STEMM is a passport with Renae Sayers

Michele Ong

When's the last time you experienced wonder? Wonder is an incredible thing to experience as a child and no less incredible as a grown up. It's an open door that can lead to new opportunities and help you to make sense of the world around you. You just have to let yourself step through it with an open mind and a willingness to find out more.

Renae Sayers is Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Curtin University School of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Join us as we speak about debriefing with the stars, embracing wonder and the process of inquiry, and how STEM is a passport that you can use to navigate your future. I'm Michele Ong, and this is STEAM Powered.

Before we dive in, a quick note. This episode is proudly part of National Science Week and has been registered as an online event. National Science Week was established in 1997 and has grown into one of Australia's largest festivals as a community led grassroots celebration supported by the Australian government. It runs from the 15th to the 23rd of August with heaps of free events happening both in person and online right across the country. If today's conversation sparks something in you, head to scienceweek.net.au to find an event near you or online and get involved. Now, let's get into it.

Good morning, Renae. Thank you so much for joining me on STEAM Powered today. I'm really looking forward to speaking with you about your journey again.

Renae Sayers

Yay. Absolute pleasure to be here. Strangely enough, this is a this is a favourite topic of mine.

Debriefing with the stars: Childhood reflections

Michele Ong

Who would have thought? Well, when we had a chat last week, we spoke about all sorts of things and everything, which is wonderful. I really love that. But we covered a little bit about how you're in astrophysics, how that was the start of your journey. But that wasn't quite the start of your journey because the bit that I loved about hearing was the fact that you debriefed with the stars when you were a kid. And I would love to know more about or I'd love to share more about, you know, how you started doing that as a practice.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Picture this, like, young teenager sitting outside on the back steps of our home. I grew up in the Mount- the foothills of the Mount Dandenongs. Uh, Yeah. Just muttering what appears to be herself, but the justification is clearly I was I was, um, conversing. Um, I shouldn't say with the stars, maybe to the stars, because, technically, there wasn't actual broadcast back as far as a conversation, uh, in in the traditional sense of two two people. So

Michele Ong

There were vibes.

Renae Sayers

There were plenty of vibes. And, again, I guess, um, you know, the more kind of wise, you know, four decades on, like, perception of that is, you know, just being able to talk through things in a place where I felt safe and contained and it wasn't really, you know, going. No one was listening. It was it was basically just giving me that opportunity to kind of make sense of what was going on in my head and having this kind of vastness to be able to zoom in and out of that sense of inquiry. And, um, yeah, I really did enjoy that practice, I think, if I call it a practice. I guess it really did become a practice. But it really it really was there was a bit of intentionality around it. And I think that sense of awe and wonder mixed in with this sort of, like, analytical kind of thinking and expression was probably my way of trying to make sense of stuff in these sort of different intensities. So, genuinely, that became something for me as I was young, kind of growing up. And I guess the word is maturing, Michele, but we're seeing seeing the effects of that one still, I guess. And

Michele Ong

It's a process.

Renae Sayers

It's just such a process. So I think, really, the that beginning of, um, realising that asking questions and being curious and having permission to do that, even just on my own and in a sacred little space that was the, you know, beautiful rickety wooden stairs of our balcony that outlooked these incredible trees of the I grew up in a place called Boronia over east in Kulin country, uh, in Melbourne. And, yes, there was a lot of trees and but we could kinda see through the horizon. Interestingly, as the years and decades went on more and more as things obviously were cleared and but the sky was always there and was always available. And I think that was what when my folks were trying to support me, like, don't have a science background, didn't really know what a scientist is. We didn't know anyone that was scientists. That was where the, I guess, the stars and therefore the astronomy and astrophysics kind of came from.

Michele Ong

I think that's something that a lot of us kind of take for granted these days, just in the fact that you allowed yourself to slow down, to think about these things, and to ask these questions and not expect an immediate response. Because you could mull over it and kind of turn it over in your head without having to feel rushed to have the answers immediately in front of you.

Renae Sayers

Absolutely. And that actually was the process. And I think, um, being comfortable in an essence about that uncertainty and that it it genuinely asking questions is that process. It's not a binary I ask, I get, and everything is solved. Although, in some cases, it can be quite helpful to actually know the answers. Um, and it does sometimes work like that. But I think the deeper stuff that intersect across different places, whether that's literally yourself and how you think and how you show up in the world, and then how you make sense of the world, including how you make sense of other people. And then ultimately, that zooming back out again of, you know, looking at the horizon or looking up to the sky.

Michele Ong

Perspective.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think back to the sort of maybe intentionality of that process. Yes. It was helpful for me as someone making sense of herself and the world and the my place in it. It was a great thing to do. But it really did, I think, help me practice that question asking and and being okay with that process. Yeah. It's how I'm gonna frame it in my wisdom looking back.

Michele Ong

Whatever works because this is how you got to where you are now. Like, it's part of that process and that journey of learning about asking these questions and finding those connections and just being prepared to be open to all these answers, which is amazing.

A letter to the stars: Writing to NASA

So as you're getting older, at one point, you decided, hey, I'm gonna write to NASA. And, you know, they wrote back. It's like, oh, my God. So Absolutely. What made you think to actually write to NASA? Because I think when we're here, it feels so remote. And, you know, they are NASA. And as you when you're a kid, you hear about this big important thing that they do and the kind of organisation that they are. And, you know, it doesn't feel very tangible.

Renae Sayers

Mhmm.

Michele Ong

So what made you think, I'm gonna write them a letter and see what happens?

Renae Sayers

I mean, this is you know, it's actually really lovely. I love I really do love this memory, and and it's very helpful because I do work and have worked with NASA. I've I've gone to multiple different, you know, labs and sites of theirs. It's an interesting thing now that that has been the trajectory. This story definitely makes sense as a little bit of an origin, uh, piece because of, I think, in the end, where I have been able to traverse. So I definitely appreciate that. But and the other thing I was just gonna say is, like, there's a modern version to this. And, you know, back in my day, back in the day, you know, I was 15, 16 maybe. And I guess where I was was on the family computer. You know? Like, the one device that you had to share with your whole family. Uh, you know, this is, you know, early early I'll say early two two thousands. But, um, it's that place. Right? And so you had the family computer, and this was actually when you could surf the web where you would go and click on something, and that link would take you somewhere else. I mean, what a novel concept, the Internet. I'm sorry. Wind the clock back to the old days. So, genuinely, it was surfing the web. And I think one of the things when I realised, you know and, again, also, I don't know what other 16, 15 year olds were using the Internet for, but I certainly was traversing across NASA. And similarly to that whole looking up in the sky and, you know, yeah, it was beautiful. It was pretty. It was awe inspiring. That was part of, like, watching and and looking in to all of their beautiful pictures. And, yes, like those early Hubble, uh, telescope images and even, like, the modeling as well, uh, you know, being able to see the products of what this, you know, effectively another country's government agency. Can we just be clear with that? I mean, like, when NASA launches something or, like, lands, you know, the seven minutes of terror on on on, like, with Mars, like, I remember literally inciting. We livestreamed it in the theatre, and we were We were cheering for another country's government agency's, like, KPI milestone. Like, that's We'll have, like, the logo. We'll be we'll be like, yeah. We did it. Isn't that amazing? Like, just to be really clear, that's what we're doing. And isn't that incredible? And it tells you something about what they're actually doing, and we'll come back to that in another moment, I'm sure, of a thread. But that's effectively and I was looking at this other this other world. It's Australia. We don't have an agency. You know? We're great at astronomy, but it's not the same. And I didn't know about that at the time, by the way.

