From January to March this year, I travelled to Germany, the UK, the USA and Jamaica to study "Strategies to get girls interested in science, engineering and technology" on the 2011 Nancy Fairfax Churchill Fellowship.  (I came back to Australia for 2.5 days during my Fellowship to accept the Young Australian of the Year award!)  Upon my return, I had 10 weeks to write a report detailing my findings.

A summary of my major lessons learned:

• Teach through projects that are based on a story that highlights the ‘why’ or the usefulness of the activity to the real world to which girls can relate.
• There needs to be a low entry level and then a quick rate of success.
• Self-confidence in a subject should be tackled before interest in a subject.
• Role models are important, as girls need to be able to visualise themselves as an engineer – include women in the marketing posters.
• Robots should be used to highlight other things like different disciplines of engineering, based on themes or to teach maths or science principles.
• Girls don’t need competition to thrive.  Girls can thrive on collaborative and mission-based tasks that have goals to accomplish and achieve.
• Volunteers should have experience doing the entire course so they are aware of all the challenges that the kids may experience.
• Girls should come out thinking, “It's not rocket-science, and even if it were, no big deal.”

The ideas I got as a result of my Churchill Fellowship are being used to create a new Robogals workshop curriculum and a robust volunteer training programme, a Robogals Club (for girls with the aptitude for SET to further their skills and pursue their interest), and a Robogals Camp.  Using the new curriculum, Robogals will also work on creating a program to train teachers, and other ideas I received as a result of my Churchill Fellowship will be introduced in Robogals over the coming years including family activities and awards programmes.  Finally, relevant findings from my Churchill Fellowship will be integrated into the Robogals SINEs (Seminars Inducting New Executive committee members, the Robogals conference), held annually in each Robogals region, and Robogals’ training manuals.

The Churchill Fellowship gives Australian citizens over the age of 18 years a chance to conduct research overseas in a field that they are passionate about and that would benefit Australia.  Nominations open in November each year, and close at the end of February.  The Churchill Fellowship is an amazing and life-changing opportunity and I would recommend it to anyone!  Find out more information here:  http://www.churchilltrust.com.au/

You can read my full report here:  http://www.churchilltrust.com.au/fellows/detail/3571/

Wow!  What a huge honour!  I flew overseas in the wee hours of 27 January, and so the whole experience of being named Young Australian of the Year is just beginning to sink in.  I'm still very excited and in disbelief - it feels like a dream!

I feel completely honoured to have been given this privilege of being the Young Australian of the Year for 2012.  I'm currently on my Churchill Fellowship, (which is a grant that is giving me the opportunity to study organisations similar to Robogals overseas), so I flew back to Australia from Portugal for 2.5 days for the Australia Day Awards Ceremony.  The 2.5 days I was in Australia were quite surreal.  I got to meet and know the other finalists before the Awards Ceremony through a BBQ dinner on the Governor General's lawn the night before, and then a morning tea at the Prime Minister's House on the morning of 25 January.  I especially enjoyed hearing about the work that Senior Australian of the Year 2012 Recipient, Laurie Baymarrwangga does.  Unfortunately, as Laurie is 95 and was feeling a bit sick, she couldn't make it, and two representatives were sent on her behalf.  It was so interesting to learn about Laurie's story and the work that she has been doing of protecting and preserving her culture.  An amazing inspiration.  I know when I'm 95, i want to look back and say, "I dedicated my life to improving the world and I gave it my all."  I hope I get to visit the Crocodile Islands and learn more about her culture.

I also really enjoyed meeting all the other Young Australian of the Year finalists.  They're all such nice people and are contributing so much to society.  I love the work Greg Irons has been doing in Tasmania, looking after Australia's unique fauna, I am inspired by David Pocock from Western Australia's work in giving back to his motherland Zimbabwe (while being an amazing footballer), and Rebecca Healy from Northern Territory for her personal strength in overcoming the challenges life threw at her and giving back in such a powerful way.  Rebecca is so lovely!  (Both Rebecca's were!)  The Young Australia of the Year finalists are a remarkable bunch and I feel honoured to know them.

Companies, organisations or anything that creates an impact is never achieved alone but is always the product of focused collaboration towards a common goal.  To that end, Robogals, which operates at 17 chapters in 6 countries would never have been able to get to where it is today without the thoughtful, dedicated and passionate work of its many volunteers, 100+ executive committee members across all the chapters, the Global team and all those in the Robogals community.  I am so proud of Robogals for what we have achieved and I am so lucky to work with so many talented individuals.  Go team!  :)

I intend to use this year and my title to highlight the topics of women in engineering, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Women in engineering

Less than 10% of engineers in Australia are female, and only 14% of engineering students are female.  As well as this striking gender imbalance, there is also a shortage of engineering graduates to fill the available jobs.  More worryingly though, the number of students taking up the harder maths and physics disciplines in the senior years of high school is declining.  In order to see these numbers change direction, we all need to work together.

