Sharath Sriram: Greater research collaboration key to long-term ambition for new WA Chief Scientist

Western Australia’s new chief scientist wants to influence more children and school students to take an interest in the field as he looks to foster home-grown talent.

As chief scientist, Professor Sharath Sriram will advise the government on the science and technology field as well as as how to attract more talent, promote the State’s science sector and inspire future generations.

Appointed early last month to succeed the renowed Peter Klinken, Professor Sriram was born in India and studied electronics and communications at university before moving to Melbourne to continue his engineering studies at RMIT University.

Mr Sriram said he was no stranger to Perth despite spending much of the past two decades based in Melbourne.

“WA is unique, it’s one of the largest jurisdictions in the world, if you look at it in the health and data space it’s probably one of the largest and the most complex,” he told The Sunday Times.

“In one of my roles I had set up a company for remote health monitoring and we decided to headquarter it in WA, this is two years back, because we felt that’s the right place to do it, it has the intent, the skills, the talent and the networks.”

Professor Sriram wants the longevity of the sector to be front of mind.

“My personal preference is to always look at the long term objective, you need to keep seeing beyond the horizon and preparing for it,” he said. “Whether it’s a State or a country how do you build resilience and security? To me, science and technology is what enables it.

“If you want to improve people’s lives, improve the state, improve the environment, it all relies on science and technology.”

Professor Sriram said some of his focus will be on the State’s youngest minds.

“I’m looking at the talent pipeline long-term,” he said. “How do we actually influence early education, inspire kids about science and technology, open their eyes to the variety of roles which exist, often there’s a lot of stereotypes.”

Professor Sriram also believes WA needs a better connected research sector to ensure better results.

“A challenge, not just for Western Australia, but across Australia is our clusters of strength are fragmented across universities and research institutes,” he said.

“So how do you actually create that collective effort? Be it create some grand challenge which focuses effort.

“Say we want to do remote health monitoring to support remote communities, how do you bring all the expertise together on a single journey?”

Professor Sriram will be the fourth person appointed to the position and he revealed he had spoken with with both Professor Klinken and his predecessor Lyn Beazley before beginning the role.

He said the main piece of advice he took from them was the importance of independence.

If anyone comes up with a view, we should be able to explain all sides of it with evidence and guide them into decision making, we shouldn’t make a decision for them.

“I think people think the chief scientist is voice for government but no, they are a special adviser to government,” he said.

“We are a balance and we can give independent advice both to the government and to the department and so in some ways we have a big opportunity of being a strategic glue between the two sides, what the government wants to deliver and what the department is able to deliver.”

While there are plenty of ambitions for developing the sector’s workforce from a young age, Professor Sriram will also have to reckon with heightened misinformation and falling trust in institutions.

He said participating in genuine conversations was a key to better informing people, although it took patience.

“With the advent of social media, with the advent of AI being used to create content which may not be real we do have to manage the misinformation and disinformation,” Professor Sriram said.

“I usually go back to one thing, it has to be evidence based, people should debate, we should never shut down debate but you need to debate it based on evidence.

“If anyone comes up with a view, we should be able to explain all sides of it with evidence and guide them into decision making, we shouldn’t make a decision for them.

“For me that’s key, I think when you start forcing people into decision, that’s when they push back and you get conflict.”

Professor Sriram entered the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation just weeks before it transformed into the Department of Energy and Economic Diversification as part of wider public sector reforms on July 1.

The change may come at a good time for the new chief scientist who said he is eager to develop diversification in the industry.

“WA is heading in the direction where there’s a lot of focus on economic diversification, so you tap into knowledge and innovation to create products,” he said.

“I think my journey has been fully along that line, trained as an engineer I built a lot of infrastructure for research when in Melbourne and that was to build on research.

“We’re very good at invention in Australia but how do you tap it to make it into innovation and products and I think that’s the journey I’ve been on and I’m hoping to contribute that here in.”