I love selfies I could look at selfies
all day and in fact that’s kind of what
I’ve been doing for the past 20 years
and no I’m not interested in renewing my
youth via snapchat but I would like to
introduce you to the grandmother of all
selfies so over half a decade ago we
thought that it was about time that
earth posed in all her Wonder and glory
for us to see and so in 1964 far cooler
than a selfie stick we launched Nimbus
tasked to create Earth’s selfie album
and ever since we’ve been checking out
her wonderful oceans and sea ice forests
ozone layer snow-capped mountains
beautiful sparkling city lights
sometimes she covers her wares in clouds
and other times she bears all and we see
her beauty and treasures on a not so
good day we see her pouty anger about to
storm with tears where she can’t quite
reach with moisturizer and her scars
from third-degree burns or where we’ve
created incisions for various operations
if you’ve ever spent just a moment on
Google Earth you’ve stepped into my
world
as a remote sensing scientist I have the
privilege of viewing these amazing
selfies and using them to create maps of
the environment helping us understand
what’s there how it changes over time
and ultimately how we can manage our
environment using this sort of
technology we’re able to ask the sorts
of questions like how big is the Great
Barrier Reef well it’s about the size of
Italy or half the size of Texas how many
individual reefs do we have nearly three
thousand how much live coral is out
there well we can’t actually answer that
one just yet
one of the reasons that we can’t is
because these satellites are several
hundred kilometres away and so what we
actually see when we zoom all the way in
its pixels now I spent some time as an
engineer in the Australian Army where I
was introduced to drones and I thought
hey what if I could get one of these for
myself and I can put a camera on a drone
and I could see if I could find the live
coral so this is one of my first drones
with a camera strapped to it with none
other than a brass strap I have some
more sophisticated setups now so what
you just to imagine that these are your
cameras this is a couple of hundred
thousand dollars worth of camera
attached to a drone and so you’re
getting ready for takeoff the motors
start up and it sounds like a scourge of
mosquitoes so you’re kind of nervous
you’ve got all this money getting ready
to fly but then all of a sudden you see
what an eye on the ground cannot
perspective
I marvel that through science and
technology I’m able to now see even in a
single shot sharks turtles raise even
individual sea cucumbers I can count
them and I know that there’s thousands
out there turning over the sediment on
the reef on a daily basis and finally I
can see my life coral and we can
actually start to map how much live
coral we have on the Great Barrier Reef
through this technology so if I take a
step back from the sort of work with the
I do with drones
I love mapping there’s so many different
applications for drones out there and
when I asked a number of my friends and
colleagues why they fly drones they tell
me a bunch of different reasons so I
think this is a really cool technology
but pretty much anyone can be a part of
and then I want to reflect on something
that happened to me last year so it was
about this time last year during
National Science Week
and I was visiting a number of different
schools sharing what I do with earth
selfies and drones and when I went to
the primary schools the kids were so
excited about what I do and they just
peppered me with questions for an entire
session boys and girls it didn’t matter
all sorts of questions yet when I went
to the local high schools the girls
didn’t show up and so I wondered why do
our tastes change really that quickly
that from primary school we go from
being curious about all sorts of things
to all of a sudden in high school girls
are not interested in this technology or
these amazing applications and I was
talking about it with a good friend of
and colleague of mine dr. Kathryn Ball
and around about the same time she rang
me up and she goes hey mate you in your
office I said yeah sure she goes jump on
your computer radio
and she said I want you to Google
drawings for girls and this is what we
saw so unfortunately this sends the
message that yes girls can do anything
as long as they wear a bikini and this
is my industry and it’s not really the
message that I want to be sending to
young girls that I want to encourage
into with this wonderful science that I
do so we dug a little bit deeper what we
wanted to do was to replace those images
that we saw on that search so we tried
to amass all the women that we knew who
were drone pilots and we found that in
Australia we have about one percent
female drone pilot and for such an
emerging technology where are all the
women we have an untapped resource here
and we dug a little bit deeper and I
found that Australia actually
