Researcher Profile Videos

Victor Gekara (00:08):

So my name is Victor Gekara. My area of research is looking at industrial transformation and the implications for skills and workforce development. So my interest in this research area started way back when I grew up at the port city of Mombasa and I had many friends that worked within the port and I visited them quite often. It's what triggered my interest in trying to learn more about the work and the circumstances and the tools and the skills they need to do this work.

                The challenges for the current workforce is that technologies are changing ever so fast. As these technologies change, we have to think about what skills are we going to need tomorrow because they're not going to be the same. So for example, in the ports. Ports are automating extremely rapidly. How do they enhance the productivity of their current workforce, but also prepare for the future changes by upskilling and retraining in order to anticipate those changes? And that's what my research is really about, thinking about the future of skills.

                So my hope is that my research influences policy, but also at the same time to help at the strategy levels, actually creating real impact. That it's helping people to recognize their skills. It's helping people to get better jobs and better policies for the economy.

Anne-Laure Mention (00:06):

I'm Anne-Laure Mention. I'm a Professor in the College of Business. My research interest is mainly around open innovation. So I'm interested in how firms innovate and with what impact. Firms need to innovate, everybody acknowledges that, but most organizations fail to innovate. So my research aims to look into all those pathways and all those processes in order to help organization to be innovative in the best possible way, looking at the best possible outcome for them.

                So I'm thrilled to have been able to build the largest team working on open innovation in Asia Pacific, and that's a really exciting project and look forward to growing it further. So I'm also the Director of the Global Business Innovation enabling capability platform here at RMIT. So ICPs are virtual platforms to actually help researchers to connect with each other and break the silos between the different disciplines, but also to engage with society, so with industry. One of the initiatives of the global business innovation platform is to run the global business innovation conversation series, where we bring together thought leaders, academics, and policy makers to debate about key issues on technological innovations and their impact on society.

                What we hoping is actually to help organizations think differently, but also better innovate internally and externally with their ecosystem. The research we conducting within the platforms is actually helping companies to grow. So we helping society. We have helping the Australian economy, but more broadly we aiming to have a global impact.

Cameron Duff (00:04):

My name's Cameron Duff. I'm a researcher in the School of Management at the College of Business at RMIT University. I'm interested in health and social problems in cities. So, with colleagues at RMIT, we've been interested in the experience of rough slipping in the city. I wanted to know more about the experience of homelessness in the city. So, I spent hours and hours wandering around the city, trying to make sense of that experience. How do we treat homeless people in the city? So, I think I learned that as a city, I think we really want to respond. We care about this, we're just not always quite sure how to respond. How to effectively intervene, what to do. Research is critical because typically with a problem like homelessness, we've been addressing it for a long time. And so, the question is always, do we have the right responses in place?

                People need help addressing complex needs, their mental health situation, their family situation, experiences of trauma, family violence. We've got to understand how all of these aspects fit together and how we can design systems to respond effectively. Been well-known for some time that we don't always have good coordination between services. And so, it's clearly the case that people get lost. And so, I think a big part of the focus now is making sure that we can coordinate services so we can follow people through care, back into secure housing. So, I think a key thing for RMIT is really the problem of social innovation. We've got big problems in cities and we need research teams working together to address them. My feeling is that as a research goal, there's no reason why we can't aim to prevent and end homelessness in this city. So, my job is to really try and understand what are the broad support needs that people need and how do we design services that address those needs as effectively as possible so we can really make improvements in people's lives.

Chris Berg  (00:05):

My name's Chris Berg. I am a senior research fellow with the RMIT, Blockchain Innovation Hub. I see blockchain as a seismic shift in the way markets, companies and governments operate.

                If it is as significant as our research suggests, then it is going to fundamentally reshape society. This is a technology that requires high level research to be adopted. And that's what we're trying to provide that the RMIT, Blockchain Innovation Hub. It's the world's first social science research center into blockchain technology. I'm an economist and historian. So I'm interested in the uses of blockchain for industrial transformation, not how do blockchains work particularly, but what happens once we have this strange new technology and we put it into society.

                The technology is just 10 years old now, but it's already being used for FinTech for interbank payments, all these sorts of really key economic processes in our society. Some of the most exciting blockchain applications we see right now are for the use of managing supply chains. So goods as they travel between companies and across borders have information about their provenance, whether they're organic or free trade or Halal or kosher, or what have you.

                But right now we manage that information very poorly. And that's why there's a great deal of food fraud. There are food security problems and all that sort of thing. We see blockchain as filling a really important gap in securely storing information about those goods. Just providing that information will be an enormous boost to competition around quality and provenance. What I really like in this space is our ability to see into the future of the global economy. We're trying to prepare Australia for the radical new changes that are coming down the track. I'm really excited by the possibilities that this technology and our research has for helping shape that future.