Discovering science communication

And so literally clicking on these incredible things and going around and just kind of being coordinate And then genuinely stumbled onto the office of space science and public outreach. And then it was like, And the pictures I was seeing were, like, scientists and engineers and working with teachers and people and kids and in lecture theatres or in expos or, like, they're opening the labs. They're bringing people in. They're going out to the communities as well. Like and it was like, oh my gosh. What is this? Like, they're talking to people about how cool this is. And I was like, I, like, always wanna talk about how cool this is. What is the thing they're doing? Is that a thing that they're doing that, like, fuck, they do? Like, that would be amazing. And so that was actually what prompted when I really kind of just got stuck into it, I was like, what is, like, what is that? And then I found what I can't even remember. Was like a con it I don't even think it would have been a contact form. It probably was just like an email at the bottom of the the page and, you know, bashed out, you know, a bit of a a bit of an inquiry, basically, like, I found this. What is this? What what are you? What do you call it? And, you know, Australia you're in Australia, and I'm just trying to work out, like, what I could study and what I do. Like, I don't know what it is. Tell me what the thing is. Like, help, please. This is cool. And I got an email back. And, of course, because living in that world now and embedded in academia and, you know, working across engineers and scientists and, you know, industry here and community there and university culture here. Like, absolutely yes. If you get an email from someone that's like, I love what you do. I don't know about it. I wanna know more. Like, it's tools down. It's, of course, I would want to talk about this than the other, like, paperwork y boring thing or report or, like, you know, all the stuff that we do as grown ups. No. No. No. So so I get it now. I get why they wrote back, but it was pretty profound. And that the answer was them saying so he was an engineer, and he had said that these are NASA scientists and engineers, sometimes teachers who've gone and, like, retrained or the other way around. And, yeah, we we wanna connect with the public. And, you know, we live in this community where everyone is. Like, when you think of where, um, you know, Ames is or Goddard is, like, there's a community around around these, like, facilities, and it's part of the sort of community fabric of that. And NASA's deliberately spread all around the different states, but it's amazing the way that they've integrated themselves into the DNA of that country effectively. So what they were saying is we care. Like, we care. We wanna open it up. And I'm like, we love sharing. And, actually, this is what we call EPO, so education public outreach. It's a form of science communication. And I was, like, writing, scribbling. I was like, this is amazing. And I was thinking, okay. Well, I'm not gonna just, like, go to The US. Um, where can I do this in Australia? And so that information genuinely led me to the basically, to find out where science communication is taught. And that I mean, it's taught in lots of places now, but the the kind of premier place at the time was at ANU. And they had both an undergraduate degree as well as a postgrad. It's now a master's, I believe, in science communication. And the postgrad program was the Shell Questacon Science Circus.

Michele Ong

Yep.

Renae Sayers

And I was like, bingo. There we go. That's what I wanna do after my degree. I'll what what should I study there? Like, if I have to study it, I was like, how to get into that? I was like, what are the things that you need to that? And it was effectively, like, a good score on a science degree and then, like, all of this other stuff that you would imagine. And it ended up having, you know, like, an application video where I ended up having ping pongs kind of in my hair and, like, dunking balloons inside a liquid nitrogen little carrier, um, and then pulling them out like a magician in a in a rabbit, pulling a rabbit hat out. Also, can talk about that later. But this, I had

Michele Ong

no idea. Scientists are just theatre kids at heart, I feel.

Renae Sayers

Well, I mean, again, you're you're kind of you're engaging with the world and the universe. And in some ways, you know, there's an element of performance to that as well. And there's a process, and sometimes you have a script, sometimes you absolutely don't have a script, and it's bit like improv. But it's absolutely you know, you're convening with reality, and we're doing our absolute best to make sense of the best version of reality that we have, and we can update that as we go. It's the best it's the best framework as humans that we have developed to make sense of reality, hands down, like, far as what it is and it's, like, the rigors around it and, you know, the the process, yes, of peer review and again but just as a process. It's systematic wonder. That was a quote from somewhere many years ago. Cannot remember.

Michele Ong

That's an amazing quote, though.

Renae Sayers

Systematic horror, isn't it? And and I think and, again, this was part of, for me, Michele, this whole, like, never really fitting into one definition or box or, you know, yes, I I was this sort of, like, very whimsical and expressive and engaging component. And then there was, like, this, like, systems y desires, like analytics and making there was just these worlds. And they just, for me, always complimented each other. And I think being an outlier, didn't quite appreciate or notice too much how much I may have been sort of out, like, in the scenes of things as well. And I think that was probably another helpful thing. And then I was like, yeah.

Studying astrophysics to join the circus

So what what am I gonna study? Science? But what kind? And I was like, well, I kinda like the stars. What's that? That's astrophysics. That's astronomy. You know? All of the the interesting instruments that we use to make sense of things we cannot touch, we can only only get light. And at the time, that's actually all we could get was energy from the universe. Now we can, uh, receive and prod and make sense of gravity as well. So great. Physics has a second tool, uh, which is brilliant. But, yeah, how do you make sense of this? And loved the language of maths and, again, creating tools that were extensions of our human inquiry. Like, how cool is that? Yeah. And so so I did physics accelerated in high school, so which meant that I finished in year, like, year 12 and year 11, and then had, like, you know, all sorts of drama and theatre and lit and, like, it was, like, very expressive, uh, you know, sort of humanities, languages, all that sort of stuff in year 12. And then finished that. I was like, see you later. I'm off to go get a master physics degree. Bye. And I remember there was a bit of, oh, like, people who weren't aware of the sort of physics physics and maths kind of stuff. And, yeah, that's where I found myself. And I was like, well, I'm here to get into the circus. Hi.

Michele Ong

I love that because that's such a like, you only need the science degree to get into science circus for communication. It's like, no, I'm just gonna go for it. Astrophysics is gonna just go hard. And especially because a lot of people go, that's not a route that normally people would go through. Like, I wanna do science communication. Why would you do astrophysics? I wanna do astrophysics, but then why would you do all the theatre and stuff? But all of that works together. Even if you're not getting into science communication, even if that's not the area that you want to develop your career in, they're still incredibly complimentary because you are allowing yourself to be fully curious about everything without boundaries. Absolutely. Yeah. It's just amazing. So one of the questions I was gonna ask you was, you know, when you started to do the astrophysics, where did you see yourself? Clearly, you saw yourself in the circus.

