This week, AB talks Alison Kealy, the inaugural Director of the Innovative Planet Institute at Swinburne University in Victoria Australia. The discussion covers the institute’s goals, focus areas, and Alison’s background in geodesy, positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT). Alison’s expertise lies in satellite positioning, quantum sensors for navigation, and the fusion of various technologies for accurate and trustworthy PNT solutions.
We touch on the institute’s focus on achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals, harnessing innovation for real-world impact, and building partnerships within Swinburne and externally. AB also *finally* learns the right way to say the word “geodesists”.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/allison-kealy-7419804
We’re also publishing this episode on YouTube, if you’d like to watch along in full living colour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fBsbLGdN7M
Transcript and Links
AB
Well, g’day and welcome to SPAITIAL. This is Episode 21. We are back after a minor hiatus. Yes, winter colds and perils did come our way, that kind of thing. That’s what happens in this part of the world in the Southern Hemisphere.
I have with me though, a beaming smile. Alison Kealy, welcome to SPAITIAL – so glad to have you with us!
Allison
Thank you so much, Andrew. Lovely to be here.
AB
Cheers. I’m going to say I had to look back – it was two months ago – I saw your LinkedIn profile saying, I have just been, you know, I’ve changed roles and I’m now the… I’ll give it a go, but you need to correct me: the Director for the…
AB
And here we go. Yes. The Institute. No, I got it wrong. The Innovative Planet Institute. Goodness me. Can we start there? Can you tell us what the Innovative Planet Institute is, what your role is, and what’s been on your plate the last little bit?
Allison
I’m two months into the role at Swinburne University, where they’ve established a new institute called the Innovative Planet Institute, and I’m the inaugural director.
And so it gives you the chance to build itself into what I’m calling sustainability at Swinburne. This is really where Swinburne wants to provide its people and technology solutions to addressing a wide range of sustainability challenges that the world is facing right now and framing it in the context of the UN SDGs: sustainable development goals to do that.
AB
Wow, that’s phenomenal. It’s so you say it’s a brand new Institute within Swinburne University. As you know I do read LinkedIn quite a lot. Swinburne just got a lovely press release last week. They’ve climbed the worldwide in Australia and Victorian in Australia University ranks. They’re definitely top 50. Top three in Victoria, I think. So numbers are going up, which is a glorious sign. Joining the ranks of other institutes within Swinburne, is it a brand new facet/silo or is going to be cross-collaboration across the Swinburne ecosystem?
Allison
There’s three other institutes at Swinburne, and obviously to develop solutions that address sustainability problems, you can’t do that in one institute. So there’s obvious connections into things like the space and health and defense and all of these platforms, data, AI, all of these things coming together.
And so it’s a real opportunity for Swinburne to leave Roof, which is what is really powerful capability for a small university into really making impact.
AB
Batting above its weight, love it. So what are the sort of the, uh, pillars within the Institute that you’re going to be driving? What are the, what are the focuses the foci?
Allison
I’ve kind of set centered it around for four key pillars and those four key pillars are energy transitions. So looking at how we achieve zero emissions, Supply chain, decarbonization, Our Future Living, How do we build cities of the future so that they’re not just smart, but they’re regenerating as well.
A subject matter called geo-resilience. I love the word, but that’s because I love the word geo and I love the word resilience. And I put them together. You know, it’s about people and communities and building resilience as we face more and more of the effects of climate action and cuts through climate change.
And then the other one is to do with transport and looking at how we would make transport smarter, which obviously fits with my role previously in the Department of Transport and Planning.
AB
Very cool. I also note with interest, we were delayed from when I first spoke to you when you launched in this new role by a couple of European conferences. Well done for having to do that work to travel to that part of the world and spend time. Well done. What’s your background, your fields? How did you (not be in this role) – but what are the sort of science journies – the career path – that’s led you to these things being front of mind?
Allison
Yeah, look, you know, I started with, I’m originally from Trinidad. So I started with a land surveying degree in Trinidad. And then I did a PhD in something called Geodesy over in the UK. And then I moved to Australia.