Gillian Vesty (00:05):

I'm Gillian Vesty, I'm an associate professor and I love researching serious games. Well, we all know that gaming has come a long way and it's part of our culture. We just love games. And I think gamification is fun and can be part of learning.

                So what do games have to do with accounting? In order to answer that question, I actually need to tell you a little bit about my past. I began my career as a nurse at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. When I was working in the hospitals, working in nursing and management and so I realized I needed to understand numbers and making sure that accounting has a social context. And I thought a really good way of actually doing this and connecting the two worlds together was through gamification and serious games.

                Currently, the project that I'm working on is building real world dilemmas, so we're using them to tackle issues around fraud, around healthcare expenditure, around climate change. So industry are really keen to support and to work with us in our serious games design because they see it as a safe way to engage in some really challenging topics.

                Our most current game is Bogart.

Speaker 2 (01:26):

I'm very concerned that you are not [crosstalk 00:01:29]

Gillian Vesty (01:28):

This is a serious game teaching practitioners about the new restructured code of ethics. Lucro Island is the serious game for budgeting to teach students about budgeting and managing a hotel that can destroy a business, that can kill a patient, but they can do it all safely within the serious game.

                So gamification is really part of our future to actually build models, to take on the wicked challenges in the world and actually make a difference.

Anne Kallies (00:04):

My name is Anne Kallies. I'm a senior lecturer at RMIT's Graduate School of Business and Law. My background is in environmental law, but I realized that working in energy law and in energy systems can have a huge, potentially global impact for the environment. We have already today the technology to go 100% renewable here in Australia, but the law is throwing up barriers that need to be addressed, and this is where I see my role. The legal framework is set up for a large coal plant connected by a big power line to a large city. It is really not set up for smaller scale, renewable energy. So, legal reform should be about opening up spaces for these types of technologies to happen.

                Energy transition is really an interdisciplinary undertaking. So, it needs the technologies, engineers and economists. On the other hand, if you are involved from the beginning in all of this engagement. It needs the community along, and then it needs the legal and regulatory frameworks to change.

Speaker 2 (01:17):

At each end, identify the installation.

Anne Kallies (01:20):

So I see myself playing part in this interdisciplinary effort to move to a better, cleaner energy system of the future. My current industry project is with a consortium of partners, it's using this idea of micro grids, being in an apartment block or a shopping strip, to let them share green energy produced on their roof. The legal system don't really recognize this idea of energy communities.

Speaker 3 (01:50):

[inaudible 00:01:50]

Anne Kallies (01:51):

We want to extend this type off offer to groups of people sharing a building. So it's very exciting to be part of this. I want my children's world to be still livable in 50 years, and I hope that my research can be a part of this effort.

Supriya Singh (00:05):

My name is Supriya Singh, and I'm a professor of the sociology of communications. And I work at the Graduate School Of Business and Law at RMIT. My research, for the most part, has been on money and on communication. So, it's really how money can be a medium of empowering somebody. And money can also be a medium of care, but it can also be a medium of abuse.

                And right now, I'm studying financial abuse across cultures. But I think the wider question now is how money connects with empowering women. Studying the way women always eat last, are educated less in the world. They own less, they earn less. That's something that I want to have an effect on, to make sure that women are more empowered than they have been.

                When I was studying globalization and money from a global South perspective, it came as a surprise that half the world was unbanked and women were more unbanked than men. The big developments were happening in Sub-Saharan Africa when M-Pesa came in, which allowed any person to transfer money by your mobile phone to another mobile phone, without a bank in the middle.

                And it has made a big difference to men and women, but particularly to women, because they can receive small amounts of money. They can save small amounts of money. And now, they can borrow money. What did result from the research was talk about money. Have conversation and let her know.

                When you talk about money, it brings together the way you think of yourself, the way you think of caring, the way you think of power. I think if my research makes people very conscious of how money is intertwined into all their relationships, I would be delighted.

Simon Feeny (00:08):

My name's Simon Feeny. I'm a development economist at RMIT University.

                Traveling overseas from a very early age, really opened up my eyes to the different ways that people live in other countries. It really helped inspire my research agenda from the allocation and effectiveness of foreign aid to the measurement of poverty and human wellbeing. I look at the impacts of economic shocks, natural disasters and climate change, as well as the impacts of child sponsorship and child labor in developing countries across the world.

                I guess one of my greatest research achievements is being able to work with so many different organizations, international NGOs, UN agencies and government departments. So having the ability or the opportunity to be able to influence these organizations and their policies is absolutely fantastic.