Renae Sayers

Yep. And maybe that was part of the liberation as well. I was I had phenomenal folks. Love my parents. And they gave me lots of gifts. One of them was never asking, well and good, Renae, but what's your job gonna be? Like, what's your actual plan here? And my gosh, as as, again, that sense of permission, that sense of being able to be a mash up of what you let in and that curiosity, that inquiry, you know, curiosity led inquiry was was really powerful. So so they were, like, the two levels of influence in the sense of, like, I guess, could see that I just had that sort of passion and persist persistence and also, like, keep Renae busy is, like, just get her in all the things, you know, which was a theme growing up as well. It was, like, little athletics over here, basketball dancing, netball over here, playing keyboard at some point, debating club. It was like all of the things keep her busy, which I'm so grateful for. Right? Because, you know, again, we're a mash up of what we let in. So so that for me was a a sense of permission. It was like, well, yes, I I am here because, I mean, I love I loved astrophysics. I loved physics and maths and sciences. And I also was able to stack my degree in a way instead of doing, like, a double degree of arts and science, which was also part of what I thought the plan had to be. When I realised that there were so many crossovers and literally down to the point of you could take a unit and it could class towards like, it's either a science unit or an arts unit, things like psychology, philosophy, and, like, even like, because, obviously, there's a lot of statistics in in psychology and, like, the philosophy of science and even, like, journalism. I was able to get one of the units because it was science communication leaning. Yeah. One of that that journalism. Oh, no. I used my journalism unit to, like, just do science projects of, like, communicating. That's right. So I was able to kind of stack my degree in a way that meant the things that I was interested in and that I I, like, enjoyed were just sort of packed in there. And then, yes, I had stuff that I had to do, but I kinda love that. Like, I loved atmospheric science. Like, that wasn't part of the plan, but I really enjoyed. I was like, clouds are cool. You know? Like, clouds are really cool. They are. Um, and even studying logic and reasoning in philosophy, and there was another unit in philosophy, And I loved philosophy. It was time, self, and freedom. I actually still have the, like, the the paper course book, um, actually. I love it. Um, and because time travel is part of the kind of vehicle to really explore time, self, and freedom. Right? Yeah. And so I I love that again in the sense I was just like I I was like, I can't believe this is actually what I get to do as a unit. Right? Like, I'm this is counting towards my degree, everybody. I'm not sure if you realise this. And on the other side, when it came to philosophy and logic and reasoning, I was like, all my maths. I was like, guys, I got this. Got this. I can't remember if I told you this when we were chatting. I was like I was like, I got this. You know? Don't don't mind me. And I kinda came into this thinking, yeah, my maths brain, logic reasoning got it. It was, like, one of my worst performing like, it took a lot halfway through to recover from that. Wow. And it was yeah. Embarrassing, slightly, but also not. Like, I was bringing the wrong, maybe, mindset framework. I don't know how I'm gonna, like, analyse this twenty years on plus, but it really did show me that I was bringing the wrong tools to the to the ask. And I will always remember this test that we did, and it was a really early on test. And I now, like, appreciate they're trying to challenge the the the crew and kinda get them thinking about stuff. And it was, um, like, the question was, you know, are these, like, logically consistent or something? I can't remember the phrasing, but it was like, can swallow your own head. I was like, ugh. Whatever. Of course, you can't. You know, went through it like this of, like, logically speaking, of course, you can't. And I was wrong. That's what I'm saying. Like, I flunked this test so bad because I wasn't thinking about, well, I could I was thinking about what was logical versus what was physically logical or possible in the sense of, like, the world governed by maths and physics or even just, like, the technology that we have in order to do stuff. And so that thinking, again, being grounded in what what the rules and the structures and the processes and, like, you know, the analytical reasoning and but then you can also use some of that to actually think out and beyond. And I actually think that I am better for that process. And at no point, Michele, did anyone ask, why are you studying that? What is your job gonna be? If they did, I didn't hear them. But I just wanted to say that is so releasing for someone who is so I mean, gosh, so young. I mean, we're so young still. Come on. Yeah. And and to be in the joy of learning and making sense of yourself and the world, like, these are powerful, powerful tools. And we, through the ages, have created incredible systems, systems of thinking, systems of knowledge, including and I'm not just talking about Western science as well, like indigenous knowledge systems and, you know, we've done that. That is a very human thing. Right? And being able to think through and make sense of, like, depending on the problem set, what are your assumptions? What are we testing? How are you testing them? Like, science is just one of those really powerful, brilliant tools that we can use, but it is aided and complemented by, I guess, the rest of this incredible, very human amazingness that we've created as far as getting stuff from our brains into other people's brains and into making sense of this incredible world. So I think we're up to, uh, 2,007 And me loving, um, my degree. No. No. No. That was it was a really, really great thing.

Navigating the future of learning and careers

So, yes, I didn't feel like I had to define or, to your question, it wasn't like I was seeking permission, and I had to I had to say to everyone else what I was gonna do and be. Yep. And I'd love to see more of that, to be honest, in the sense of, um, and this is not to move away from the very real, very practical component of, like, people wanna have good jobs and get paid and and do good stuff. And, like, you have to go through that process. And often, you know, everyone's got different constraints and choices that they have to make. And I guess there's just this feeling of this logical chain, this very linear, like, I do this, I come out with that, and then I'm good. Like, even if you're going into a field that now today looks like it's got great job prospects, you're gonna earn great money coming out as a graduate, It's relatively stable and secure. Like, each kind of iteration looking back, like, that's that's not the forever situation. Right? And what works for your parents is not gonna work today, you know, or might not work. It might be, like, a model that needs updating. And so so I just think, yeah, when I I speak with people that, um, today are trying to make choices and make sense of their pathway. You know, you sometimes see the sort of, like, angst in sort of sometimes parents' eyes of, like, what's the one to do to help them? Because the world feels very uncertain more than ever before, probably, as well. And so there is a bit of angst and fear. And if I'm gonna do this and invest in this, literally, with time and money, when are we gonna get?

Michele Ong

I think that's all the more reason for approaching it in that completely unbounded way because we don't know what the future's gonna be. Things are moving very quickly. Even in the last century, you've seen the acceleration of technology, like the leaps that we have made in knowledge and understanding of the world around us has, you know, been exponential. And that's just gonna keep happening. And we can't use these linear structures to determine what our future will be when none of it is linear. So being able to, you know, explore and look at what we enjoy, what we can do, what our skills are, what we can cultivate, and figure out how that will fit anywhere is probably what we need to do. The specialisations and things like that, that's still going to be a thing. But we can apply the specialisations in all sorts of places that we don't know exist yet.