So my background is really in satellite positioning. So looking at things like positioning navigation timing solutions, which has now taken me into the world of quantum. So that’s, yeah, so very exciting.
And the potential of quantum sensors to play a role in navigation and positioning in areas where GPS doesn’t work. And so that’s my science journey. That’s my passion. It is in Geodosy and positioning.
And so currently, I get a chance to use a whole range of brand new technologies and sensors in order to do that as well, but then leverage that into the applications where GPS would normally be working.
But if it doesn’t, then what do we do to secure our banking infrastructure, our trains, everything?
AB 05:31
We had a chat with Phil Delaney in our last episode and one of the nuggets he left was how the Australian GPS network is being built up to be even more exacting and also the coverage to be made better.
And the number he put out there was billions of savings proposed in the future, A billion here, a billion there – pretty soon you’ve got some serious money on the table. Is this the brave new world of expanding the positioning around the world or is it, as you say, what are the kind of places where positioning is not covered by those constellations of satellites flying just above our heads?
Allison
So it’s two things, Andrew. It’s one – it’s anywhere that you can’t see the satellite signals. So in tunnels, underground, indoors, those sorts of environments. But then there’s the other thing of when you have applications that are safety critical, like our trains, and we want to make sure that we have a solution that is really, really one we can trust, then you want something else there that helps you do that.
And these alternative technologies help you to provide that trust in positioning that is required for this application.
AB
So complete secondary technologies or supporting technologies around the GPS framework?
Allison
I think you need ‘bolting’. I think you need an augmentation like the space-based augmentation system that Australia has just invested in, SouthPan. And then you need alternatives that aren’t subject to the same errors as the satellite signals are.
So you have an independent system as well.
AB
Gotcha. And I can reveal I was also in a European country a little while ago that is a known hotspot for GPS spoofing. So I guess say these technologies are also to combat trust in said signals and “am I really where I am or should I just fall into the ground?”
The security aspect is significant. I take it this conversation does have implications in that kind of space.
Allison
Yeah, so it’s, you know, the Quantum PNT problem is one that defence is very interested in. Sovereign PNT capabilities is one that Australia is very interested in, as are other countries around the world.
And we’re seeing lots and lots more the impact of spoofing in certain areas, which, you know, creates that unreliability and mistrust.
AB
Yeah, yeah, and a million mistrusts a second does tend to make a signal processor confused. And if it’s confused, that’s not a state you ought to be in.
Allison
Yeah, I think I saw a number somewhere in the US where if they lose GPS for a day, it costs about a billion dollars.
AB
Right. Yes. Yeah, we are talking what was military only technology in the 80s, I would say. And then was first released commercially, but with bricks, I guess, bigger than mobile phones of that era.
My father did have a mobile phone in that era, you know, carried around the suitcase of the battery with it. The GPS, the fact that it’s everywhere and augmented and we just rely on it. And it’s also, you know, the number of constellations that we can tap into is now increased, although perhaps there might be few less in the future.
That’s a conversation for something else. That’s, that’s all right. Maybe getting back to the Innovative Planet Institute. What are the first few things you’re doing? What’s on your, what’s on the dance card the rest of this year?
AB 09:21
What’s the, is it you’re looking for partners, you’re looking for projects, you’re looking for other students and building up teams? What’s the first 100 days look like?
Allison
Yeah, the first 100 days is actually, which is rapidly coming to me. I know, I’d say it’s already been two months. So what’s the next 100 days? It’s really about, you know, I’m new to Swinburne, building those partnerships within Swinburne.
You’d be amazed at the fact that that is a thing to do. It’s own challenge. So it’s doing a lot of matchmaking. A lot of blind dates.
So I’m going to try and just kind of get the right people into the right room, into the room with the right questions. So I think one of the things I’d like to focus on is what does impact mean for an institute like this?
And impact for me is about how do we get the innovation into the hands of the people who need it? So the decision makers, is it society? It’s unlocking it from where it kind of sits. So, you know, it’s getting technology and it’s getting people and it’s putting them together and saying what is the best way to provide a solution to this challenge?
