The journey home
Uther believes Australia offers the best of both worlds--a nice balance between good students and quality of life.
"One of the things that really attracts researchers is working with good students," he explains. "Researchers tend not to do things by themselves, you lead a research group. Now, universities are where all the students are. So there has to be a close collaboration between the universities and NICTA." He said in the initial phase, the organisation would have to work with universities before it can attract overseas researchers.
Take the University of New South Wales as an example. He says the best students in NSW are there and in fact, the varsity is fast producing the best talent in the country and it's "stealing students from other universities."
"So, you get good students and on top of that, you've got a saner lifestyle...and while I'm willing to work hard, I do want a lifestyle that goes with it," Uther says, adding he prefers Sydney to Boston.
Nipping IT in the bud
Initially, many of NICTA's researchers will come from the two universities that formed part of the initial proposal, the University of New South Wales and Australian National University. Last year, Dr Brian Anderson, NICTA's chief executive officer, gave the assurance
that the new highly-funded centre would not steal researchers from the universities, and Uther claims that's still important.
"I think NICTA does have the ability to attract people back because it does pay a little better than a normal academic here, and while it's not on par with US salaries, at least it shows it's trying," Uther says. "Obviously, money is important, but not in absolute terms because if you're not willing to pay someone, then that's an indication that you don't respect what they can do."
"Why do I think others will come back to NICTA? I think it's more attitude than anything," he notes, adding that the organisation is pushing ICT in a manner intended to develop good staff in Australia, as well as good PhD students. "It's trying to develop US-style PhD students."
Uther believes studying for a PhD has a different image in Australia than it does in the US, and this is affecting the type of people who choose to obtain a doctorate.
"If I look around, the people who are doing PhDs here are geeks...top of their class and didn't have the drive to go straight into industry. The ones who were top students and had a flair (for something) would seek employment and get hired because that was the way to make money.
"In the US, having a PhD is seen as part of leading a technical group in a company. There's a lot of benefit in having those research skills as part of the management of researchers...academia is not considered a sheltered workshop for the intellectually gifted," he says.
For instance, at Carnegie Mellon, around one third of PhD students would go into academia, another third would venture into startup companies, and the rest into industry research labs.
"If you get a PhD in Australia, it's assumed you're going into academia. I think that leads to everyone who gets a PhD [being] sort of this fuddy duddy professor and it's self-reinforcing," Uther says.
While this scenario isn't widespread, he maintains that PhD students in the US were more driven compared with their Australian counterparts.
"I'm hoping we can change the whole perception of what a PhD is...not just a union ticket for an academic--it's more than that, it's how you conduct research," Uther says.
"A PhD is how to produce people who are not only good at doing what has been done before, but can go on and do new stuff, and then can we get the Australian companies to realise they should get a PhD to lead an industry development group," he contends.
