The Australian Academy of Science is saddened to learn of the passing of its former President and former Chief Scientist of Australia, Dr Jim Peacock AC FAA FTSE FRS, at the age of 87.

Academy President, Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC, said Dr Peacock will be deeply missed and remembered as a champion of Australian science.

“Jim was dedicated to Australian science and the Academy right to the end, making a significant effort to attend our annual Science at the Shine Dome event just six weeks ago.

“Jim made outstanding contributions to Australian science, agriculture and science education over many years,” Professor Jagadish said.

Initially intending to become a biology or science teacher, Dr Peacock was inspired to pursue a career in research after doing his honours in the field of cytogenetics, studying snowgrass from Kosciuszko National Park.

In an interview about his life and career with his friend and Academy colleague Dr Liz Dennis AC recorded in 2008, Dr Peacock said one of his favourite things to do while studying plants for his PhD was camping out in the Australian bush.

Dr Peacock went on to become a molecular biologist and geneticist, rising through the ranks to become Chief of the Division of Plant Industry at CSIRO from 1977 to 2003 and Australia’s Chief Scientist between 2006 and 2008.

Dr Peacock was responsible for the development of insect-resistant cotton in Australia, removing the dependence on agrichemicals.

His achievements in plant science include the development of a low-GI, high-fibre variety of barley valuable to human health. He also founded several agribusiness companies including the Gene Shears Company.

Dr Peacock was elected a Fellow of the Academy in 1976 then served as the Academy’s 15th President from 2002 to 2006.

He said his biggest contribution while Academy President was to champion better science in schools.

“In particular, I was able to initiate Primary Connections, which now is used in primary schools right across Australia.

“That was really exciting and I believe it has changed the face of primary school science,” Dr Peacock said.

One of Dr Peacock’s other major accomplishments as President was to transform the Academy’s approach to providing science policy advice to Government.

“We’ve got to help toward making the right policies... I did change that approach, and it worked pretty well,” he said.

Dr Peacock also established the CSIRO Discovery Centre in Canberra, providing many thousands of children and family members with a hands-on science experience illustrating the importance of science in our lives.

He was also awarded the 2013 ACT Senior Australian of the Year.

The Academy offers its condolences to Dr Peacock's family and friends.

In 2025, the Australian Academy of Science sharpened its future focus.

With a 70-year record of transforming science excellence into national impact, the Academy strived to boldly shape Australian science, research and innovation for decades to come.

“In an increasingly complex and contested world, ensuring that science continues to serve all Australians is critical,” said Academy President Professor Chennupati Jagadish AC.

Shaping Australia’s science future

In a groundbreaking report, the Academy cast an analytical eye forward to 2035: does Australia have the scientific capability to meet growing challenges, ten years from now?

Australian science, Australia’s future: Science 2035 mapped the scientific landscape, workforce and future needs, and identified eight areas with critical gaps.

“Simply put, our sovereign capacity to innovate and respond to emerging challenges… is undermined,” said Professor Ian Chubb AC, Academy Fellow and chair of the report’s advisory panel.

“For the first time, we have a map of what needs to be done, backed by evidence, and no excuse to do nothing because now we know.”

Launched at a national symposium as part of the Academy’s annual event Science at the Shine Dome, the report underscored the Academy’s ongoing calls to address underinvestment in R&D – a vital step to boost productivity and secure a safe, prosperous and sustainable future for all Australians.

This essential work complemented the Government’s Strategic Examination of Research and Development – a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reset, realign and repair the country’s ailing R&D system.

As the examination progressed, the Academy expressed concerns that declining investment in fundamental research was being ignored.

“Fundamental research is the wellspring of innovation. There is no ‘D’ without ‘R’,” Professor Jagadish said.

To reverse this funding decline and create a globally competitive R&D system, the Academy has proposed an R&D levy that is budget-positive, incentivises R&D, and creates a revenue stream to support fundamental research.

In a landmark speech, delivered as the Ralph Slatyer Address on Science and Society at the National Press Club in November, Professor Jagadish unpacked these issues in-depth and outlined the national strategic imperative for a robust science system as well as the essential recommendations the Strategic Examination must address.

This year the Academy also called for bringing Australia’s supercomputers up to speed, as the country’s ageing infrastructure can no longer meet the needs of science, defence, industry and society.

The next 10 years of Australian astronomy were charted in a new decadal plan led by the Academy’s National Committee for Astronomy, outlining the big questions astronomers are seeking to answer – from the mystery of dark matter to whether we’re alone in the universe – and what the sector needs to explore these frontiers.