And you know, that’s language. You know, everybody’s speaking a slightly different language, the vocabulary, it’s really kind of a collaborative endeavor that requires a little bit of finessing.
AB 11:01
Everyone has their own lens. If you come from a certain field, everything, you know, hammer looks like a nail, but also to communicate the values that ethos is always a hard thing, even to figure out what that is, but then to, you know, say it clearly plainly is a great thing.
So it is the goal of the, can we be calling it the IPI, the Institute of Planetary Institute – is it going to be a short name, a long name and acronym forming here, or we keep it correct first?
Allison
I know Australians like to shorten their names. I’m going to keep it formal. But within it we will have a lot of very, very informal conversations and relationships developing in order to achieve the kinds of output that I think really presents itself as an opportunity for Swinburne as well.
AB
No, fantastic. Do you have a premises, a level, a room, a building carved out? Are you operating virtually? What’s the future land grab of the Institute?
Allison
Yeah, Land grab is a good 90 day plan, I have to say.
AB
Have you sighted exactly which place you’d like to work at?
Allison
They’ve given me a lovely office in the engineering building, which houses me, which is great. It is a virtual institute, and that’s been brilliant given everything we’ve learned during COVID. I don’t know what it would have been like before that, but given the experiences of COVID, it’s a really lovely platform for engaging with much more people, increasing the diversity of participation, but purely making this a virtual interaction as well.
And so in terms of space, we have a lot of space that there was on campus that works really well. I’ve stumbled across a beautiful visualization hub full of big monitors and screens in which you can run a lot of spatial problems, digital twins, AI on digital twins, and invite people in.
So if I could tell people using this podcast, if you want to come in and play in our spaces, we’ve got some beautiful spaces for co-designing solutions.
AB
I absolutely would love to second that. I haven’t yet played in that area. I do operate around the Swinburne area every now and then, so I will take you up on that offer to go and play. But it is such a vital part.
There’s a lot of talking about ways to communicate and show deep nested 3D dense gnarly problems, but there’s nothing quite like experiencing it. I don’t know what the ratio of, well, if a picture tells a thousand words, I don’t know what the ratio of spatial intelligence is to words, but I really don’t want to write a 20 page thesis versus “come and put this headset on” or “come and play with me and we’ll find out in five minutes”.
Obviously, the speed of knowledge transfer is a much different for those types of problem sets.
Allison 14:16
Yeah, and you know, a spatial person trying to show a planner, the impact of something happening or building being built or one decision making process, it’s much more interactive to see what the effect of that.
And if you think about, you know, the future where you could layer onto that AI, where you don’t even have to play around with computers, you can just tell it to show us certain things, you know, then you have a really powerful narrative environment for, you know, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary interactions.
AB
I’ve been in a lot of digital spaces for a very long time. I would say how long, but back in the early days of – gee – even Photoshop and imagery, I many times had someone say, excellent, can you move that image to the left? “Yep. 10 seconds done.” Now can you move it up? “Yep. Come back tomorrow.” It’s that there’s some things that are easily done in some places and others are “that’s a ground up rewrite – that’s a grand up rewrite”.
And it’s really lovely to separate the technical and let the technical happen, but have people just come in the front end and ask the questions unfettered and obviously these are spaces being, you know, multi-screen multi-collaboration and in a world with multiple headsets all working together that mode of I can tell you I can talk you through it or I can just show you and you know, let’s experience it.
That’s exciting.
Allison
Yeah, and experiencing it’s something like that together. I think we’ll open up more dialogue. It will encourage more conversation about what is possible, you know, so intent and context and all of these things become conversations when you move beyond technology.
AB
Yeah, indeed. The check is changing so fast. It’s nice to keep the right handle on it. But as you’ve been saying in your first 100 days, it’s the talking. It’s the trying to piece together what’s the aim, what’s the plan.