Schools can establish robotics programmes so that our kids will not just be consumers of technology, but also creators of technology.  Through robotics, theories learnt in maths and physics can be shown in the real world to enhance learning of key concepts.

Changing these numbers won't happen overnight, but if we focus our attention on this issue, then we will be able to have girls and boys see engineering as something that is creative, logical, world-changing, and something they would like to be a part of.

Through research done on my Churchill Fellowship (my research topic is "strategies to get girls interested in science, engineering and technology"), I've encountered some really cool ideas of dealing with this issue.  I'll be writing a thesis about the topic upon my return to Australia in March, and then planning the implementation of all those ideas shortly afterwards.

Innovation

Innovation is a hard thing to define.  But to me, it's knowing there is no perfect solution, but that better solutions can always be found.  Having said that, it's important to ship.  So innovation is a process.

I'm all for supporting having a show like the ABC's New Inventors return to air in Australia.  The show each week shone a spotlight on innovations coming out of Australia, giving inventors free marketing, credibility and a platform for them to connect with like-minded people.  If we want to create a nation of creators, then we need to celebrate them in the media!

Through my short stint on the New Inventors last year, I got to meet some of the nation's most enthusiastic inventors!  For example, after the New Inventors Grand Final, I hung out with one of the grand finalists, Flexipole, until I had to take my early morning flight back home to Melbourne.  Flexipole is a really awesome company and I'm really inspired by their determination and perseverance, but they said they were having a lot of trouble getting it off the ground because it's difficult to run that kind of innovative company in Australia.  As someone who wants to start up that kind of company in Australia, I found it very disheartening to hear.

The New Inventors cultivated a community of inventors and manufacturing entrepreneurs.  As the lovely Sally Dominguez, a popular New Inventors panellist put it, "that show brings together the most interesting people.  Where will they meet now?"

Entrepreneurship

I'm interested in fostering entrepreneurship in Australia, particularly Melbourne, because I want to see a cultural change.  I think we need the entrepreneurial mindset, of being creators, to further create a world-class city.

Innovation without application is of no use to anyone.  Once innovations are created, we need to get them into the marketplace, and entrepreneurship is how we do that.

Culturally, we need to make it okay for people in Australia to choose entrepreneurship as a career.

And practically, I think the method used in the "Startup Chile" programme centred around a central location (say the city of Melbourne) where the government simply gives enormous grants to would-be entrepreneurs to do their thing is the fastest way to make a bold statement about our nation's commitment towards entrepreneurship.

Thank you so much for all the kind messages of support I've received so far.  It really means a lot to me!  This year is going to be one crazy roller coaster, but I'm going to hang on and make sure I have heaps of fun.  :)

How to create a Sandbox Global Summit

Carefully select over 4 years, a group of 650 under-30 year-olds from around the world and cultivate relationships between the membership through regular dinners based in cities all over the world, and daily online interactions.  Idea exchange, contact and company introductions, couch surfing, topical debates, and international friendships all result.

These 650 people have never congregated before, so encourage and cultivate these regional dinners and virtual interactions so that they grow healthily, and watch as the links between individuals become stronger.

Then BAM!!!!!  bring together 200 Sandboxers and other young, and Sandbox-type guests in the one place!  Encourage them all to give 72 hours out of their busy schedules to spend time with each other during well-organised activities in amazing venues… and you get the Sandbox Global Summit.

The people

The people are just amazing.  In my day-to-day life, I don't tell most people that I intend to start a company after I graduate from university because they look at me like I should attend a Careers 101 Course.  I usually tell people that I intend to travel for a year after university to appease them.

Not this lot of people though.  They don't even bat an eyelid.  Everyone there wants to change the world.  The conversations there tend to be more along the lines of,
Person A:  "One of the things I'm working on is…"
Person B:  Parallel idea/  know of a similar organisation/  running an organisation going through the same challenges/ know of relevant contacts/  other relevant experiences or expertise, etc.
And the conversation turns into a huge snowball of amazing ideas and possible action steps!

The best thing though, was that everyone there was just so approachable and down-to-earth, belying their incredible achievements.  It was very refreshing and inspiring to meet so many young people who are so comfortable in their skin.

