Science Festival and CRC Innovation conference, Canberra

The Bushfire CRC participated in the Australian Science Festival alongside the annual CRC Innovations Conference at the National Convention Centre in Canberra in late May 2009.

These two events under the one roof were an excellent opportunity to showcase Bushfire CRC research to a wide scientific, political and general audience. The Bushfire CRC used this to promote bushfire science to schools (more than 12,000 children arrived by bus over the week), the general public, and to invited parliamentarians, and department and embassy staff.

Encouragingly, our booth at the festival saw a constant stream of school children through it, all eager to hear about the science of bushfires. It was ranked eighth best out of the 37 exhibitors by the school children – an excellent outcome considering many of the big names in public science communication were present.

Bushfire CRC post graduate student Matthew Phillips (project D2.1) from Deakin University was shortlisted out of 35 applicants (in the top 4) for the Co-operative Research Centre Association Early Career Scientist Award at the CRC Association Conference. Matt gave a 10 min presentation on his research into the fitness of tanker based fire fighting crews. While his presentation was clear, robust and well received the winner was a PhD scholar from the Oral Health CRC.

This was a high profile opportunity to expose Matt and the Bushfire CRC to a broad national scientific and political audience of more than 500 people. Matt’s work has been made possible by the significant contribution of Bushfire CRC member agencies who have supported his work.