The Academy’s education team released new Science Connections and reSolve resources for secondary science and maths teachers. The resources bring the work and data of Academy Fellows and other Australian researchers directly into the classroom, inspiring a generation of future scientists to explore, discover and lead.

Navigating a turbulent geopolitical world

The rapidly changing geopolitical environment continued to present challenges for science in 2025, with the Academy advocating for Australia’s strategic R&D capability in response to abrupt policy shifts from one of our most important research collaborators, the US.

The Academy also established and continues to lead the country's efforts to attract top US researchers and technologists via Australia’s Global Talent Attraction Program.

Efforts to deepen and expand Australia’s research collaborations with Europe progressed, with a forum at the Shine Dome in July exploring the strategic benefits of association with Horizon Europe, the world’s biggest research and innovation funding program. The Academy welcomed the start of exploratory talks between Australia and the European Commission on a possible connection.

Closer to home, the Pacific Academy of Sciences celebrated its one-year anniversary with the election of 13 eminent scholars as Fellows. The Australian Academy of Science was proud to play a role in this Learned Academy taking flight.

International connections were deepened through the ongoing Tri-Academy Partnership. In November, the Academy led an Australian delegation to Aotearoa New Zealand for a summit focused on shaping Indigenous-led international research agendas and transforming academia for Indigenous knowledge holders.

AI, air quality feature as hot topics

Alongside Burnet Institute and international partners, the Academy co-led global efforts at the United Nations to declare healthy indoor air a human right.

More than 300 leaders gathered at a high-level event on the sidelines of the 80th UN General Assembly in New York in September, while more than 150 organisations signed a global pledge – the first international effort to formally recognise clean air as essential to health and wellbeing.

An Academy report, Indoor air: the science of indoor air and pathways to improve indoor air quality in Australia, launched in November, saw the Shine Dome lit in blue and green to highlight the importance of indoor air quality for public health.

Artificial intelligence was also a trending topic in 2025, with more than 1,400 people attending the Academy’s public speaker series, ‘AI in science: the promise, perils and path forward’. Expert speakers traversed the intersections of AI with health, food and even tackling scam phone calls across six fascinating sessions. The final event of the year is set to coincide with the publication of discussion papers exploring the role of AI in the science.

The Academy made 23 submissions to government on topics from food security to algal blooms.

Science celebrated in style

Science excellence took centre stage at the Academy’s premier event, Science at the Shine Dome 2025, where new Fellows and honorific award winners were celebrated.

Twenty-six of Australia’s best and brightest were elected to the Fellowship, with expertise spanning crop genomics to theoretical cosmology.

“Each Fellow has made remarkable contributions in their field, demonstrating the vital role that science plays in addressing our most pressing challenges and expanding human knowledge,” said Professor Jagadish.

In 2025, Fellows earned prestigious accolades for their outstanding work. Professor Richard Robson FAA FRS was one of three scientists awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing metal–organic frameworks with vast applications. Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska received the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science for her trailblazing advancement of our understanding of indoor air quality.

Twenty-two leading minds and emerging stars received honorific awards, recognising outstanding achievements spanning diverse impact areas such as antibiotic resistance, climate change and photonics.

Scientific excellence was further elevated through award grants – from a trailblazing course on genomics research with Indigenous Australians to supporting early- and mid-career researchers to undertake research with collaborators in Europe.

The Academy continued to advance its reconciliation journey, with a special event during NAIDOC week bringing four inspiring young Indigenous researchers and community advocates to the Shine Dome for an evening of conversation and connection.

Get your science fix over summer

Dive into the Fellows’ fascinating recommended reads and listens for summer entertainment that will spark your curiosity. 

The methodology was developed by the Australian Academy of Science and combined foresight techniques, qualitative research methods, and data forecasting to create a comprehensive evidence base for Australia’s scientific capability.

Head of Science Policy and Advice at the Australian Academy of Science, Dr Hayley Teasdale, said “Consultations with Learned Academies, Royal Societies and colleagues worldwide revealed this approach had not been taken before.

“This report seeks to raise the bar for the types of evidence that policymakers can seek to inform their decision-making,” Dr Teasdale said.

“We have made the method entirely transparent, and repeatable, in the hope it can be replicated in other sectors,” she said.

The Academy brought together Learned Academy Fellows, National Committees for Science members, and other leading experts across three challenge areas.

