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VC’ s corner though SKA is still in its design phase, the impact of supporting this infrastructure is already being seen.
Three SKA precursor projects, massive and ambitious radio telescopes in their own right, were initiated to develop, test and advance various aspects of the science and technology required to make the SKA a reality. Two of them – The Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder( ASKAP) and the Murchison Wide-Field Array( MWA) – are already operational in Australia, and have signalled to the world that radio astronomy research in Australia leads the world.
Data collected by the MWA alone in its first five years of operation will require about 15 petabytes( 15 million gigabytes) of storage and archive space, and is an indication of what the SKA will require in terms of computing capacity. As part of the bid to host the SKA, the federal government allocated $ 80 million to establish a petascale supercomputing facility, to demonstrate Australia’ s ability to develop the computing infrastructure required. The Pawsey Supercomputing Centre, the most powerful supercomputing facility of its type in the southern hemisphere, was launched in Perth in 2013. It is now processing data from ASKAP and the MWA, and is supporting research projects that were impossible dreams only a decade ago, across radio astronomy and other areas of computational and data-intensive undertakings, such as the geosciences, biotechnology and nanotechnology.
Construction has not yet begun on the SKA, but ASKAP, MWA and the Pawsey Centre have driven advances in high-performance computing, signal processing, radio frequency systems and high-speed communications. This sort of technology development transfers directly to a wide range of down-toearth applications, such as personal computing, telecommunications and wireless technologies.
The spin-offs from major scientific endeavours to other areas of science and industry can completely transform technologies and economies. The supercomputing infrastructure, in particular, is already supporting research in areas ranging from asthma treatments to renewable energy. Solutions to a range of problems are being explored that will have social, environmental and economic benefits for decades to come.
Unfortunately, the economic argument for supporting research infrastructure is weakened because research takes time. The payoff in terms of new scientific knowledge and applied outcomes can take decades. But research infrastructure is not just about the research. There is also a compelling social argument.
Research infrastructure projects such as the SKA provide a focal point for upskilling the population. A renewed focus on astronomy and the origins of the universe in the public consciousness has the potential to make children once again look upwards and consider more distant horizons, much like the space race did in the 1960s.
A telescope that straddles the planet, and a supercomputer that can download the equivalent of the entire internet in five minutes, can fire the ambitions of a generation and increase the uptake of science, technology, engineering and mathematics( STEM) study through primary, secondary and tertiary education. If people know it exists.
International research indicates that 75 per cent of the fastest-growing occupations require STEM skills and knowledge. Employment in these occupations is projected to grow at almost twice the pace of jobs in other fields. A STEM-skilled workforce is critical for Australia’ s continued productivity and global competitiveness. Given that there are signs Australia’ s participation and performance in STEM disciplines is declining relative to other nations, encouraging the next generation to once again reach for the stars can only be a good thing.
This research infrastructure is also positioning Australia globally. It demonstrates that Australia can deliver and support world-class ICT infrastructure, and sends a signal to the global research community that those investing in science domains dependent on supercomputing can bring their business here. It is helping to attract the best and brightest to Australia, creating strategic collaborations between Australian researchers and the world’ s leading astronomers, engineers and scientists. Collaboration is vital to the development of a strong innovation culture. It is a key driver for a robust knowledge economy. The SKA and its related research infrastructure will foster innovation just by bringing together experts from a number of different fields, and giving them some challenging problems to think about together.
It will also help attract and develop some of the new types of professionals that will be needed to help drive the knowledge economy of the future. There is a growing realisation that the future economy will be driven by big data as it has never been before. Data scientists – employees specifically skilled in dealing with big data and the analysis of trends in data – will be the miners of the 21st century. Data mining, or extracting business intelligence from enormous datasets, can provide that 1 per cent productivity gain that may equate to hundreds of millions of dollars for Australian businesses and industries.
As our ability to produce and analyse more data improves, so will our productivity and competitiveness. This ability is being developed on the research infrastructure being created now.
Australia needs to improve its capacity to translate research into commercial outcomes. We perform strongly on research excellence, but poorly in translating publicly funded research into commercial reality. With the research infrastructure already in place and in development for the SKA, we have an opportunity to create a recognised international hub for big data and innovation, bringing together academia, industry and government agencies motivated by the academic and commercial challenges of big data.
The benefits of investing in research infrastructure do not lend themselves to a 15-second political pitch. The returns to society, which generally occur over decades, are not easy to explain and can occur in seemingly unrelated areas. But investment in our research infrastructure is an investment in Australia’ s future. The skills, capabilities and institutions necessary to make projects such as the SKA a success are increasingly the same skills, capabilities and institutions necessary to keep Australia competitive and at the forefront of our global knowledge economy.
Our ability to self-source this research capacity will impact directly on our nation’ s living standards, education and employment opportunities, economic growth and global competitiveness. We need to make a compelling argument for investment in Australia’ s research infrastructure, so that supporting it becomes as self-evident as investing in health, education or defence. n
Professor Deborah Terry is vice-chancellor of Curtin University.
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