And this is easily doable in X. This is all let’s put that on the long path. And the other end of the stick is often that thing. Yeah, that’s a button on your phone now. It’s easily done. So the pace of change is, I’m glad to see you’re harnessing it and using it as best you possibly can.
Allison
Oh, absolutely. I’m so excited. It changes so fast. I tell people, I remember when I started using GPS and there were only a few satellites in the sky and you had to wait until it.
AB
“And look, there’s one coming!”
Allison
Yeah, yeah, that’s 3 AM. Yeah, indeed.
AB
Now, when I fly a DJI drone, it connects to two or three satellite networks and oh, it’s got 14 or more. It kind of should know where it is reasonably well. That’s untenable. Yes, as you say, 20 years ago, that was like “back in my day”. Okay, there we go, kids. We’ve said it now.
So, I can see five research programs you’ve got here on the website.
https://www.swinburne.edu.au/research/institutes/innovative-planet
But future places for living, urban infrastructure, urban decision making. Wow. Can you tell me about those sort of problems that you’re looking to solve? What size scale? Micro, I mean, what are the definitions of the problems that you’re trying to look at?
Allison
Yeah, I should also add that in my 90 days I would be doing a website update.
AB
Okay, gotcha. Asterisk: this information may change.
Allison
I mean, I guess a previous incarnation of the Institute was to do with smart cities.
AB
So, many of these things have collapsed into one of those pills that you were talking about before?
Allison
…to plan it and allow this to increase the scale of what we do. So we will still keep the smart cities focus and pivot to something along the lines of future living, you know, create an affordable housing, create in green housing that is affordable.
Those kinds of challenges will form part of what future living is going to be. But we will extend that into, well, how do we build transport networks that support new communities? And how do we manage energy and supply energy to cities of the future?
And what does that mean for us as a society in terms of skills and workforce planning for the future as well?
AB 18:52
That’s exciting. That’s a massive ring bit. That’s not a small task. So obviously you’re jumping in with two feet. As I say, I’ll come back to the question of what’s the rest of this year to formulate and plan and prepare and then what’s your goals for 2025?
What would you like to be doing if we had this year to get in trouble and stuff?
Allison
So for the rest of the year, I’m looking at building up a key set of programs, one of which is obviously aligned with quantum. Looking at where Swinburne can position itself in delivering to the different roadmaps that are being created in Victoria nationally and internationally.
That is one thing. We also have the French-Australian energy transition being initiated across universities, across industry sectors between France and Australia. And so looking at how we would build that into really harnessing international collaboration, as well as local intellect to deliver that and what those programs might look like.
And so those two plus actually getting the Institute bedded down and working is going to be a really important thing. And for next year, I think, you know, I’d really like to position ourselves to where Swinburne is seen as a key accelerator of the SDG goals.
And so, you know, when we’re talking about this next year, Andrew, which I hope we are. What you’ll be seeing is that we’ve created the pathways and the partnerships that are actually allowing us to do more rapid, not just new innovation, but actually getting innovation out of the university and into the practitioners’ hands as well.
And that’s more about policy and standards and all the things that have to happen.
AB
Lovely. Can I twist around to talk about the buzzword bingo that we just got our viewers and listeners to tick off their bingo cards? Can we go back to quantum? It definitely is, yeah, it’s a big word.
If you can’t say “AI” and “quantum” in any marketing brochure or website, you’re sort of, you know, what are you doing?
Can you tie together both what you’re doing with the Institute and quantum, Swinburne, but also your studies and the conferences I’ve been watching you do with living vicariously through your LinkedIn photo reel.
Quantum PNT: can you explain to us what that word means in that context? What it’s distilled down to or what that one word, if you can unpack it, is it just marketing? What’s the core of it?
Allison 21:56
Okay, so the core of quantum, and I’m not a quantum physicist, right? So I, that’s my disclaimer.
AB
Is there a quantum physicist in the room? No, that’s okay.
Allison
I’m oddly married to one, so there’s sometimes is. Okay.
But in this case, I think what I’m interested in is, is just the sensors that allow us to do more accurate measurements. So when we talk about quantum, we’re talking about sensors that are typically able to perform measurements with very, very little error in it.