Renae Sayers

Yep. And I think also it's the things of, um, like, what is your toolkit? What is what are the things or, like, like, a passport maybe. Right? Like Yeah. I think of at least with STEM specifically, studying STEM is sort of it's building your passport to help you navigate an uncertain future. Right? But it's your passport, so the stuff needs to be yours. And I mean this in the sense of finding your right fit. And if you're enjoying something, that's a massive indicator. Because if you decide, oh, like, oh, I'm gonna do this career, and that's the thing. I mean, we we hear all the stats and the, you know, we're gonna have five to eight careers in our life, etcetera, etcetera. You can always go and retrain. You can the pipeline of, like, primary, secondary, tertiary, grad, job, ta da. Like, I'm done. See you. Like, just that's really, really, really not quite a thing. I mean, even if you go and study medicine, like, this constant learning and training and changing within the, like, trying this this particular discipline out and this type of context and where you end up, you know, going rural for medicine or in a hospital or, like, in a sort of specialist, like, this constant change. And that feeling of, you know, what is it that is going to help you navigate that? Because either you will change and or the world will change within any given path. Right? So if you've got, like, you end the path constantly moving. Hannah Fry, Professor Hannah Fry, if she ever listens to this or anyone who knows, I love her. I love her. I love you, Hannah. She- You inspired a lot, by the way, Hannah, and, uh, Professor Hannah, including a show that I wrote called Maths and Explosions at SciTech. It was a great show, and that's externally validated, not just because of what I think. But that's why she has these she's these two things, and it's like, as far as coming down to choices and how to, like, make choices, and particularly for this question of, um, anyone making sense of their path, their choice. Regret minimisation, and micro ambitions. And those two things combined provide a really good iteration framework rather than this is my path. And that feeling of, like, chasing your dreams, it's like you probably won't get there to your dream or your dream will look different and the like but it's got a pretty good idea of, like, follow that energy. Follow that it's like that, you know, strong convictions loosely held kind of thing. Like, have strong dreams, but hold on to them loosely so you are making sense of how you're not gonna make choices that you you will regret, and that there's a micro ambition framework of, like, oh, it's like the Elsa Next Best what was the song in Frozen 2? Like, The Next Best Thing?

Michele Ong

Yeah.

Renae Sayers

Anna's the one. She was in a cave or something, and - yeah. So so it's that next best thing. Right? So I think that's a really powerful a powerful way of thinking about it. And and if you have the interest, then I don't think the box that you should be applying it for this thing down the future that it may or may not exist or you might not have that awareness of, you know, fixing it in that sense. Like, we value science in so many ways. And, yes, it you know, we can go into many directions for this, but I'm just gonna say our chief scientist, uh, Professor Haymet, he did a presentation in Perth in May for this year, 2016. And and he's kinda touched on this with his sort of pre you know, science based parliament and the sort of the the the talks that he's done. And it and it's along the lines of to have a really healthy, like, science ecosystem, you need to have both discovery and translation. And in this case, he was talking very specifically around, you know, the role of that fundamental science feeding into commercialisation and, like, industry outcomes. And if you are someone that follow the sort of political kind of federal commonwealth, like, all of that rhetoric around science, It's actually just the method for industry, talking a lot about that sort of industrial kind of framing of of science. But but he was really clear about the role of both of those as healthy ecosystems. And if you think about it like a lot of science grads, and and I think of I've got this incredible group of friends where we span about eight years, and we all at some point worked at SciTech here over the last fifteen, twenty years here in Perth. Not all of us at the same time as well, which is also really remarkable as our friends, but all of us have science degrees. And it's really interesting if I look at the group and where they're where they're doing their work. And are any of them in a place of discovery, including those that had PhDs and, you know, did lab work and very, like, research orientated kind of the answer is no. They're all in that translation piece. And so a very few number of people will create a career in discovery with respect to the role of science. Right? The rest of it is translation, whether that's literal translation, like science communication, whether that's business development, whether that's comms in general, whether that's working through policy, whether that's being an adviser in a company or a role where you are able to do that sense making piece or interfacing between different stake like, just anything that has anything to do with, like, science and STEM that really that's what we talk about with translation. And, yes, the commercialisation and entrepreneurship and creating, like, economic value from the investment of basic research and discovery. I appreciate it's about all of that. But Yes. Those two things, Michele, like, we need both.

Discovery and translation in science and life

We need discovery and translation. And the base level of being able to, like, make sense of those and how they intersect with other parts of our world is incredibly valuable.

Michele Ong

It is. And it's there's the parallels between, you know, our own trajectories and the trajectories of all the work that's being done in these spaces. Because all of it is about translation. It's about finding the common threads that you can apply in multiple spaces, whether that's in terms of what you've built during your career, and what you've learned, and what you've pulled in, not just from your professional spaces, but from your recreational and your interests. And see how they apply in all these other different ways. And so the translation is it's very philosophical, but it is it's about translation of life. And Yeah. The way that you approach things. So so many people I speak to who are, you know, mid career onwards, they found a common thread. They may not have known what the common thread was at the time, but there was something about what they do, what they enjoy, that they carry with them throughout their life, throughout their career. And the ones that have made it work are the ones who've been able to find that common thread in lots of different other industries and different other types of roles and work that they do. And, you know, this is where your group of science friends have sort of built that thing as well because they've all come from similar sort of backgrounds, but they've been able to figure out how to apply what they do in other ways, in other places, to help other places and other people apply what they do in other ways and other places. Lovely fractal kind of thing.

Renae Sayers

Yes.

The relationship between science communication and science strategy

Michele Ong

So that's the work that you now do because you went from, you know, communing with the stars to talking about NASA to astrophysics, science circus. But the work that you do now at Curtin is strategic. It's high level translation and trying to figure out where all of these amazing things that people are creating, building work elsewhere. Mhmm. So how how did you figure out that was the thing that you do that you like to do?

Renae Sayers

Well, dude, I tried it a lot. Thank you. That was a that was the best summary. I I can't I can't even get Claude to summarise this for me. Sorry. No. This is great.

Michele Ong

I'm better than Claude. Fabulous.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. I will I will say, though, I think it it always works looking back. Right? The hindsight is wonderful. The path is very clear once you've walked it, and that is the point. So I think I realised I think I was solving solving problems using science communication. Let's call it that. And then it became solving strategic problems in the framing of what tools I had, which was effectively science communication with the the the underpinnings and love of the science foundation, the training, the the degree in that sense. And I guess that shows up in interesting ways. And I think of, at SciTech, my time there and kind of going in sort of that sort of management, you know, still wanting to be close to that delivery, but thinking of that sort of management place and managing theatre and events there. One of the things was, you know, we I wrote this store I wrote I wrote shows that had no words. So it was it was an amazing process. I'm happy. Like, again, I can talk about I loved that. I ended up touring them around the world because we could open and show them at international science festivals without translations.

Michele Ong

That's amazing. And I would definitely like to talk to you about that at some point.

