Speeches
Wednesday, 21 August 2024
AIMS National Scientific Meeting
I am delighted to be here officially to open the Australian Institute of Medical and Clinical Scientists’ National Scientific Meeting. I particularly welcome those who have travelled from interstate.
It is especially good to do so, as I understand that this is your first face-to-face meeting since the pandemic.
North Terrace, the road in front of this Convention Centre, has long been thought of as Adelaide’s boulevard of culture and government.
It’s where you’ll find Government House, Parliament House, and our Art Gallery, Museum, Library and Botanic Gardens.
But, North Terrace is also our boulevard of science, where world-class research is undertaken and scientific endeavours proliferate.
It’s where our three universities have a presence, and where the Royal Adelaide hospital and the SA Health and Medical Research Institute anchor the Adelaide BioMed City hub for health and life sciences.
And at the eastern end of North Terrace, Lot 14 is a centre for high‑tech innovation, including emerging space and cyber industries. It’s where Stone & Chalk’s start up hub, the Australian Space Agency, the Australian Institute of Machine Learning and the Australian Cyber Collaboration Centre are located.
As I, and my husband Rod, who is a physicist and mathematician, visit these and other institutions, we have been impressed by the world-class science and collaboration being undertaken here in Adelaide.
It is a privilege to witness how research outcomes are being applied to develop technologies that improve lives and how we are contributing to knowledge at a national and international level.
We should perhaps not be too surprised in light of South Australia’s rich scientific history.
I am reminded of that every day, because just outside the North Terrace wall of Government House are busts of Adelaide luminaries Sir Mark Oliphant, who stands near Nobel Prize winners father and son Sir William and Sir Lawrence Bragg, and Lord Howard Florey.
The work of Florey is pertinent to today’s meeting as, like many of you, he was a pathologist and pharmacologist whose work at Oxford University in conjunction with others, was instrumental in the development of penicillin.
While scientists can gain great prominence through their ground-breaking work, I also know there are many scientists whose work behind the scenes contributes a great deal, but can sometimes receive less attention.
The unsung heroes.
I know that many of you here work in public or private diagnostic pathology laboratories, as my niece does. Thank you for your commitment to a profession by which, it is estimated, 70% of all medical decisions are guided.
Your vital work was brought to the fore during the pandemic, when it was widely recognised as critical to supporting health care actions for both individuals and the community.
Like many others, I have awaited the all-important text which would let me know if I had COVID – twice receiving the news I did not want.
Your meeting theme of “moving forward” looks to moving beyond COVID and examining how to take medical laboratory science and the profession into the future.
I know the power of listening to and learning from others. I commend the Institute for bringing together laboratory scientists, laboratory managers, academics, researchers, biomedical industry representatives and laboratory medicine students.
By sharing ideas, experiences, and scientific knowledge in the field of diagnostic pathology, the profession can continue to move forward.
I also thank AIMS for its role in advocacy, course accreditation, education, and professional development, of which this meeting is but one aspect.
I hope too that, the conference can help the community to better appreciate the role you play in advancing high-quality patient care.
To that end, it gives me great pleasure to declare the AIMS National Scientific Meeting officially open.