And so what that means is we have the ability to do things like measure acceleration very, very precisely. And doing that very precisely means that we’re able to measure things like the magnetic field.
We can measure things like gravitational effects. We can measure a lot of sensing parameters. So, so just to be clear, when people talk about quantum, they sometimes talk about quantum computers, or they talk about quantum communications, or more secure communications.
When I talk about quantum for things like positioning and navigation, I’m talking about sensors.
AB 23:10
Gotcha. And you’re using quantum in the sense of the word of the smallest increment possible. Quantum being beyond micro, being the smallest measurements, the most precise. Gotcha. So error is reduced.
And then that is added up, averaged to let us humans know. But on the smaller scale, you’re doing the lowest level math, science, physics to make that happen.
Allison
Yeah, and so what it allows us to do is measure things like understand how the gravity field of the earth is changing, which is really important for mineral exploration and for some of the geodesic work that we do.
But the accelerometers that are being built using quantum physics, they’re actually allowing us to do things like navigation underwater, for example, very, very accurately. Because GPS isn’t going to work underwater.
It’s a great alternative too. And so that’s where, and you’re right, you can’t get away. If you’re not saying quantum in every conversation, are you even doing science? That’s it.
AB
How do you possibly get funded if you don’t sprinkle one of those three, four, five words into any year? No. And that just it. It’s tricky when that is the actually correct word and it’s meaningful and pushing the boundaries of science correctly.
First is the startup in the garage that says we’re doing quantum AI, synthetic cyber yadda, yadda, or you’re just laden in every word sadly is loaded and has multiple lenses on it. So it’s great to unpack that.
Thank you for that. Also, thank you for telling me the precise pronunciation of ‘geodesy’. As someone who sees these words more than more than says them hits was it it’s always hard with the emphasis on the right syllable and geodesy or geodesic.
Obviously the pronunciation changes depending on the word, but geodesy and yeah – I read more than I talk. So it’s it’s often hard – thank you for helping with that. That’s really good.
Could you define geodesy as a field and and how it relates and how it’s permeated throughout the things that you’re playing with them?
Allison 25:24
Yes, so geodesy is actually the study of the size and shape of the earth and the positions of things on the earth. So it’s the fundamental property that we use for determining things like where are our property boundaries?
You know, how do we know where things are when we give it coordinate values? It sets up what is called the datum against which we’re able to do things on a global scale. And so it’s the foundation of maps, it’s the foundation of navigation systems.
It’s the core piece of information that allows us to understand where things are on the surface of the earth. So, you know, when we hear things like Australia is moving seven centimeters north-east, yeah, the reason we’re able to say these things is because we’ve defined a reference frame that allows us to detect those kinds of movements.
And so geodesy is that is that study. And we have a worldwide skill shortage of geodesy. So this is my pitch for anybody who is interested in this. This is the place to think about it.
AB
Now this wasn’t a course in my career is counselling in high school. Was it for you and for others? Is it a science first then specialise? Is it a specialised university that teaches geoscience, geodesy or is it…
AB
What is the career path? This is not a field that I’m… There aren’t many ge… Hang on. There aren’t many geodists out there?!
Allison 27:13
Yeah, there’s not many geodesists there even less they normally came through a land surveying program, which is why I did geodesy, but even the land surveying programs we’re seeing a lot of them dwindling, not just in Australia, but nationally, internationally, it’s a global problem.
This this shortage and it is recognized. So yeah, you’d have to, you know, there is no geodesy course that you signed up for. You do a bit of it in physics, you do bits of it in space science, you do bits of it in in geomatics or in surveying.
But, you know, there is no course called Geodesy in Geoscience Australia. There’s a lovely internship program where people can go and learn about Geodesy as well. But yeah, it is it is one of one of the things that I do like to tell people, you know, we’ve actually see people, you know, when you take up your phone and you’re using a map on your phone with GPS, you’re using Geodesy, right?