Renae Sayers

And and look. And there's many, many people now who have, like, gone on and done like, there's even someone who's, like, done their masters and, like, I think even trying to do a pitch. Like, it's one of the ways that we can we can make sense of this. And I guess, suddenly, we had something that we could contribute in the sense of financially for some of these contracts. Like, they we were able to get paid. Like, there was a business opportunity in that sense, particularly at the time where there was more of these festivals, and they were looking for international participation. The Abu Dhabi Science Festival is one of them. And it was aided by the fact that I had worked at Edinburgh Science Festival when I lived abroad, and the director there who I worked closely with was advising into and basically map his team were were kind of establishing this for for them. And so that was, again, happy happy, wonderful connections there. But we also took it to China, and we took it all around rural Western Australia to all the ag shows, you know, in 2011 for International Year of Chemistry, and it was called IYC, Ignite Your Curiosity. The cue the call thing was the facilitation at the end of the show, and you were able to effectively, like, give people the opportunity to ask questions and make sense of what they saw. But the process of it wasn't us telling you what you needed to know, and the barriers of language so if you're in a shopping centre, you immediately can hear and see that this isn't for me as an adult. For example, I'll usher the kids forward. But, actually, we wanted to create connection moments with people in the audience, including strangers, which was so cool, particularly when, uh, someone I'm gonna just tell the story. I won't say names, but there was someone that was quite skeptical about this in, you know, in in practice and in Singapore and no. It was in Abu Dhabi. And it was beautiful because at the end of the show and it ends with cornflower fire breathing. It's amazing. But, um, and gross, and it was a fun one to train people in. But, um, but the thing was at the end, like, or maybe it was an elephant's toothpaste or something. So this person was standing in the kind of plaza, and a just member of the public was there, I think, with his family. And at that like, he turned around and almost, like he didn't grab him, but he almost, like, grabbed his arm. Let's call it figuratively. And it was like he was like, oh, elephant's toothpaste. Do you think that was elephant's toothpaste? And he's like, oh, I see. I get it now. And so, again,

What you build, and what comes after

I thought I mean, I didn't go out to solve that problem. I didn't go out to go, right, everyone. We have a market problem. What we need to do is work out our product differential and how we like, it was literally I was like, I wanna do cool science stuff. These are really I had an opportunity. We got a grant. SciTech had a grant. And so it was a really amazing kind of set of circumstances. But I think it was about what you do with it next. Same thing with after dark, adult only events. At the time, um, so I'd come from Edinburgh to SciTech and had seen the adult programming as as a just a standard as part of these, you know, big international and local festival formats. It's not weird now that there's things for grown ups, but that's not always the way it was seen, um, particularly here in Western Australia at SciTech. And so there was a few of us, you know, who were observing what was happening when grown ups kinda step back when there's kids around because it's like, oh, it's for them. You know? And so, yeah, there was a few of us who were like and I was like, we could do this. And, you know, at the time, the manager of the events, and we, like, did this spreadsheet, and it was, like, 17 people will cover costs. And so we pitched it and, you know, a thousand people showed up. And I yeah. History you know, it so so these are these things. And I guess coming back to the lens of my ten years at at at Curtin, same thing. Like, I've had four different roles and lots of different things from Fireballs in the Sky. And and, you know, that was an incredible program. It was an outreach program based off the Desert Fireball Network and research. And at the time, it was about bringing the community into that fold and building up the awareness and understanding of the role that this plays globally, but as well, just that fascination. Right? And, you know, we had this app, and I didn't develop this app, but the app was ready to kind of scale. The program was ready to scale, and there was a link with NASA. Um, we were the Australian node formally. Um, the director had gone and signed. The the professor, you know, filled gone and signed over in The US because we didn't have an agency, so he could just go up and do that with an Australian flag behind him and through the Solar System Exploration Research Institute. And so, yeah, my role was to scale that sort of kind of outreach working with them, with NASA for the citizen science component, but also just, again, like, and making sense of how to position things. So the relevance like, the meaning, the relevance, and the and the importance was seen depending on who it was and what problem it was. Then with the Space Science and Technology Center helping working, you know, with Phil closely to, you know, his vision and, like, how we can make that happen and how we can influence the ecosystem, and so founding the Space Science and Technology Center and little things like we weren't allowed to call ourselves a center at the time. For bureaucratic reasons, we had gotten our funding before all of the sort of internal committee stuff had been, for example, signed off of this is the name and now you can have a website was effectively what we were waiting for. So I couldn't tell people who we were formally. And how do we how do we create a story about that it's not just the fireballs in the sky and the desert fireball network and the and the and the meteor stuff We made this suite of other planetary science going on. And so, yeah, teamed up with teamed up with, at the time, illustration, so in Haas at Curtin. And, uh, it was like I was the industry. And, like, I pitched to them, you know, the NASA visions of the future and those beautiful, like, retrofuse futuristic posters. Yes. Oh my god.

Michele Ong

That was such a good time.

Renae Sayers

So good. Um, and the guy it's from the studio the visualisation studio in JPL at Caltech. And, again, like, having the opportunity to, like, speak with them about this was like they they they loved they loved that it was or the guy I spoke to, he was like, this is awesome. I had no idea. It's like, yes. You're the centre of the world, JPL. No. My Ames friends would be very upset by that. Don't worry. Ames is the greatest gift that NASA has given JPL.

Michele Ong

You're all favourite children. It's okay.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. Well, they all live. I would say they all live, but there's a lot of them that live literally just down the road now. Yep. It's beautiful being, um, these NASA expats as grown ups. You know, these are some of my, you know, dear friends in my community, you know, with my daughter as well. And she doesn't think it's weird that they're building a little, like, ISS robot detector that, you know, or that has launched things and was the PM of, um, like, BioSentinel that's, you know

Michele Ong

Her expectation management's gonna be through the roof.

Renae Sayers

Space oh, Binner. Binner space. Like, shit, like, I think all of our kids from the Binner space program of us who have kids, they just sort of think that's not like, oh, yeah. Like, I brought it into a preschool. I brought it to, like, engine model into the preschool. And, like, yep. It's just like, no. You don't understand. This is a literal spacecraft. It's flying. We like, they built it, and I helped make the beakers know?

Knowing the endgame changes the roads taken

So all of these things, what I'm trying to build, Michele, is at the time, I did not realise that if someone had said to me then, you're like, you're gonna go into into strategy and governance and you're you're gonna build frameworks and you're gonna look at things of capacity building and how you scale that and advise in and then do some translation and input work to feed that back into you know? And, also, if I had, I would have a very different trajectory, and I would have had a different different education. And to be honest, when I look at that, I don't feel like that's not a good fit for me. So I'm very grateful that the set of circumstances has led me to being in this position, and I'm very proud that I'm the, like, director of strategic initiatives for Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin. I get to work with some of the most incredible individuals from the spectrum of earth and planetary sciences who are literally in the discovery and are making sense of the world and who do care deeply about how their science shows up.

