Dr Paul Scully-Power AM

Well, what a fabulous day. A fabulous day for the graduates. And to the family and friends, who are sitting throughout this vast auditorium, sitting for over an hour, I know you want to stretch your legs, so why don’t you all stand up and give a huge round of applause to our new graduates. Come on, don’t be shy.

 On your feet. You graduates, sit down. Family and friends. You may now be seated. Well, Madam Chancellor, you and I have known each other for a long time, so I want to see your indulgence. I want to mention specifically, by name, some of the vast galaxy of superb people you have put together at UTS. First of all, to the presiding Vice Chancellor, Professor Glenn Wightwick. I’ve known Glenn for many years too. He was once the head of research for IBM; that’s one singular accomplishment and he should be congratulated for that.

But some three years ago, when I came back from Washington DC, I formed a company with a well-known Australian entrepreneur, Kevin Walden, which is called Westpac Little Ripper Lifesaver, which is drones for the saving of life, especially on the beaches. You’ve probably all seen it. And it occurred to me at that time three years ago that even the best pilot in a helicopter looking at the ocean for either people in distress or sharks had at best – at best – a 30 per cent chance of success, and I thought there must be a better way. And it occurred to me that we should therefore put artificial intelligence on a drone.

So, I came along three years ago to Professor Glenn Wightwick, the DVC, and said, ‘This is my big idea.’ And he embraced it.  He then went to your Dean, Professor Ian Burnett, who also embraced it, and between the two of those they picked someone to lead the push on the side of UTS and that’s Associate Professor Michael Blumenstein. And why did they select him? Well, it turns out he had a history of research on beaches, remote sensing on beaches, and three years later I can honestly say he’s turned out to be the absolute epitome of a successful leading a successful university industry collaboration, and that is so important.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the real brains of this outfit, and that’s Senior Lecturer Dr Nabin Sharma. Nabin has been the heavy lifter. He’s an outstanding researcher and academic, and late last year he won the National Australia Award for the best artificial intelligence in this country. Let’s have a hand for Dr Nabin Sharma.

So, I’m sharing this lineage today with you all to show that with cooperation that universities and industry can work together for the betterment of this country and our nation and all mankind, and in doing so, improve all our lives. And that is the message that I want to give you today.

Now, to get to the more formal part. I’ve entitled my address It’s time to make universities great again, so don’t all cringe up the front. Don’t cringe. Because today, we are witnessing probably the biggest disruption of our lives, which is being driven by technology. And I’ve brought along a simple piece of paper. I’ll read from it, just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

Just 10 years ago – 10 years ago – the top five companies on the US Stock Exchange were, in order: Exxon, founded in 1870; General Electric, founded in 1892; Microsoft, founded in 1975; AT&T, founded in 1885; and Proctor & Gamble, founded in 1837. Now, 10 years later, the top five in order are: Apple, founded in 1976; Google, founded in 1998; Microsoft, founded in 1975; Amazon, founded in 1994; and Facebook, founded in 2004. What a change. That is what we are living with and through.

We all know it’s a digital society – laptops, smartphones and social media. But many people today are not aware that we’re actually witnessing a coming together for the very first time a number of new technologies that are not only going to disrupt our lives but they’re going to disrupt the jobs of the future. We’re witnessing the biggest change in human destiny since electricity was invented. And keep in mind that electricity has been the most pervasive and enduring strategic development that we’ve all experienced up to now.

So, you might well ask, what are these technologies? Let me be brief. First of all is what I call Space 2.0. Within five years from now, we will see tens of thousands of small satellites – by small, I mean the size of half a loaf of bread – tens of thousands of small satellites in low-earth orbit, all of which will have smart sensors, remote sensing, be able to communicate in terms of a mesh network using, I might add, laser communications, not wireless communications, and the only analogy I can give you is it was only a few short years ago that smartphones came into existence. We now have millions – in fact, billions – of them around the world. And how that has changed our lives – well, you’re about to see smartphones in space on steroids.

And if you think that’s in the future, it is not. Elon Musk, who most of you have at least heard of, already has approval – already has approval – to launch over 11,000 of these small satellites in orbit over the next 12 months. I’m talking about here and now.

The next big thing is robotics. You’ve all heard about it, but robotics is not only machines; it’s also drones. But wound up with robotics as the whole concept of big data, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, machine learning, cloud computing, drones, smart sensors, swarm intelligence. But keep in mind, especially at a university like UTS, that all comes down to algorithms. The jobs of the future really comes down to algorithms and that’s where the money is. If you look at Apple today, Apple today makes most of its money from apps, not from selling smartphones.

