AMANDA BARNARD

'The job I’m doing now didn’t exist when I graduated.'

When Dr Amanda Barnard studied physics at RMIT she was the only woman in her graduating class. Throughout her career she has found her gender to be both a barrier and a benefit. She looks forward to a time when it won’t matter and all scientists will be judged equally on the merit of their work.

Amanda is a science leader and one of Australia's most highly awarded computational scientists.  She currently leads research developing computational modeling, high performance supercomputing and applied machine learning and artificial intelligence.   Amanda is currently the Senior Professor of Computational Science at the School of Computing at Australian National University.  She has also worked as the Chief Research Scientist at Data61, the digital and data arm of CSIRO.

Amanda was featured in a Her Place STEM exhibition in recent years. This year Amanda was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2022 Australia Day Honours for "significant service to computational science, to medical research, and to education".