Solving for the challenges of tomorrow and the shift in the bottleneck from access to judgement

You know, our whole thing is for a better tomorrow. And given the challenges that we as society face, a lot of them have deep roots in the these particular sciences. And we're not solving them alone, But there's a sense of the the quantifiable data, for example, the measurement and interpretation layer of what is reality and then how we make sense of decisions on top of that. This is a critical component of some of these big initiatives, these big things of how we make decisions of resources from a political point of view, from a geopolitical relationship point of view around the world, and how how we decide and prioritise how we wanna live. It's a fundamental layer, and it's incredible that I get to to see that. And I guess for the public to, you know, appreciate its role that it plays and how to show those benefits. And even if you don't if it's not the earth and planetary sciences component that you, you know, go down, what those tools rather than the content, it's the context. And I think this is even more important when we look how AI is shifting that bottleneck rather than, like, price per line of code is a completely different thing now. It used to be, you know, like yourself. Like, you you you like, highly trained, experienced. Like, it takes, you know, like, each line of code. And then the fact that that goes into a product that gets shipped and, like, deployed into the world, like, that is a very expensive process. And it's not to say that AI is now, like, completely, oh, we we don't need I'm not even gonna entertain that stupid argument. Of course, we still need very, very, very, very good, Very, very good, like, software engineer. I'm not saying code is dead, but it's the cost of that is going down. Right? Similar to when electricity, right, and hot water even into your home. Frank Green did a great rant about this, uh, about the Jevons Paradox. Feel free to link that. It was a fun one, by the way. So now that's shifting that bottleneck rather from the access to the expertise or the information. Yes. I can just look up and have all like, create an agent that is gonna be, you know, the the most meticulous, I don't know, coder for you know, you you could just create an the access is not the problem. AI shifted the bottleneck to the verification and judgement.

Michele Ong

And that's where a lot of the problems were because so many of the things that we were doing in these areas were highly manual and very labour intensive. So being able to shift that from being able to take, you know, they can take the scut work. Now we can actually figure out what the meaning is and where to get that value from it. And that's where the money is, like, the literal and figurative money is.

Building curious communities with public engagement

Renae Sayers

Yeah. And I think that's the I think it's a really important thing for the public to be aware of as well. And and again, coming at it from the joy and the wonder and the awe of the literal universe figuratively and metaphoric, you know, like, as well as going, there's some very real things that we can do to influence that on our own level at our every day. And, yes, you can scale that to have an impact, um, to your community, you know, contributions. And I think with this sort of other flip, the National Science Week that's coming up, which is really exciting in August, and, you know, having that week where we say actually it's its thirtieth year, um, this year of National Science Week, and it's the this grassroots biggest, like, science festival. Right? And so it can reach about 300,000,000 people in Australia, you know, events all over events out the wazoo, like, two and a half thousand events. Right? So nationally, that's coordinated by Inspiring Australia, and that's the sort of, like, governments we will engage. It's a strategy for public engagement with science. Right? And then each state and territory have their sort of body that runs and their own sort of coordinating committee and grants and things like that. And so in WA, that's inspiring Australia WA or inspiring Western Australia. And so it's exciting in this well, I'm excited because this year, like, I'm I'm its chair. And so looking at from the public component of this grassroots, like, it's making this national policy position real in a grassroots local impact kind of way. And I think I think this mechanism is really powerful. And to the point of having science and its relevance and STEM and its relevance to society, particularly in the sense of making sense of those, like, you know, the the bottleneck shifting with AI, for example, and then the premium of, uh, you know, human human judgement and that trust brokering and validation, like, how important that is now. And that if you wanna sharpen your skills to make yourself competitive, guess what? A STEM degree is an absolutely brilliant or, like, you know, STEM learning. Let's call it a STEM framework paired with maybe even, an entrepreneurial framework. How do we create value? And this is how no. How do we create knowledge? Then, you know, how do we translate that knowledge into value? And then how do you onwards to that? Yep. Like, that's great framework. And I think just being able to look at how community groups or, like, programs that happen in the regions and in in in our community, even in the in the metro region, can be connected under this big umbrella that says, we celebrate this. And, yes, it's for the joy and the wonder and the, like, we'll explode some stuff and ministers will get in front of the primary schools and, like, do a like, it's awesome. Right? Like, we're saying it's relevant from our highest levels in Australia, and we give that permission and ownership to the sort of grassroots communities who are wanting to either use science to engage with their community. They might not be a science organisation or traditionally, you know, a a STEM based organisation, right, or group, but they can use STEM, you know, to engage their usual audience or create a new audience from that. And I just feel I just feel like that engine as, uh, you know, it's not just science week as well. We do WA STEM grants that sort of help kind of make make national science week every week of the year, Michele. But it's it yeah. Coming down to that sense of trust and belonging. Right? And so if we can give that to our community so they feel like they're a part of it. And it gives them

Michele Ong

agency to engage with it as well because I there was another guest who was speaking about an MIT program that they observed and it was for kids. And it was a coding program, but it was for problem solving. And it's like, well, you didn't have to solve the world's problems. What's something in your community? What's a small change that you can make in your community? And how can you do that? Through problem solving, through coding, through whatever it is, whatever tools that you have, you can make a difference in your own space.

Renae Sayers

Absolutely. And it's empowering. And I think I did do it's that job of, oh, curiosity is it you know, curiosity is a pathway to empowerment title of your TED talk. Was like, actually, it was in 2014. Felt very out of self in the the a lot look. The the talk there is great. It's obviously 12 years old. Um, but the the crux of it, I still kind of stand behind.

Curiosity is a pathway to empowerment

From the beginning of this talk, Michele, we've spoken about that whole, like, curiosity led inquiry and making sense of who you are and yourself and the play your place in the world. And here are some tools. And if you keep curious, I think it's the best possible way to keep yourself open. But it's also the best possible like, open for open for growth, open for making sense of you know, even in conflict. Like, it's not like, oh, let's all be empathetic. It's which is also very valuable. I'm not saying that that's not. But, you know, when you're in a conflict with someone and, you know, there's this sort of, like, oh, how could and you're like, I wonder why. What what is their framework? What is their analysis of the evidence? What is the model they have created from the evidence that they have access to? What is that interpretation? It's not to say that facts aren't facts and evidence isn't facts. It's about the interpretation. Right? And so it's not like we choose our own facts and our post like, no. It's about the interpretation of this information.

Michele Ong

And how you came to that conclusion. Yes.

Renae Sayers

That's a process of science. Right? That's why it's very rigorous, and it's meant to be, you know, very rigorous and open and peer review. And it's like, I did this, and I got this answer. Can you do it? Can you can you because this is pretty I think this is pretty important. We didn't know this before. So how do you take things from the unknown and put it into the known when that's usually a really scary thing when we think of the unknown. Right? And it's like, don't be afraid because everything we know has come from there. Right? Like but the process of doing that, I think, is is the empowering component. It's not to say it's the only component, but my gosh, I think it's a really strong fundamental thing. And and, yeah, it is curiosity is a pathway to empowerment.

Michele Ong

Absolutely.