And after that, it’s nanotechnology. Nanotechnology, most of you are not aware of some of the recent discoveries in nanotechnology, but nanotechnology is a technology of things that are too small to see. We’re finding more and more that the physics of nanotechnology is totally different. It’s dramatically affecting already medicine, it’s affecting smart materials and it’s even affecting antenna designs from everything from antennas looking up into the great galaxies to antennas on the top of your house.

I give you one example; I’m part of a team that has used nanotechnology in materials, very fine-grain materials, to produce the only known filter in the world for water that will remove all known viruses. Why is that important? It’s important because 85 per cent of the disease in Africa is water-borne and we intend to change the face of Africa by using that nanotechnology.

The next is quantum computing. You’ve probably all heard about quantum computing, but no one – very few have put their heads around it. Quantum computing is just around the corner. It will provide 30 orders of magnitude more powerful computing. Now, one order of magnitude is 10, two orders of magnitude is 100 times, three orders of magnitude is 1000 times, but quantum computing will give you 30 orders of magnitude of computing power – totally change our concept of computing.

And not to mention politics – I won’t, but energy is a big issue. But seriously, solar arrays – we have today’s solar arrays that can be actually sprayed on. You don’t have to manufacture them; you can actually have sprayed-on solar arrays. I have some; they exist. It was invented by CSIRO; they exist. New battery technology is going to solve the problem of storing energy.

And then there’s photonics. Photonics simply is whatever you can do with an electron, like communications, whatever, electricity, you can do 1000 times better with photons and the photonic technology we’re now building, microchips which are totally photonic, again, that will change not only computing but it will change smart sensors and remote sensing.

And lastly, I want to mention 3D printing; you’ve probably heard about it. You can 3D print just about anything today. I’ll give you two examples: already a 3D printer has printed an entire house. Already. And when I talk about it’s a big house – five bedrooms. And the total cost was $70,000 US dollars. It’s going to change building; it’s going to change the way we live. And the other one is, which was just done very recently, is we’ve 3D printed an entire rocket. Think about that. We can 3D print an entire rocket that will fuel what I’m talking about with these thousands of nanosatellites in low-earth orbit. It really is going to change the way we live.

I’ll give you one very brief example: agriculture. Australia is an agriculture country. Within five years, a farmer will get up in the morning, sit down at the kitchen table for breakfast, look over the results of yesterday’s satellite passes, which will tell him or her everything he or she needs to know about the farm, what needs to be sprayed today, where there’s disease, where there’s not enough water etcetera. You can also go count the herd blah blah blah. You can actually go along and spray individual plants in a farm, thus conserving a lot of the spraying biologics.

And then he or she, having reviewed that, will tap on their smart watch and give instructions to either the robotic tractor or the robotic drones and today, on farms today in Australia, we’re already flying eight drones together without automatically – eight drones as a swarm in line, abreast, so we have that technology today and those robots, if you will, will do 95 per cent of the work on farms within five years.

But the point that most people have missed, I think, is that all these new technologies are coming together at the same time. We’ve never seen this in human history before, and that is why it’s going to dramatically change everything we do. So, how do we make universities great again? We’ve got to give more than good education. We have to prepare students for the jobs of the future and the new economy, especially the economy of information technology. And the real test will be whether the graduates of this university in the future will have good, well-paid and satisfying jobs.

You might well ask, how do we do this? I think it’s fairly simple. First of all, we have to define what technologies are going to be dominant in the years to come, and I think I’ve outlined that. There’s relatively few of them; we need to focus on them and get rid of all the rest. Even more importantly, we need to integrate technologies across the various departments. That is critical. Next thing is, we have to introduce what I call apprenticeships between university students and industry, because not only can they cross-feed, but that’s how they can get experience.

But beyond all that, we really have to focus on what I call the soft skills, which will become increasingly important in a connected world, and I call them the five Cs; A B C, five Cs: complex problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication, because most of the great ideas and big successes come from this cross-fertilisation with people from different backgrounds with different experiences can see things differently and propose new solutions.

So, this is really a call to arms for everyone in this audience, not only the graduating students, but staff and faculty from the other disciplines. And to the parents and influencers in this audience, that they need to embrace and prepare themselves for this technology revolution because it’s going to change your life.

So, where to from now? Madam Chancellor, indulge me one more time with my next big idea. And that is that UTS is already probably, depending on who you talk to, in my world absolutely, the top university in Australia for artificial intelligence. My big idea is that this university should form an institute, an institute for artificial intelligence. I’d like to call it the Australian Institute for Artificial Intelligence, because it could well build on what we’ve already done; it could grow to be preeminent, not only in this country but globally.

And I would think that that would be a fitting tribute, starting today, because I’m very mindful of the fact that, take my name out of it, but today it is history for this university to award the University of Technology Sydney, to award its very first doctorate of technology.

Thank you very much.