hemorrhages female talent from as early
as primary school so much so that by the
time we graduate in science technology
engineering and maths only 16% of those
graduates are women we need to be able
to source from 100% of our talent pool
to make sure that we can grow our
economy now I’ve known for many years
that I’m a minority and the sort of work
that I do in the first technical
conference that I went to back in 2000 I
was stunned though to see that there are
only about 15% women this is a standard
conference that I attend and this one
was actually taken earlier this year so
the statistics haven’t really changed
that much so again where are the women
and for many years I’ve I’ve known this
but I actually haven’t thought to do too
much about it but then I heard dr. Zeus
and the Lorax in my er unless someone
like you cares a whole awful lot nothing
is going to change it’s not well I do
care a whole awful lot I’d like to see
some of these statistics change and my
colleague dr. Catherine ball also cares
and so we started a program called she
flies really designed to encourage more
girls and women into science through the
world of drones and so lucky for us the
state government of Queensland thought
this was a pretty good idea and so they
gave us some money to go back to that
high school where no girls showed up and
to run a drone day and I thought jeez
I’ll be lucky if I get twenty girls
let’s see how this goes so I offered a
girls only drone day I had sixty girls
and a waiting list which really gave me
an insight into how we need to
communicate some of these opportunities
if we want to encourage our young girls
and women into these careers so yes I
teach girls how to fly I teach them all
the safety aspects that we need to know
when working with this emerging
technology but importantly I also teach
the teachers because it’s really
important to empower the teachers so
that they can continue to engage with
their students as well so we’re mapped
to the Australian National Curriculum
and they can continue working with these
students I also work with boys I do aim
for a higher proportion of girls to try
and change those statistics so we have
about 80% female participation at the
moment but I’d definitely work with boys
to
but I’m gonna let you in on a secret
it’s not about the drawing it actually
has very little to do with the drone
what you see here is a group of grade
six school children learning to be
geospatial scientists I want to shatter
the illusion that scientists wear white
lab coats I want children and adults to
be working together cooperatively I want
to encourage critical thinking creative
learning problem-solving these students
have been told that there was a cyclone
in the map area that they’re looking at
they need to use their drone to go and
determine the impact of that cyclone
exactly the same as what I would do if I
was in the field with my drone so they
have to come up with their own flight
plans they figure out exactly how
they’re going to do it and then they’ll
undertake the mission I also believe
that it’s really important to try and
encourage creativity so in this example
these girls have created their own piece
of art and now they need to work out
using trigonometry exactly how high to
fly their drone so they’ll capture the
perfect photo not too big not too small
one photo they don’t need to think that
they’re doing maths but we embed it
anyway and I’m not sure if you’ve ever
seen drones used for entertainment but
Lady Gaga Disney Cirque de Soleil
they’re all using drones for their
entertainment so why not encourage
people to start learning early how we
can do this and these girls have coated
their drone left on this using
programming to give that display so
really try to take examples that I know
drones are used
or out in the real world and just
miniaturize them bring them down for
students to work on so through some
federal government funding we’ve been
lucky to run drone camps across northern
Australia so we’ve been here in Cairns
Darwin and soon out to the Pilbara and
we also run drone days around the
country you can see a range of yellow
dots there so this is these are the
number of programs that we’ve run since
February this year when we actually
launched the program so you can see the
size of the yellow dot indicates a
number of people that we have had go
through the program and on average we’re
teaching three programs a week now
around the country and I say we because
I can’t do this by myself and one of my
happiest moments earlier this year was
when I had a number of people say that
they’d like to join me and they want to
push this movement as well they want to
be my instructors so I now have 11 other
instructors around they come around the
country teaching what we teach with she
flies and as much as I love what I do
why we do it in my ideal world she flies
wouldn’t exist because it wouldn’t need
to thank you
[Applause]
you
you