Renae Sayers

And it makes science, I think, very personal. It makes it very meaningful for the self, for the for me. And then it's how it makes it relevant for my world, and it's how it makes it significant for that world. Yep. And to have something that permeates across all of those different layers of abstraction, I think, is just an absolutely incredible, beautiful thing. So I would love for us to be more curious and create spaces where we can practice that and give permission to that and that we can appreciate what adult curiosity looks like rather than just delegating all of that to the kiddos.

Michele Ong

I think so. And and that's such an important thing, especially because, like, when you talked about that person who had that response to the show in Abu Dhabi. And it's because you find a way to connect with them on whatever it was that they use to construct whatever their knowledge is. Yeah. And that's what we want to achieve. We want to be able to reach those people at that point where they go, it makes sense now.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. Because it's their framing. It's their worldview, you know. And I know, um, some of the best communicators, uh, in fact, I'm gonna give a shout out to Jacob Martin, who's an incredible scientist. He's a Forrest fellow. Um, I'm incredibly inspired by him, actually. His ability to sit with people and have conversations around very controversial topics and to connect with them in a way that validates him as a person and and that that is how you can help change people's minds and worldviews. And he knows this because he was someone that used to be very skeptical and didn't believe and value, and and he had a conversation that changed his life. And I think as someone, um, who contributes so greatly to science through and and in all aspects. Yes. His actual, you know, caliber is, um, objectively excellent. And but he but he's his championship of, um, all of the human components that go into that. You know, he's an incredible mentor to many scientists and, um, emerging students. And but it's that thing of the public. It's like it's the trust and the respect and just going to where they are. And he regularly does that. Last time I saw him last week, he was literally like, oh, I'm actually going I'm going to sit with these people tonight, and we're gonna talk about this. And it's like, wow. I mean, the world changes. Another one of my mentors who I get to still work with, um, he says the world changes one conversation at a time. Right? And, again, science is just one of those things you can converse about. And the tools of science and inquiry and sense making and reality checking is also another way we can connect and change the world through either conversing one to one or creating contribution at scale.

Michele Ong

Yeah. Because science communication is about just communication. It's a yeah. Reaching people where they need to be reached, how they want to be reached, and in a respectful way that allows them to see your perspective and for you to see theirs. And, you know, that that's just beautiful. And that's just human connection right there. Very authentic. Yes. Super authentic. And I think it's one of those things that a lot of people now feel that that's lacking in a lot of the way that we engage with each other. Just because we're not taking the time to sit and have these conversations like your mentor is to kind of just slow everything down and connect and commune and, you know, deep breath with the stars. So full circle. That's all it is.

Renae Sayers

Beautiful. We'll come back to that always.

Michele Ong

Always.

What advice would you give someone who would like to do what you do, and what should they ignore?

So this feels like a nice kind of way to round off, especially because you did talk about what you want people to be able to do more. So one of the probably not the last, but getting towards the last questions that I tend to ask is what advice would you give someone who would like to do what you do, and what advice should they ignore?

Your career isn't a job title

Renae Sayers

Definitely ignore definitely ignore that that's all well and good, but what's your job gonna be? Yep. Because for two things. One, you know, that's all well and good is also a, like, legitimate path. And, yes, there may be logistics involved with it is what I've stumbled on my words then. So, yeah, there's a legitimate path, and, yes, there's, like, logistics involved or something to pursue. But, also, it comes to that sense of, like, again, the famous the saying, you know, you can't be what you can't see or you can yeah. If you can see it, you can be it. And knowing that you often have your world changed in some shape or form because there's micro or macro light bulb moments that go off. Right? So that process of becoming is something that is always happening. And so the thing that you might have as, like, I want to do this because I wanna get this good job, or because I wanna make sure that, you know, when someone says, oh, what do you do? You know, like, yes, this is the thing I'm gonna do to get that good job. And it's also because people just want the best for everyone. Right? So it's not that it's about, like, like, it's it's ridiculous advice. That's not what I mean. I just think that there's so much more in that process and that it doesn't like, if you're in a trajectory that feels very logical and, you know, I think particularly in a in a realm of specialisation, you know, you feel like you need to get in early and, like because specialisations take time to literally foster, to grow, to learn, to acquire, to cultivate. Right? And so the feeling of, like and then you get at the end of, you know, ten years or whatever and go into something else often feels like that sunken cost fallacy, which is also because it's not like, oh, I've jumped off the path, and I need to find my way back onto the path. I'm gonna just, like, explore this bit over here. It's like, that's life.

Embrace uncertainty and growth

Life is going to happen, and those that build the muscle of operating in uncertainty are going to find their way through things. And I think that's part of this, like, do this, output that, you're sorted. And I just think, you know, we're all trying to find the best possible bets to make in this world more so than ever for loads of different reasons. So I guess it's just the world's not gonna stop changing, and neither are you. And so I think that

Michele Ong

And that's a good thing.

Renae Sayers

Space. Is so good. That's, I mean, that's literally the process of becoming. Right? So it's okay to be as like, if you're fit, like, it's match the best match fit. Right? Like, what's the match fit here? And if a specialisation is the thing for you, like, great. Like, go forth. But it is okay to have range. It's okay to change your mind. It's okay to have a path or a trajectory that doesn't make sense to anyone, including yourself. But if you have that sort of internal check of, you know, am I having fun? Does this mean something to me? You know, whatever whatever your internal principles are. Right? And yes, there's no substitution for, like, hard work at some point. Like, I'm not saying for anyone that's doing anything hard that it's easy. And that's not it. Like, game I I remember the gaming hard fun, I think it's called, that, uh, she did a TED Talk a while back about that framing of, um, you know, it's hard. They're working hard at these things and hard problems. They were like, there's something rewarding about it. So just because it's hard doesn't mean it shouldn't be done. In fact, it actually is probably recognition that it's worthy. But stack your, like, tool set with the best possible range of tools to help you kinda get through those things is where I guess I'm coming from with this. And, um, yeah. The as I said, I realised years after that, actually, the the gift was never having I never had to, like, define myself by somebody else's standards. I never had to describe what it was precisely in their view. And because for a lot of people, they didn't know. Like, a lot of my like, no one knew what a scientist was. I didn't know what a scientist was. I didn't know how to draw them when I was a kid, you know, doing the little, like, what would you like to be when you grow up in primary school? And, you know, drew a nurse, a doctor, and like a lawyer, and I thought I I thought I wanted to be a lawyer.

Michele Ong

Yeah. And you only have that frame of reference of what's around you at the time. So you don't know what you don't know when you're at that age, except for what's around you and what you see.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. And I think science communication, you know, to answer your explicit question, again, I don't think it's a it doesn't have to be a job description as well. And even being a professional science communicator, I I I actually have never no. That's a lie. I think I had that in Edinburgh. I don't think that's actually been my job title explicitly. You know, I've had definitely had outreach in it. I've been planetary science outreach. I've been research ambassador. I've been deputy director of the Space Science and Technology Center, and now I'm director of strategic initiatives for Earth and Planetary Science. That's just the last ten years at Curtin. Right? And so none of that necessarily indicated exactly what my training was and exactly what it was that I was bringing to that role. And I think that is part of the craft as well as the skill of what goes into that. And if I think of, for people today, the tools you have access to when you're starting out and the access so, again, changing the bottleneck from access to the judgement component, don't forget to invest in your judgement muscle. And so that, I think, is the pretty critical thing. And maybe that's where I come from with don't worry about what your job description and your job title will be. Worry about the thing that lights you up and that will make you feel like you're valuable and you're contributing. And I definitely think it's shifting to that whole sense of, you know, trust and judgement and, yeah, validation. How do we make sense of the fire hose of information that we have here on the dark like, the data that turns into information and information into knowledge and then ultimately knowledge into wisdom?