It also consulted outside the science sector with those on the demand side of science.

Expert workshops identified eight science capabilities growing most in demand: agricultural science, artificial intelligence, climate science, biotechnology, data science, epidemiology, geoscience, and materials science.

Innovative workforce forecasting

A breakthrough moment came during one of the workshops when Professor Rob Hyndman FAA FASSA suggested forecasting what the scientific workforce would look like in 2035, rather than relying solely on historical data.

Professor Hyndman developed a formula incorporating five key inputs: working population by discipline, graduates by discipline and age, mortality data, retirement intentions, and estimated net migration.

This approach generated 500 simulations of future population scenarios for each scientific discipline in Australia, revealing concerning trends about workforce sustainability.

Comprehensive data integration

The method’s strength lies in its comprehensive data collection and cross-validation approach.

The Academy’s policy team assembled information from education systems spanning primary school through university, workforce employment patterns, research publications and collaborations and funding expenditure across all sectors.

Expert workshops brought together Academy Fellows, National Committee members, and leading external experts to validate findings and identify knowledge gaps that quantitative data alone could not fill.

Academy Fellows also engaged with Indigenous scientists in a series of yarns to gather a range of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives on the future of science which also helped inform the report.

“We did what the Academy does best: convene expertise and produce evidence to inform decision making,” Dr Teasdale said.

Rating system for policy action

The report includes an accessible and intuitive colour rating system.

Green indicates no capability gap is expected by 2035, orange suggests some existing gaps with likely future shortfalls, and red signifies existing gaps with certain future problems if the causes aren’t addressed.

Then there is the fourth category – the grey question mark. For Dr Teasdale, “this is the most interesting one. It means that we have insufficient data or codes to define this capability, which makes it more difficult to measure.”

Rating scale for the graphic above:

• Green thumb: No trends decreasing. No gap or unlikely to have a gap in capability.
• Amber thumb: Some trends decreasing or no majority of increasing trends. Some gap or likely gap in capability.
• Red thumb: Most trends decreasing. Existing gap or certain gap in capability.
• Question mark: Insufficient data available.

This report provides critical, evidence-based, in-depth analyses that will inform science and policy leaders tasked with shaping the Australian science, education and immigration landscapes. In addition, it can act as a guide for philanthropists looking to make nation-building investment decisions.

Implications for national policy

The report and the novel methodology developed to produce it represents more than an academic exercise.

By providing systematic evidence about future science capability needs, we offer policymakers a tool to make informed decisions about education and industry investment, immigration policy, and research funding priorities.

Dr Teasdale said this type of analysis can only happen somewhere like the Australian Academy of Science.

“This was made possible by the unique combination of expertise in our fellowship and our secretariat, in research methods, science policy, convening science advice, communicating science, and of course, the deep expertise in science itself.”

As countries worldwide grapple with similar questions about maintaining scientific competitiveness and capability, this transparent and repeatable methodology is a valuable template for developing evidence-based science policy.

The full method can be found in Appendix A (pg. 76) Australian Science, Australia’s Future: Science 2035 – full report

The Academy’s report projects capability gaps in eight key science areas that will be most in demand by 2035: agricultural science, AI, biotechnology, climate science, data science, epidemiology, geoscience, and materials science.

The analysis found:

• We aren't training enough geoscientists, yet our economy rests heavily on resources, and critical minerals is a priority of the National Reconstruction Fund under ‘value-add in resources’.
• Jobs in artificial intelligence (AI) are expected to surge, yet only one in four Year 12 students is studying mathematics – the fundamental science discipline underpinning AI.
• We’re facing national shortages of materials scientists, and the workforce in process and resources engineering is also projected to decline.
• The current pipeline and study choices of students is not aligned with the needs of our future workforce, with declining STEM participation and teacher shortages a looming threat.

Rating scale for the graphic above:

• Green thumb: No trends decreasing. No gap or unlikely to have a gap in capability.
• Amber thumb: Some trends decreasing or no majority of increasing trends. Some gap or likely gap in capability.
• Red thumb: Most trends decreasing. Existing gap or certain gap in capability.
• Question mark: Insufficient data available.

This report provides critical, evidence-based, in-depth analyses that will inform science and policy leaders tasked with shaping the Australian science, education and immigration landscapes. In addition, it can act as a guide for philanthropists looking to make nation-building investment decisions.

See a detailed text description of this graphic, that aims to improve accessibility of the graphic for a broad audience.

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