Katarina Stuart (2012) – Where Are They Now?

The relationships and interests I developed over my high school years at Pymble have certainly played a major role in shaping who I am today. And though it is somewhat confronting to approach the ten-year mark since graduation, such emotions also prompt reflection. I am ever grateful for the lifetime friendships forged over my Pymble years which, considering recent tumultuous times, I know can weather anything.

Of course, I would be remiss to dwell on my time at Pymble without considering how it has shaped my choices since then. While I did love subjects like English and Visual Arts, my strongest academic memories at Pymble were always of the Science and Maths classrooms. Facilitating your interests, no matter how niche or weird, was something Pymble excels at. It is vital that in high school you feel comfortable to explore the things you love, and I remember my high school years enabled that. My memories are characterised by teachers going above and beyond their role to help students who showed interest in their subjects. For me and a few others that took shape in the form of maths and science Olympiads, titration competitions, and various other science projects. While I now shudder at the thought of all the extra homework I did under the cunning guise of fun, I can’t deny that it taught me extra time was well invested in the things you loved. And I truly loved science. My interest in science, specifically biology and evolution, has always been what has driven me in the academic environment.

My world now looks a little different from that of my time at Pymble. I am an evolutionary biologist, and work in a field called genomics, which is basically genetics coupled with computer science. Specifically, I study invasive species, and look at how they evolve within their novel (invaded) ranges. The findings of such research aim to assist management efforts of invasive or vulnerable species and provide information on the fundamental molecular mechanics underpinning species’ evolution. My work has taken me to many places, from remote fieldwork in regional Australia, to overseas to teach or present my research. I have recently submitted my doctorate thesis at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and will be moving to the University of Auckland to take up a position as a postdoctoral research fellow.

My everyday work is somewhat unpredictable, and largely dependent on which section of my projects I am up to. I have worked in locations across Queensland and Western Australia, running experiments and collected field data. And of course, a necessary component of many genetic projects is working in the traditional laboratory setting (termed wet-lab, likely in reference to the many hours you spend crying in exasperation as simple procedures fail for the 5^th time in a row due to a planetary misalignment). In the wet lab I can have my hands on anything from extracting the genetic material (DNA) from a sample, to running the sequencing machines used to generate the DNA code data.

Ultimately however, a large majority of my time is spent doing bioinformatics, which simply means using computer science to work on large genetic data sets. These days all but very particular genetic analysis will require remote computer clusters, or ‘super computers’, to analyse. My projects cover a range of different data types, from constructing reference genomes for species, to analysing population genetics data to be used for pest control decisions. So, on this note I am thrilled that they are introducing data science as a subject for students to take here at Pymble. With how pervasive tech is and will continue to be across many fields of work, exposure to computer and data science is fundamentally important.

Across all my different research projects I have met people from all walks of life studying biology. The academic environment is a surprising melting pot of people who have arrived at research, including those who never saw themselves as studious during their high school years, and in some cases never completed high school. What unites them is a passion for the natural world, whether it be for one specific endangered marsupial, or a desire to critique and improve the very foundations of the way we conduct biological sciences. So, in a way it is interesting to remember the anxiety that I know I and many of my classmates felt around assessment time, that our futures would be made or broken by some mark. If the ten years since graduation have given me anything, perhaps it would be perspective on the flexibility of our career choices, and the strength we all possess to drive ourselves when we are self-aware about our passions.

I don’t think I had a clear idea in my head during my high school years of what a scientist looks like. Aiming for a career in academia was never a goal of mine, it was simply an end result of continuing to choose the direction of learning that inspired me most. And to be honest I still don’t necessarily know what I will do, I will simply keep making the choice to follow what intrigues me and trust that whatever it fills my day with will be rewarding. In this tumultuous time of uncertain global prospects, I think the best we can do is make sure we are living a balanced life and spending our working hours doing something that fulfils us.