                I expect a lot of my future research projects are going to be very closely related to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and basically raising living standards for everyone across the world.

                So I guess I'm most passionate about research that is able to have an influence, driving solutions to real world problems.

Prem Chhetri (00:07):

My name is Prem Chhetri. I'm the professor of Logistics and Geographic System. My research is about spatial mobility and the way we can model movement of goods across space and time.

                Goods are moved in certain ways, in certain direction, and they can be predicted. I develop complex statistical and spatial models to help businesses to improve their productivity and profitability, allowing the areas of production and areas of consumption to be linked in a more efficient and optimal way.

                A recent project which I have conducted was funded through Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency. It looks into the likely impact of extreme weather events on port operations. We developed a computer simulation whereby we can simulate the likely impact of extreme weather events.

                The ability to translate an idea into a tangible product which can be used by the community is critical to my work. A lot of my work dealt with disaster planning, for example, and this work is critical in terms of saving life. I developed a evacuation model whereby we developed system through which people can be evacuated quite effectively and efficiently in the minimum time.

                I am passionate about creating new ideas and these ideas, helping students to explore new territory, new frontier of knowledge creation. We prepared our students to confirm those challenges in advance, ability to innovate so they are work-ready.

Lisa Farrell (00:05):

I'm Professor Lisa Farrell, and I'm a professor of economics at RMIT University here in Australia. My research predominantly is around the consumption of whiskey products. By whiskey products, I mean, those that potentially have some health risk associated with them, in particular addictive products like consumption of tobacco, alcohol, and gambling.

                So from an economics perspective and a societal perspective, we're interested in this because the consumption of these products has a lot of negative externalities. There's harms associated with them. We can see unemployment, large debts, homelessness. We can see divorce and family dissolution. So the real innovation in my work takes a behavioral economic slant and approach to understanding this.

                Because the first step in behavioral change is behavioral awareness. So there's some really important contemporary issues in this space. For instance, the increase in internet gambling, the change in who gambles. Internet gambling means there's a younger generation of people gambling. We haven't really understood that very well. The change in alcohol consumption that we have. Binge drinking amongst our young females is becoming a huge social issue and we don't understand that very well.

                So I'm passionate about this, because I think it's very important that we build safe communities. And so we want to be able to better understand how we can limit the harms associated with excessive consumption.

                So one of the really exciting things is to see students take those ideas themselves. So our students are creating apps that allow them to monitor their behaviors, maybe about their drinking consumption. So it's really exciting to see students take on some of these ideas and actually turn their learning into something practical.

                So I think really the focus here is to understand behaviors because when we understand behaviors, we can design effective policy. Evidence-based policy is effective policy, and that's really what we're trying to do. Use the data that's out there to get a much better understanding of behaviors, to be able to design policies that are going to be effective and to be able to build safe communities.

Anthony Forsyth (00:06):

I'm Anthony Forsyth, a Professor of Workplace Law at RMIT University. And I also work in the corporate world as a consultant at the commercial firm, Corrs Chambers Westgarth.

                Working in a law firm as a consultant keeps me grounded in the live legal issues that are happening in workplace law every day. I'm able to bring that into my teaching, so students get real life examples drawn from my work at Corrs. And also, there's a really good overlap between the research I do and the practical work I do with Corrs in terms of the issues that come up in both of those contexts.

                Well, the passion was ignited growing up in this working class family, where there was a strong emphasis on fair treatment in the workplace. All of that relates to today, because union decline is a problem. Unions are not as visible in the workforce anymore. So what do we have in terms of some buffer against the power of capital? What we're now seeing in the modern economy is employers are in many ways reinventing themselves through franchising, through labor hire, through independent contracting, and more recently through apps and platforms as a new way of engaging workers. So governments and policy makers and unions have had to be nimble in ensuring that they're able to respond to those new challenges and retain that strong tradition that we've always enjoyed.

                The influence on government policy has been really satisfying. I recommended that there should be licensing of labor hire providers in Victoria. The Victorian government has now brought legislation before parliament that hopefully will be enacted this year, that will bring in protections for people employed in that part of the workforce. So this was a really great opportunity for me to demonstrate the relevance of academic research and inquiry that will actually make a difference for many people. It's a very satisfying outcome.

                So I teach law students, but I also act as a mentor to my students. So I have a lot of students coming to me in my labor law class who ask me about what the opportunities are. And I'm always happy to give that advice. The main thing I ask them to do is to keep an open mind. You can have a fixed idea from very early on, but I guess what my career shows is that you can try a lot of different things and still find the thing that works for you at the end of the day. For me, that's a combination of the best of both worlds, which is academia and working in a commercial firm.