all day and in fact that’s kind of what
I’ve been doing for the past 20 years
and no I’m not interested in renewing my
youth via snapchat but I would like to
introduce you to the grandmother of all
selfies so over half a decade ago we
thought that it was about time that
earth posed in all her Wonder and glory
for us to see and so in 1964 far cooler
than a selfie stick we launched Nimbus
tasked to create Earth’s selfie album
and ever since we’ve been checking out
her wonderful oceans and sea ice forests
ozone layer snow-capped mountains
beautiful sparkling city lights
sometimes she covers her wares in clouds
and other times she bears all and we see
her beauty and treasures on a not so
good day we see her pouty anger about to
storm with tears where she can’t quite
reach with moisturizer and her scars
from third-degree burns or where we’ve
created incisions for various operations
if you’ve ever spent just a moment on
Google Earth you’ve stepped into my
world
as a remote sensing scientist I have the
privilege of viewing these amazing
selfies and using them to create maps of
the environment helping us understand
what’s there how it changes over time
and ultimately how we can manage our
environment using this sort of
technology we’re able to ask the sorts
of questions like how big is the Great
Barrier Reef well it’s about the size of
Italy or half the size of Texas how many
individual reefs do we have nearly three
thousand how much live coral is out
there well we can’t actually answer that
one just yet
one of the reasons that we can’t is
because these satellites are several
hundred kilometres away and so what we
actually see when we zoom all the way in
its pixels now I spent some time as an
engineer in the Australian Army where I
was introduced to drones and I thought
hey what if I could get one of these for
myself and I can put a camera on a drone
and I could see if I could find the live
coral so this is one of my first drones
with a camera strapped to it with none
other than a brass strap I have some
more sophisticated setups now so what
you just to imagine that these are your
cameras this is a couple of hundred
thousand dollars worth of camera
attached to a drone and so you’re
getting ready for takeoff the motors
start up and it sounds like a scourge of
mosquitoes so you’re kind of nervous
you’ve got all this money getting ready
to fly but then all of a sudden you see
what an eye on the ground cannot
perspective
I marvel that through science and
technology I’m able to now see even in a
single shot sharks turtles raise even
individual sea cucumbers I can count
them and I know that there’s thousands
out there turning over the sediment on
the reef on a daily basis and finally I
can see my life coral and we can
actually start to map how much live
coral we have on the Great Barrier Reef
through this technology so if I take a
step back from the sort of work with the
I do with drones
I love mapping there’s so many different
applications for drones out there and
when I asked a number of my friends and
colleagues why they fly drones they tell
me a bunch of different reasons so I
think this is a really cool technology
but pretty much anyone can be a part of
and then I want to reflect on something
that happened to me last year so it was
about this time last year during
National Science Week
and I was visiting a number of different
schools sharing what I do with earth
selfies and drones and when I went to
the primary schools the kids were so
excited about what I do and they just
peppered me with questions for an entire
session boys and girls it didn’t matter
all sorts of questions yet when I went
to the local high schools the girls
didn’t show up and so I wondered why do
our tastes change really that quickly
that from primary school we go from
being curious about all sorts of things
to all of a sudden in high school girls
are not interested in this technology or
these amazing applications and I was
talking about it with a good friend of
and colleague of mine dr. Kathryn Ball
and around about the same time she rang
me up and she goes hey mate you in your
office I said yeah sure she goes jump on
your computer radio
and she said I want you to Google
drawings for girls and this is what we
saw so unfortunately this sends the
message that yes girls can do anything
as long as they wear a bikini and this
is my industry and it’s not really the
message that I want to be sending to
young girls that I want to encourage
into with this wonderful science that I
do so we dug a little bit deeper what we
wanted to do was to replace those images
that we saw on that search so we tried
to amass all the women that we knew who
were drone pilots and we found that in
Australia we have about one percent
female drone pilot and for such an
emerging technology where are all the
women we have an untapped resource here
and we dug a little bit deeper and I
found that Australia actually
hemorrhages female talent from as early
