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Wednesday, 1 June 2011

It may be a case of being in the right place at the right time, but every so often, a pioneering individual in society sees a need and endeavours to address it. Our University honours several of our own innovators in many of our significant facilities.

For example, only recently we dedicated a major walkway and various buildings to Emeritus Professor Eric John Underwood, Emeritus Professor Sir Noel Stanley Bayliss, Professor Robert Street and Professor David Curnow.

And, as you will read in this issue of UWA News, our memorial Dr George Hondros lecture commemorates a UWA colleague who, despite a relatively short life, made his mark on our University and on Perth.

In a similar vein, it was a great honour for me to have been asked to deliver the inaugural Ralph Slatyer Address in Brisbane earlier this month. Thanks to this distinguished UWA graduate, Australia continues to benefit from Professor Slatyer's identification of a need and his work towards meeting it.

The year was 1990 and Professor Slatyer, Australia's first Chief Scientist, suggested to then Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, the concept of a national network of Cooperative Research Centres. Professor Slatyer and the Prime Minister were friends, having been students together at Perth Modern School before studying at this University.

In devising the CRC program, Professor Slatyer was expanding the stimulating atmosphere he'd experienced in the laboratory as a young researcher. He saw at first hand that the coming together of minds with different abilities is what creates great science.

His vision was crucial in enabling top-flight science and collaboration in this nation - a calibre of science that had been unheard of previously.

Since the inception of the CRC program in 1990, 186 centres have been created. Today, there are 42 centres throughout Australia in four fields: Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing; Mining; Manufacturing; and Services.

The research carried out at these 42 centres ranges from seafood to plant biosecurity; from deep exploration to polymers; from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health; to rail innovation. Each CRC has multiple participants around Australia and many boast significant global collaboration.

At UWA , we host five CRC s - in mining, bushfires, asthma and airways, greenhouse technologies and infrastructure and engineering asset management - and we play a vital partnership role in many others across Australia.

The breadth of research and the enormous benefits that have emerged and will continue to emerge from the CRC program nationally and internationally are directly attributable to Professor Ralph Slatyer.

At our own University in every discipline, we often witness unexpected research consequences when people bounce ideas off each other. And we encourage an environment that fosters and recognises the experimental and the avant garde.

Vice-Chancellor Alan Robson

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