Page 64 - Australian Defence Magazine September 2019
P. 64

FROM THE SOURCE
P R O P F E R T S A O N N Y A N MA MO N E R O
“One of my initiatives through
the missions to get greater scale around a relatively smaller number of problems.”
Continued from page 63
whether we can demonstrate new capability in quite short timeframes.
ADM: And what about the Grand Chal- lenge Program, where is that up to? MONRO: We had a very strong response asking for proposals to the first Grand Chal- lenge for Countering Improvised Threats. We received 215 submissions from industry and universities and narrowed them down to 13 high quality proposals. Over 20 or- ganisations including universities, primes and SMEs, are involved in these 13 propos- als and are working on jointly developing prototypes of a threat detection and defeat system over four years. Defence is investing $19 million in these successful proposals.
Each project under the Grand Challenges program is to be funded between $100,000 to $1 million per year depending on scale, complexity and risk, for a duration of one to three years. The results of individual proj- ects feed into other projects, contributing in
threat around data, and cyber issues. We’re seeing increased challenge around commu- nications and information exchange, and as we head towards the Internet of Things it really changes what we’re protecting and how we need to protect it.
At the same time, probably one of the most profound changes is the really sig- nificant investment by other countries in science and technology. It means we can’t be complacent that just because we’ve been really good in certain areas historically, we can’t assume that with our current level of investment we can stay good at them.
I’m always very deeply impressed by what we can do through true partnerships and in order to be able to secure those true part- nerships, whether that be domestic or par- ticularly with international partnerships, whether that’s with our own colleagues or other key strategic international partners, we have to be really good at something.
This is our absolute strength. There is no organisation in Australia, I would argue, with the scale and focus of DST for R&D.
We’re the second largest publicly funded research organisation to CSIRO. CSIRO has a broader range of applications and custom- ers in contact. DST has a more focused application domain which allows our people to build endur- ing relationships and deep domain knowledge and a significant government
investment in science and tech support for that customer. I think our absolute distinct value proposition is that we can really deliver transformative S&T to the ADF.
ADM: When you say scale and focus, do you mean your ability to bring a relatively large quantity of resources to focus on a comparatively smaller problem? MONRO: Yes. It’s not that it feels like that to us because as soon as you’re inside the model, you want to do more. But rela- tive to the rest of the landscape that’s trying to cover a broader area, I would argue that we’ve got the opportunity to deliver real im- pact, really big game-changing tech to De- fence because of that degree of scale and de- gree of focus. Although I believe that we’re spread too thin at the moment and one of my initiatives through the missions is to get that greater scale around a relatively smaller number of problems.
The absolute privilege and advantage is
having the ADF as a partner that’s abso- lutely built into the fabric of everything we do. Others out there in the research sector not only have to find out who’s interested in what they do but how to understand their language and the domain in order to be able to make sure that what they do has impact.
We’re absolutely blessed. We can send scientists out on deployment so they can see firsthand the problems that are being faced. We can have ADF people in our labs mak- ing sure that what we do in our research is shaped by the need. And as I said right at the beginning, the absolute appetite from ADF for new technology is just fantastic because we can be a bit bolder.
ADM: What lessons are you bringing from your previous roles into DST? MONRO: A number of things. The obvi- ous one is what drives the university sector, having been in senior leadership roles in universities for 15 years. That deep under- standing of how the university sector works and how we can most effectively set up our collaboration mechanisms so that we get the best contribution from what are world class universities, 40-odd of them.
The second I’d say is that the work that I’ve done in building high performing cul- tures. To develop low tolerance for poor behaviour and really include diverse people and perspectives. Coming into DST it’s really interesting that so many people just love the work they get to do in DST and build long careers here. That’s wonderful and it’s an asset. But we also need to get better at bringing in a more diverse range of people and in deliberately build in tow- way mobility with industry and academe and being able to really harness them and one aspect of that that’s really, really obvi- ous here is gender.
ADM: That’s quite interesting, because we recently ran the Women in Defence Awards and the key message is that you can’t innovate if everybody has the same perspective on something.
MONRO: Absolutely. One of the things that I bring to this role is experience and a deep appreciation for the value of diver- sity and inclusive culture and the demon- strated ability to lift culture along with performance, I know that’s something I’m very focused on. Finally I bring exten- sive shaping experience everything from pure, high-quality blue-sky research right through to commercialisation and spin- ning out companies.
an integrated way to the Grand Challenge. But the Grand Challenge has taught us so much more. Through this program we have learned how we can relate to partners in solving large and complex problems for De- fence and this has prepared us for the next stage of the Defence Science and Technol- ogy challenge - focussing our energies and efforts on some leap-ahead technologies, or moon shots as I have called them in the past. At present we are developing a series of re- search missions to harness internal and exter- nal research efforts. In time I foresee the Grand Challenge program morphing towards these
missions. Stand by for more later this year.
ADM: What are the broad technology trends globally that you’re seeing will have a flow-on effect in Australia? MONRO: What we’re seeing is a really dramatically increased pace of change in everything to do with data, AI, machine learning, along with our increased rate of
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