It’s mass market Geodesy we’re talking about now. And so we need to get more more people interested.
AB
I hear you. That’s a lovely ad. And it is true that, you know, just as you think you’re in, I don’t know, the start of high school and primary school, I’m going to be a doctor,a lawyer and your horizons open.
I’ve watched my kids go through university with good and firm ideas, but still no one even knows what’s at the end of those, you know, choices three and four years later, and it’s great to see that these are specializations within deep fields.
I did a startup a decade ago called My Perfect. Basically, it was the opposite of Google with rather than starting with a search engine to have millions of results, you’d start with lots of results and play 20 questions till you got down to your perfect thing. The best one of all was My Perfect Career. It was actually neat that it asked questions that split the field really quite wildly and came up with a thousand different choices of what you should do. And it was kind of fun to play my own game of what should I be in or what should I’ve done because if you don’t know, you can’t make a choice.
So it’s always good to find out that there are more options out there than what you could possibly think of until you’re halfway through. So brilliant.
Allison
Yeah, I’ve got two kids. One just started uni and one’s in the Year 11. And yeah, it’s a really interesting conversation to have with them, given all the choices that they do have now and trying to inspire them into STEM related areas. It’s a challenge still.
AB 29:59
Can we even walk back a little bit more? You talked about another well, an acronym which you explain, but it is all over your LinkedIn field and that is PNT, position, navigation, timing.
Obviously, that’s an acronym that is so frequently said, it’s turned into an acronym. What is the international focus on it? Or is Geodey the underlying maths and PNT is the daily application? What’s the linkage between the two?
Allison
Yeah, Geodesy is the underlying, you know, the sort of theoretical infrastructure under which positioning, navigation and timing is, it sets up all those kinds of reference frames within which we make measurements of positioning, navigation and timing.
The PNT aspect of it refers to the applications, the technologies and the systems that are used to provide position, navigation and timing. So, satellites, for example, would be part of that PNT architecture, where quantum clocks are now part of the timing and architecture as well. But underpinning all of these would be the infrastructures of Geodesy.
AB
Got you. With more satellites up there, are you able to make use of the low-earth-orbit constellations? Starlink is the classic one, but there’s a lot of, there’s many frameworks. Well, it’s a large place up there, but certainly it’s getting much more crowded. Is that adding influence? And is that adding its own level of accuracy to the conversations? Or is it the ground-based systems like we’ve talked about before with Phil, but also, is it the actual underlying hardware and the techniques, software based on the ground that are actually helping to really bridge these gaps between where we want to be and where we are today?
Allison
Oh, funny, it should lead me down this pathway, Andrew, because I’m going to say that the thing that I fundamentally adhere to is the idea of fusion, right? So I don’t think there’s going to be any one one algorithm, any one technology hardware technology, it’s not going to be any one thing that provides the answer to the increasing number of applications we’re trying to service with positioning and timing.
So I think for me, anything that that comes up – low earth orbiting satellites, quantum, whatever it is – it has strengths and it has weaknesses. And the way we maximize and optimize over this is we combine them together.
And the mechanism we use to combine them comes down to what the application needs. So if the application needs our high accuracy and high trust, then we should be able to sample from our little toy box of things – and grab everything we need to give us that solution. Whereas if we’re not so interested in accuracy, it’s on our mobile phones, we just want to get to a restaurant. You know, that’s a different different type of class of application that I think we’re talking about.
So for me, the low orbit in satellites offer a lot of opportunity for us. It comes with its own complexity as well. You know, you need a lot of them as well to cover areas. And so, yeah, it’s it’s all part of a hierarchical solution.
So for me, you have things on the ground, you have things in the middle of the air, so drones and things like that, you have things near space, high altitude balloons, and then you start to have things in space.
And these are the layers of sensing and capability that we have to help build our solutions for things here on Earth. And they all have to work together synergistically.
AB 34:06
Very cool. That’s great to hear because that means you’re not putting all eggs in one basket. You’re just hoping up to whatever comes along. And I guess a follow up is what sort of year on year benefits are you hoping for?