Michele Ong

Yep. I think that's such a hard thing for you know, even before the AI stuff. We're already getting so much information overload just in the way that we had access to things because of the Internet. And that judgement part is so important that we've completely we're so busy taking it in and consuming it that we're not actually figuring out what it means to us and what we can do with it and why it's important to us specifically and not just to what other people say it is.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. And so again, like, what are you building in yourself? What are you investing in at the end of the day? And if it's yourself, then that's the correct answer because wherever you will be

Michele Ong

That's where

Renae Sayers

like, wherever you end up, there you will be. Right? And so it's like rather than making a plan that will survive the world changing and you changing, it's like, build that sense of self, that capability or whatever it is that survives the destination changing. You know? Like Yeah. What are the things that you can carry with you? And that changes. And how you spend your time as well is another really interesting thing to take notice of. How do you like to spend your time?

Michele Ong

Yep.

Renae Sayers

Learn who you are. That'll be great.

Michele Ong

Yeah. It's it's only finding out what your identity is.

Renae Sayers

That's don't. Someone tell me, how does this work?

Michele Ong

But, yeah.

Renae Sayers

It it's

Michele Ong

it it does come back down to understanding who you are. And, you know, it is about your identity and what that means to you and what your values are and, you know, what's important to you to cultivate. And that isn't a label about a job or a role or an industry. Yes.

Renae Sayers

Absolutely. I think yeah. In closing, it's like, if I look at the world, you know, science changes things when you feel like it belongs to you. Right? Like, at all of those levels, meaning, relevance, importance. So, um, I love science. I think that's good

Michele Ong

for me. In summary, science is I love

Renae Sayers

science, but I also love a lot of other things. And I get really passionate about a lot of other things. And that doesn't mean that I'm any less of a scientist or any less of someone that identifies in that particular way because there isn't really a box to be honest.

Michele Ong

And I think that makes you even more of a scientist because you are doing that exploration, you are doing that love of finding out. And I think that's the whole point, really. Absolutely.

Renae Sayers

And maybe we do need to think broader about, rather than science was just the process of discovery and someone in the lab, that that sense of translation and making sense of ourselves and the world around us and that, you know, when we talk about science, we're talking about both discovery and translation. Maybe that might be helpful for how we can help appreciate and celebrate this incredible thing that brings so much to who we are as a species. Yes.

Michele Ong

Big questions, easy to solve.

Renae Sayers

Yep. Yep. It's yeah. Gosh. How do we yeah. We're still figuring it out. It's okay. It's okay. Is it? It's okay to I keep being don't have the answers, Michele. I don't have the answers.

Michele Ong

And I think that's important because that uncertainty is what keeps us wondering and keeps us asking. And Absolutely. Yeah. Just it's okay not to have the artist as long as you're gonna look for some.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. And I hope my previous versions of myself are, like, proud of myself now. Like, you know, that whole thing of what you would have on your epitat, like, or whatever it is, like, what would you say on you? I'm like, I really hope that I can still impress my, like, younger self. And I'm trying to hold that framework right now today of going, I really hope, looking back at this time right now, I'm gonna feel similar to how I do, looking at all of the different junctures of life and working things out and the messiness and the the exuberance and the too muchness and the maybe not enoughness. But, actually, it's all just making sense of who we are and our world in it and, uh, and ourselves in it. And so, um, yeah, maybe yeah. And everyone's like, be kind to yourself. And I'm like, I wouldn't even press the heck out of myself.

Michele Ong

Set the bar high.

Renae Sayers

Fire-breathing, circus, running around, like, flat like, in all of the random you know, climbing a mountain, doing some theatre in Scotland, have been to yeah. Fire-breathing in China and almost getting arrested. Uh, like, it's just there's a lot of things there, and and we are a mashup of what we let in. And I feel that, you know, even the bad stuff that's in there, I still you know, I'm trying to hold her as much as I can. You know? It's not just the best version of ourselves. It's like loving the pretty shitty bits of ourselves as well, I think.

Michele Ong

Well, it's because we're always growing. We're always changing. We're allowed to have good and bad times, and good and bad us. We're not perfect, and that's okay, as long as we're working to be better all the time.

Renae Sayers

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And go science.

Michele Ong

And go science.

Renae Sayers

No. Thank you. Absolutely, Michele. Gosh, what a ride. This has been great.

Michele Ong

This has been great. Yeah. So if people would like to know more about what you do, where can they go?

Renae Sayers

I'm not really present on the socials. I apologise. But that's okay. It's not about me. You can find out about incredible National Science Week stuff that are happening in your area by, like, coming into the website that's wherever it will be. Yep. I don't know if it's on the screen or wherever down there. And, um, and even just, like, popping in either your postcode or an area and just having a look at what's happening around you, appreciating each metro area, um, in Australia has a lot of action in that week from the 15th to the 23rd of August. However, um, there are some regional hubs and regional events as well. So do if you're listening to this somewhere, um, around Australia, do pop your postcode in and have a look at what's going on. If you're interested in in getting involved, there's also a bunch of, like, uh, toolkits and, you know, media like, you can get involved. National Science Week and same thing at WA STEM with the Inspiring Australia, Western Australia. So that's, like, one place for the sort of, you know, public grassroots, uh, local impact meeting our sort of policy big framing of science engagement in Australia. And, of course, if you if you love Earth and Planetary Sciences, you wanna know a little bit more about what we do, there's plenty of places. Just, yeah, Curtin Earth and Planetary Sciences. But, also, just continue continue being curious and finding interesting things and, and yeah So I'll I'll link some random stuff.

Michele Ong

Absolutely. Thank you so much for this. It's been wonderful, again, talking with you about life, the universe, and everything. Yeah. It's been wonderful hearing about your incredible journey and the way that, you know, it all does connect together because communication is everything and science makes it all work. So thank you so much for sharing that. It has been absolutely wonderful speaking with you again today.

Renae Sayers

Thank you, Michele.

Michele Ong

Yeah. Hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

Renae Sayers

Absolutely. I will. Thanks again. Appreciate it.

Michele Ong

Thank you. If you enjoyed this conversation, please let me know. Subscribe to this show, leave us a rating, and share this with your geeky or geek-curious friends. You can also support STEAM Powered on Patreon under @steampoweredshow, the link for which also be in the show notes. Thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you next time.