The venues

The main venue MUDE resides in a beautiful mall in Portugal.

As soon as you step out of the front doors of MUDE and look to the left, you see the sun smiling on a glistering wide river framed in a grand archway on the top and sides, and a colonial cobblestones walkway.  Just gorgeous.

Inside the venue were beautifully, custom-designed and hand-crafted cardboard furniture and decor.  Yes, cardboard!  It was edgy, young and looked amazing, which helped set the tone of the event - funky, fresh, innovative, arty, a place for creators and high quality.

As well as that, we had dinner in some places of great character - a museum, a circus, a hall where traditional Portugese music was played and even a reconverted pharmacy!

The sessions

All participants were encouraged to curate their own sessions.  This led to 72 sessions over 5 time slots and a lot of devastation on the part of the participants.  How do you choose between sessions like "An Autopsy of Failure", "Cold Reading, Fortune Telling, and Social Engineering - How you are manipulated every day and how you can use it for your own goals", "Virtual World Vs Concrete World, How can we make change happen?" and "How can we predict the future using public information on the internet?", which were all on at the same time (as well as another 10 similarly interesting sessions)?

We were encouraged to make the sessions collaborative discussions, which meant that we could create amazing new friendships and conversations that could be continued way after the sessions were over.  This bottom-up approach really maximised the expertise of all the participants and fostered amazing conversations.

A family

When we were welcomed at the airport at the start of the summit, we were handed a letter written by Nico Luchsinger, the CEO of Sandbox, which emphasised that Sandbox wasn't just a network, it was a family.

Having met 200 Sandboxers who were welcoming, encouraging, and shared the same DNA strand of wanting to change the world and doing something about it, I'm glad I've finally met the family in person.

What I got out of it

New collaborations and friends!  I will definitely be Skyping with John from Dublin about making Melbourne into an entrepreneurial hub.  I will definitely be in touch with Kat from Teach for America for them to speak at our Robogals SINE (Seminars Inducting New Executive committees) in California at the end of February.  I will definitely be in touch with Tomas from Prague to find out how the company he's working with, a nanotechnology company that does innovative work in bandage technology, is going.  I will definitely be in touch with Robin from Switzerland about starting up a Robogals chapter in Zurich.  I will definitely swap notes with Evan from New York about the book he's writing to teach kids business skills and entrepreneurship.  I will definitely be in touch with Gwen from Singapore to form strong links throughout the Asia Pacific.  And I will definitely be following up with Philip from San Francisco to stay at his house for a week in February.  :)

The result of putting like-minded people in the same place and seeing what happens, can sometimes result in magic.  The Sandbox Global Summit is one of those places where magic was created.

The inaugural Sandbox Global Summit was held in Lisboa, Portugal on 20-22 January 2012.  200 Sandboxers and guests from all over the world attended.

I'm so proud of Sonya Chan and Harry Eakins, who were both recognised by their faculty at Imperial College for Services to the Community.

Sonya Chan served as the Imperial College Robogals President for a couple of years before taking the reins of Robogals UK Director.

Harry Eakins was an eager member of mew in its first year, before rehauling the club and renaming it Imperial College Robotics Society and growing that through his keen passion for robotics.

I'm so proud that my friends Sonya and Harry who have worked so hard have now been publicly recognised for their work.  Congratulations Sonya and Harry!

… isn’t the car you drive, whether you earn more money than your neighbour, who you know, or what you know;  it is your health.  Without your health, you don’t have anything.  You won’t be able to run your company, study, travel the world, take on everything you dream of, or live your life to your fullest potential.

So, are you looking after yourself?

• Do you get enough sleep? Whether your body needs 3 hours of sleep or 8 hours of sleep a night, make sure you get enough sleep for your body to operate.  It is stupid to rob yourself of being able to perform at your highest level as a result of not getting enough sleep.
• Are you eating well? Watch Mark Bittman’s TED talk.  As my friend Amir said about it, “20 minutes to learn about food. It’s well worth it ; )”   Eat well.  You’ll live longer.
• Do you exercise? Regular exercise significantly increases your life expectancy, gives you more energy, lowers your health risk and helps relieve stress.  It also builds and limbers up your body and leaves your mind alert.  Great body and more energy.  No brainer.

Don’t wait until you’re older, for things to be stable, for you to have more money or for your body to get ill.  You’re always going to get older, things will never be stable, you can always have more money, and we all know that prevention is better than a cure.  With your health, there is no tomorrow - the time to start looking after your body is now.