Well, what are the metrics you’re seeking or seeing? Are you saying we’re getting better tolerances? Are you saying we’re getting better trust? What’s a fireball team? Any of you?
Allison
I think a 5 or 10 year view starts off with something as simple as sovereign. You know, I think the 5 or 10 year view has to be what is Australia’s sovereign capability in this area, but also what is Australia’s contribution to the global you know, toy box.
AB
Gotcha.
Allison
Yeah, yeah, you know, what are we doing? And then, you know, there is also this idea of, you know, where can Australia position itself to benefit from some of the things that are happening internationally?
So one of the things I’ve been working on is this space and spatial roadmap, where spatial, which has always been a user space technology, can now leverage the greater investment in space sensing to deliver a greater downstream benefits for things like bushfires and emergency response and climate change and things like that.
So I’m hoping that we’ll see intelligence and AI become some of the offerings that Australia and Victoria in particular, I’m really trying to get Victoria’s the smart state to catch on. You know, so that we build intelligence solutions that are almost technology and the sector at no stick.
AB
Look, as a fellow Victorian, I support that. That’s all good. If I have a conversation with someone in Sydney, I will have to change my tune. That’s okay. This is just the classic Australian debate of who’s got the best footy team, it’s generally the fact that it works.
You;ll be dealing with partnerships and projects – are you looking to on-board students and directly have active projects or is it more outward facing partnerships and projects? Is it outside Swinburne? Is it bringing up people through Swinburne and releasing them or is it to grow the institute and be a powerhouse of R&D?
Allison
I think Swinburne has a real brand in providing technology solutions outward facing. It’s one of their moonshots. You know, every industry partner gets a technology solution. And so I think that’s where their brand is really strong.
And so I’m really keen to really do that, that partnership building with goals and impact in mine. But I don’t think we can do that without building up the workforce that can support that technology rich future as well.
So it has to be done both ways. But the idea would be that we have students who are working very closely with industry as well so that they’re building up not just the theoretical and academic skills, but they’re also getting that on the job training that helps them to build out the support that the industry will need.
AB 37:52
Alison, thank you so much. Awesome to chat to you. I’m gonna say it’s opened my eyes and my ears to the kinds of things that are on the riser. Obviously drawing together such, I mean, the field of view of the Innovative Planet Institute is obviously so much bigger than yes, first website look, but also that vision for the future is just glorious to hear.
Where do you, we asked where the field is for PNT, but where do you think the institute will be in five years time? What’s the, not the 50 year time, that’s, you know, we’ve all got matrix style jacks in the back of our head and we’re all wired into the central thing.
Where’s the sensible first horizon that you’d just love to be?
Allison 38:38
I think I would like to be able to point to a few things that has made society better. I would like to see some of the work that we’ve done actually being used in creating better resilience, meeting the needs of the most vulnerable people in society today.
And I think if we were able to even do a little bit of that, that’s what I would think we’re on the right track.
AB
Oh, that’s heartwarming to hear. And it’s perfect to finish with Alison. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. We’ll leave contact points you LinkedIn profile will leave a link to the website.
Looking forward to seeing a version 1.1 or 2 .0 release. That’s all great. But it’s really happening to hear that vision and the passion come through. We all fully support it. Even if we’re not in Victoria, Australia.
Obviously, there’s ways to get in touch and get involved. So thank you for your time. Congratulations and welcome to the directorship of the University of Innovative Planet Research Institute.
AB
Alison Kealy, thank you so much.
Allison
Thank you, Andrew.
AB
That’s it for now. Catch us all next time. Next time more interviews coming through. This is perhaps going to be the format going forward. So looking forward to having some more of these kinds of chats. Colds notwithstanding. Yes, it is cold in this part of the world. Heaters on. Cats are hibernating. But from us at SPAITIAL, we’ll catch you next time. Bye bye.
HOSTS
AB – Andrew Ballard
Spatial AI Specialist at Leidos.
Robotics & AI defence research.
Creator of SPAITIAL
To absent friends.
