered what was the very first star to light up the Universe? That moment in time, when all things began? Well, Professor Lisa Kewley, Director of the Australian Research Centre for Excellence in All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions (ASTRO 3D) is leading the hunt. And if you think finding your keys in the morning is difficult, imagine searching for a handful of select stars amidst our universe, which is made up of an estimated two trillion galaxies, each one home to 100 billion stars.

Growing up in the 1970s, surrounded by the pioneers of the India’s space program, ’Dr Susmita Mohanty was always destined for a space-based career. For Mohanty, the influence of those pioneers was profound. “I could show up in anybody’s offices in the afternoon and they would make a cup of tea and say, ‘let’s talk about your new ideas’. I could talk to them about art, architecture, design, technology, politics. They were Renaissance men. And that’s really what shaped me,” says India’s first space entrepreneur.

In the brain, some proteins determine when animals reproduce. In foods, others determine whether a coeliac will have a bad reaction. Professor Michelle Colgrave is sorting out the goodies from the baddies.

In her last role, founding and heading the Australian operation of 350.org, and her current endeavour as climate editor at Climate & Capital Media, Palese and her colleagues have spearheaded one of the most effective strategies yet against climate change – convincing investors that putting their money behind fossil fuel companies is a bad idea.