as primary school so much so that by the
time we graduate in science technology
engineering and maths only 16% of those
graduates are women we need to be able
to source from 100% of our talent pool
to make sure that we can grow our
economy now I’ve known for many years
that I’m a minority and the sort of work
that I do in the first technical
conference that I went to back in 2000 I
was stunned though to see that there are
only about 15% women this is a standard
conference that I attend and this one
was actually taken earlier this year so
the statistics haven’t really changed
that much so again where are the women
and for many years I’ve I’ve known this
but I actually haven’t thought to do too
much about it but then I heard dr. Zeus
and the Lorax in my er unless someone
like you cares a whole awful lot nothing
is going to change it’s not well I do
care a whole awful lot I’d like to see
some of these statistics change and my
colleague dr. Catherine ball also cares
and so we started a program called she
flies really designed to encourage more
girls and women into science through the
world of drones and so lucky for us the
state government of Queensland thought
this was a pretty good idea and so they
gave us some money to go back to that
high school where no girls showed up and
to run a drone day and I thought jeez
I’ll be lucky if I get twenty girls
let’s see how this goes so I offered a
girls only drone day I had sixty girls
and a waiting list which really gave me
an insight into how we need to
communicate some of these opportunities
if we want to encourage our young girls
and women into these careers so yes I
teach girls how to fly I teach them all
the safety aspects that we need to know
when working with this emerging
technology but importantly I also teach
the teachers because it’s really
important to empower the teachers so
that they can continue to engage with
their students as well so we’re mapped
to the Australian National Curriculum
and they can continue working with these
students I also work with boys I do aim
for a higher proportion of girls to try
and change those statistics so we have
about 80% female participation at the
moment but I’d definitely work with boys
to
but I’m gonna let you in on a secret
it’s not about the drawing it actually
has very little to do with the drone
what you see here is a group of grade
six school children learning to be
geospatial scientists I want to shatter
the illusion that scientists wear white
lab coats I want children and adults to
be working together cooperatively I want
to encourage critical thinking creative
learning problem-solving these students
have been told that there was a cyclone
in the map area that they’re looking at
they need to use their drone to go and
determine the impact of that cyclone
exactly the same as what I would do if I
was in the field with my drone so they
have to come up with their own flight
plans they figure out exactly how
they’re going to do it and then they’ll
undertake the mission I also believe
that it’s really important to try and
encourage creativity so in this example
these girls have created their own piece
of art and now they need to work out
using trigonometry exactly how high to
fly their drone so they’ll capture the
perfect photo not too big not too small
one photo they don’t need to think that
they’re doing maths but we embed it
anyway and I’m not sure if you’ve ever
seen drones used for entertainment but
Lady Gaga Disney Cirque de Soleil
they’re all using drones for their
entertainment so why not encourage
people to start learning early how we
can do this and these girls have coated
their drone left on this using
programming to give that display so
really try to take examples that I know
drones are used
or out in the real world and just
miniaturize them bring them down for
students to work on so through some
federal government funding we’ve been
lucky to run drone camps across northern
Australia so we’ve been here in Cairns
Darwin and soon out to the Pilbara and
we also run drone days around the
country you can see a range of yellow
dots there so this is these are the
number of programs that we’ve run since
February this year when we actually
launched the program so you can see the
size of the yellow dot indicates a
number of people that we have had go
through the program and on average we’re
teaching three programs a week now
around the country and I say we because
I can’t do this by myself and one of my
happiest moments earlier this year was
when I had a number of people say that
they’d like to join me and they want to
push this movement as well they want to
be my instructors so I now have 11 other
instructors around they come around the
country teaching what we teach with she
flies and as much as I love what I do
why we do it in my ideal world she flies
wouldn’t exist because it wouldn’t need
to thank you
[Applause]
you
you
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