Peter Steinberg

Professor of Biology, University of New South Wales 

Ceremony: 10 October 2016, 2.00pm

Speech

So today I’m going to speak about two intertwined themes – one global, and one personal. So the first really easy theme is the current state and future of the world, in four minutes or less. The second more personal theme is on the topic of your role, what you’ll do, in that future.

So for the first theme, I turned to a quote from a nineteenth century English writer named Charles Dickens. So 150 years ago, Dickens wrote a novel about the French Revolution called A Tale of Two Cities. And the opening lines of that book are fantastic and continue to resonate through the ages. Those lines are: ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom; it was the age of foolishness.’ So that was written 150 years ago, but I don’t know that there’s a better quote for the present time.

We live in an age of unprecedented prosperity, in which standards of living and education are higher than at any time in the past. We live in an age of astounding access to information, and physical access to just about anywhere on the planet. Many, if not most, of the graduates sitting here today have the real possibility of living to more than 100 years old. So parents, you might want to hang onto the sofa bed in the front room for a little while. But in so many ways, it’s an amazing time in which to live.

On the other hand, there are also very significant challenges. By 2050, there will be another 2.5 billion people on this planet. This brings with it a whole suite of issues, not least the fact that we are changing the climate at a rapid rate, with increasingly dramatic effect, as you’ve heard the Pro-Chancellor speak to. We acknowledge diversity and equality across peoples, more than we ever have, and I can say that truly, having been on the planet for some 60 years, but we also very clearly have more to do in that regard. So although the world continues to change, and indeed at a rate more rapidly than it ever has, this dichotomy paradox between the best of times and the worst of times seems likely to continue.

So what is your role in all this? So that’s my second, and I guess more personal, theme. One way of putting it is what do you want to be when you grow up, and will it make a difference? So the first part, what do you want to be when you grow up, is actually a bit of a trick question, because in fact, and forgive me parents, I hope you never grow up, at least if that means ceasing to change, ceasing to learn, ceasing to embrace challenges. So as you heard from the Provost, my major current job is to run the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, a multi-university institute across the harbour, which includes UTS as one of its founding partners. This position enables me to contribute in, I hope, a significant way, to the understanding and sustainability of threatened marine environments.

However, I’ve also spent time in the corporate world – I ran a public biotechnology company for a number of years, developing novel antibacterials. And I’ll tell you, in that world, and after a few meetings with the California investment community, you understand very well about the pointy end of capitalism. And it’s been really illuminating to work, if you will, on both sides of one of the central issues of our time. How do we maintain and grow prosperity, while at the same time trying not to further degrade our environment?

So life is surprising – I don’t know that I anticipated either of those central roles that I’ve had. But I’ve worked on three continents, in academia and the corporate world, as you’ve heard, and I ended up raising a family 15,000 kilometres from where I was born. I didn’t know 40 years ago that I could easily have predicted the way my life has turned out, with perhaps one exception. And that exception is the central role of science as a guiding theme in my life. And I in fact remember a specific day – in fact a specific afternoon, when for all intents and purposes I became a scientist. And it wasn’t some of the obvious things – it wasn’t when I got my PhD or published my first paper or became a professor.

In fact, it was in an invertebrate zoology lab in my third year at the University of Maryland in the United States. So that afternoon I spent four hours looking down a microscope and discovered that our world was full of aliens. They had multiple legs and bizarre body shapes and truly terrifying mouth parts. It was full of creatures that looked weirder than anything out of any science fiction story, and on that otherwise unremarkable day in Maryland, my path as a scientist I think was truly set. So that’s 35 or 40 years ago, and from that intervening 35 or 40 years, I have two suggestions to share to you from that experience: so the first ends directly from that invertebrate zoology lab – be passionate about what you do, and if your passion happens to turn to weird invertebrate worms and crustations and other small, wondrous creatures, don’t apologise for it. Go for it. Or if it’s red shifts in different galaxies or forensic science, go for it.

The second suggestion is to lead a thoughtful and informed life. So you’ve now, as graduates of an eminent institution, been trained to think in a rigorous way and to rigorously assess information. I talked earlier about a world that is now awash with information, and there is actually a standard joke about this, right? And I need a prop here. So we now have in our pockets devices that let us in seconds access thousands of years of accumulated human knowledge. And what do we do? Well, mostly we use those devices to watch cat videos and to argue with people that we don’t know. So use those devices and all the other tools at hand, for more than that. Continue to be informed, and combine that information with your training as scientists, or with your training in the other disciplines that are represented here today, not just professionally but in all aspects of your life.

So I’m biased, being a scientist, but it’s my view that science and its technological consequences have been the greatest single influence on human life in the past 200 years. That impact is a consequence of the accumulation of knowledge and of a structured and thoughtful approach to understanding the world. For those of you graduating today in science, that is a remarkable legacy that you have been handed. So I’m now about to verge into grumpy old man territory, but we live in a world where unsubstantiated opinions and the loudest voice carry too much sway. Information matters, training matters, expertise matters – the kinds of things that you’re now the proud owners of. I speak of these things as a scientist, but I’m sure that other colleagues here at UTS and elsewhere would have similar things to say about training in their own particular disciplines. So use that training. Be proud of the expertise that you now have, and the information that you’ve acquired, and lead a thoughtful and informed life – that’s how you change the future.

So in closing, I’ll return to Dickens and a vote of hope for you and your future. So my hope is that in 30 years, when one of you stands on this stage and makes this speech, that you can say ‘It was the best of times, it was the age of wisdom.’ Full stop. So go out, be passionate, be thoughtful, and make it that way. Thank you.

About the speaker​

Peter is a Professor of Biology at the University of New South Wales and the inaugural Director and CEO of the Sydney Institute for Marine Sciences. This venture is a collaborative research and training institute, bringing scientists together from state and federal marine and environmental agencies, plus four different member universities in New South Wales, including UTS.

Peter is also Co-director of the Centre for Marine Bio-Innovation at UNSW, an international focal point for interdisciplinary and applied research into chemically mediated interactions between organisms. Furthermore, he is Co-director of the Advanced Environmental Biotechnology Centre at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Peter is a distinguished researcher participating on the editorial boards of leading scientific journals. He is an inventor on 9 patents; and has over 100 international publications. His research interests include environmental change and coastal ecology, kelp and seaweed ecology, bacterial biofilm biology and ecology, biofouling and antifouling, and environmental biotechnology.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Zoology and a Doctor of Philosophy in Biology. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and a Queen Elizabeth II Fellow.