“You need business skills, business prowess and an entrepreneurial spirit,” is how Linda Kristjanson, Professor of Palliative Care at Edith Cowan University, describes the challenge facing academics today.
“You need business skills, business prowess and an entrepreneurial spirit,” is how Linda Kristjanson, Professor of Palliative Care at Edith Cowan University, describes the challenge facing academics today.
Her working life is a far cry from the traditional image of tenured academics.
Instead of sitting back and enjoying a guaranteed salary, she has obtained $6 million through competitive grants and industry backing to sustain her activities over the past seven years.
“Whereas some academics get their salary from the university, I bring in my own salary, and I do that with most of my people,” Professor Kristjanson said.
“The expectation is that you bring in money and that’s why it’s such a competitive area.”
And she clearly thrives on the competition for funding.
“There are some good things about that because it means it is performance based,” Professor Kristjanson told WA Business News.
"If you are not meeting standards for peer reviewed scientific journals and competitive funding, then the grants shouldn’t be coming your way.
“It’s not something you ever get comfortable with.
“You are running a department that is a medium-sized business and every year you start at zero and you build your grants and get going again.
“It’s a stressful way to live; you have to love the game, you have to love the chase.
“You also have to know there is a passion about the work, so that the staff I hire know they are on soft money, that there is no guarantee.”
This approach helps to explain how Professor Kristjanson became the first woman from the not-for-profit sector to be named Telstra’s Australian businesswoman of the year a couple of years ago.
Professor Kristjanson wears several different hats during her busy working week.
Her ‘academic’ hat is chair of Palliative Care, a position funded by the Cancer Council of WA.
She brings to this role a Ph.D. in clinical nursing, specialising in treatment for the terminally ill, which she describes as a pioneering field.
Professor Kristjanson is also associate dean of research in the faculty of computing, health and science.
“In that role, I take what I am doing in my own team and I help others build research centres, research skills, and research productivity and help them understand the collaborative model,” she told WA Business News.
“I think that is the secret to getting so far so quickly in the last seven years.
“The old scientific model where everyone sits in their own lab shooting for their own Nobel Prize is over.
“You have to work collaboratively, so you share funding, share resources and share ideas.”
Professor Kristjanson believes one area the scientific community under-performs is in its failure to apply business principles to its work.
“What I have had to do is help people not only understand the merits of collaborative research, but understand the right governance structure, the right business structure and the right business plan,” she said.
“I think that has been the weakness of science in most parts of the world.
“Scientists have not embraced business and governance principles.
“Everybody wants to sit on the board but I say ‘no, we need an independent corporate board’.”
Despite her commercial focus, Professor Kristjanson said government and the corporate sector should not lose sight of the importance of basic scientific research.
“More and more there is a move to applied research where you have a focused eye on immediate outcomes.
“That can be good for a little while but it can also lead to unimaginative work because you know what the outcome is going to be and it can also lead to you missing something fairly innovative.”
Professor Kristjanson’s passion for collaborative work is reflected in the activities of the WA Centre for Cancer and Palliative Care.
The centre, which obtains funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council and the National Institute of Health in the US, employs 40 people on 20 projects.
It employs people in fields as diverse as psychology, engineering, medicine, statistics and computer science.
“To me it’s the space between the disciplines that the most interesting research questions are found,” Professor Kristjanson said.
A small example of a good research outcome was the development of a touch screen computer for use in hospitals, she said.
It enables families to express their concerns and highlight issues they want medical staff to address.
“What we are trying to do is improve the quality of practice in a way that is sensitive to the needs of the families but is also efficient for the health system.”
Professor Kristjanson, who came to Australia in 1997 from Canada, said she was attracted to Edith Cowan University.
“I knew this was a new university keen to develop its research profile,” she said.
“That’s something I like to do, build research teams and research centres, so I was really unencumbered by a lot of tradition which helped, but also there is a can do spirit that attracted me.”
She said ECU’s research output, as measured by competitive grants won, publications and higher degrees, had gone up 26 per cent a year over the past decade.
The recently established Institute of Radiochemical Engineering is one vehicle for boosting research (see next article).
Professor Kristjanson’s next major focus is the proposed National Nursing Research Institute.
She is in the process of seeking participants from across Australia, and insists that universities team up with a major clinical partner.
ECU, for instance, has teamed up with Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.
Professor Kristjanson has already lined up accounting firm KPMG and law firm Mallesons to assist with establishing the institute.
She believes the community as a whole will need to confront some of the issues she is currently researching.
For instance, the ageing of the population means that increasing numbers of people will become home carers, typically with little or no training.
Very little research has been undertaken on the needs and attitudes of home carers, or the efficacy of their care.
She said employers would need to deal with this issue, because increasing numbers of staff would seek flexible working hours to care for parents or spouses at home.
The alternative – paid care – would cost the community about five times more than home care.
KRISTJANSON FILE
- Telstra Australian businesswoman of the year 2002.
- Cancer Council of WA chair of Palliative Care, Edith Cowan University.
- Associate Dean (research & higher degrees), Faculty of Computing, Health and Science, Edith Cowan University.
- Director, WA Centre for Cancer and Palliative Care.
- Director, Institute for Radiochemical Engineering.
Top support for institute project
Luminaries in Perth’s business and political community have pitched in to support one of Linda Kristjanson’s recent endeavours.
The Institute of Radiochemical Engineering is a collaboration between Perth’s four public universities and the Australian Nuclear Scientific and Technology Organisation.
It features a governance structure that is on par with leading Australian Stock Exchange-listed companies.
Sandover Pinder Architects chairman and chief executive Michael Henderson, who chairs the institute’s corporate board, was instrumental in its establishment and incorporation.
Other members of the institute’s board include former deputy premier Hendy Cowan, Royal Perth Hospital’s head of nuclear medicine, Dr Nat Lenzo, and Professor Kristjanson.
Law firm Mallesons Stephen Jaques and accounting firm Deloitte played key roles in the incorporation process.
“What was great was going out and meeting with them,” Professor Kristjanson said.
“We said we’ve got a great idea but we need your help, because we need an incorporated body because that’s how we get everybody to play together.
“Can you give us pro bono support?
“And they did, they were terrific; we probably got $100,000 of pro bono help.
“No one university could have done that by itself as quickly and as easily.”
Mallesons partner Nigel Hunt said: “We thought the project had significant potential and as such we were proud to be involved in an initiative at the leading edge of applied medical research technology”.
The institute aims to foster research in radiochemical engineering, boost training and generate commercial outcomes.
Its establishment was made possible by the State Government’s decision to spend $8.9 million on a PET scanner and cyclotron at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital, primarily for use in the early detection of cancer.
The facility can be used for research outside normal business hours and the isotopes it produces are a valuable research tool.
Each of the universities is able to obtain benefits in its areas of expertise, such as environmental science at ECU, geophysics at Curtin, veterinary science at Murdoch and medical and basic science research at UWA.
“There are excellent commercial opportunities, with Perth ideally positioned to provide isotopes to health centres and research laboratories in South-East Asia,” Professor Kristjanson said.
