2019 Speakers

Professor Juliet A. Gerrard, FRSNZ

Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.
Kaitohutohu Mātanga Pūtaiao Matua ki te Pirimia

Professor Juliet Gerrard trained at Oxford University, where she completed a First Class Honours degree in Chemistry and a DPhil in Biological Chemistry.

In 1993, she moved to Aotearoa New Zealand, as a research scientist at Crop & Food Research. She was appointed as a Lecturer in Biochemistry at the University of Canterbury in 1998, where she became Professor and Co-Director of the Biomolecular Interaction Centre.

In 2014, she moved to the University of Auckland as a Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemical Sciences and later the Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Science.

Juliet’s research covers a broad base and is interdisciplinary, cutting across biochemistry, chemistry, health, agricultural and food science and biomaterial design. It also incorporates a full spectrum of fundamental and applied research. She has held an Industry and Outreach Fellowship with Callaghan Innovation and founded a start-up company.

Juliet has over 150 publications, as well as three books. She won a National Teaching Award for Sustained Excellence in Tertiary Teaching in 2004 and played an increasingly governance role in the research sector, including as Chair of the Marsden Council and a Director for Plant & Food Research, prior to her appointment in 2018 as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor.

Professor Jason Swedlow FRSE

University of Dundee

Professor Swedlow earned a BA in Chemistry from Brandeis University in 1982 and PhD in Biophysics from UCSF in 1994. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Dr T.J. Mitchison at UCSF and then Harvard Medical School, Dr Swedlow established his own laboratory in 1998 at the Wellcome Trust Biocentre, University of Dundee, as a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellow.

Jason was awarded a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship in 2002 and named Professor of Quantitative Cell Biology in 2007. His lab focuses on studies of mitotic  chromosome structure and dynamics and has published numerous leading papers in the field.

He is co-founder of the Open Microscopy Environment (OME), a community-led open source software project that develops specifications and tools for biological imaging. In 2005, he founded Glencoe Software, Inc., a commercial start-up that provides commercial licenses and customization for OME software. In 2011, Prof Swedlow and the OME Consortium were named BBSRC's Social Innovator of the Year and Overall Innovator of the Year. In 2012, he was named Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Professor Swedlow has organized or directed several courses in quantitative microscopy at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, USA, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, USA and the National Centre for Biological Science, Bangalore. India.

Professor Raynald Gauvin

McGill University

Professor Raynald Gauvin received his Ph.D. in 1990 at École Polytechnique de Montréal in Metallurgical Engineering. He was then appointed as an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering at Université de Sherbrooke where he became associate Professor in 1995 and full Professor in 1998. In 2001, he joined the department of Mining and Materials Engineering of McGill University, Montréal, Canada, as a full Professor.

Professor Gauvin's research interests are related in developing new methods to characterize the microstructure of materials using high resolution scanning electron microscopy with X-ray microanalysis and Monte Carlo simulations. He is the creator of the CASINO program that is used by more than 10,000 users in the world. He has more than 300 papers in scientific journals and conference proceedings. He was Invited Speaker in more than 100 international scientific conferences. He won several scientific prizes, most notably the 31st Canadian Materials Physics Medal in 2007 from the Metallurgical Society of the Canadian Institute of Mining, the Heinrich Award in 1997 from the Microbeam Analysis Society of America and the Prix d’excellence du président de l’École for the best Doctorate Thesis defended in 1990 at École Polytechnique de Montréal.

He was the President of the Interamerican Societies of Electron Microscopy (CIASEM) from 2009 to 2011, the President of the Microbeam Analysis Society (MAS) from 2005 to 2006, the President of the Microscopical Society of Canada (SMC) from 2001 to 2003 and the President of the International Union of the Microbeam Analysis Societies (IUMAS) from 2000 to 2005. He is currently the holder of the Birks Chair in Metallurgy and also of an Industrial Research Chair funded by Hydro-Québec and the National Science and Engineering Research council of Canada. He was awarded Honorary Membership of the European Microbeam Analysis Society in 2017.