Conversation: Dr Catherine Foley - research scientist, mother and volunteer - Going out there 'and making a difference'

Sydney
16 February 2003

'Cash for babies' instead of abortion

People 'outraged' at war talk

Tough nights for priest after crash

Abraham seen as symbol of hope and a bond of unity

Cardinal in Church 'top 10'

Catholic social justice, welfare groups issue NSW election kit

Chinese New Year revels will aid bushfire victims

New role in archdiocese

Charity, sacrifice essential to Christian life, says Pope in Lenten Message

Catholic Club helps fund suburban play area for littlies

World Day of the Sick - 'Defend life', Pope urges health workers

Care of elderly needs overhaul

Editorial: 'Just war' debate

Letters: Sir Alan Walker

Conversation: Dr Catherine Foley - research scientist, mother and volunteer - Going out there 'and making a difference'

... in the footsteps of Abraham

Archive on Nazis won't hurt Pius XII

War against Saddam may be 'just war'

'Powerful celebration' of the Church

Cardinals' coats (of arms) of many colours

Conversation: Dr Catherine Foley - research scientist, mother and volunteer - Going out there 'and making a difference'

By Marilyn Rodrigues

"I thought you had to be Einstein's cousin to be a scientist, and I guess I've never seen myself as being really bright," she says.

"I'm good at work and I'm good at seeing the relationships between things, but I wasn't the person who came first all the way through high school; I can assure you of that."

Dr Catherine Foley is discussing the people and influences that guided her into her career as senior principal research scientist with the CSIRO.

At age 18, she had wanted to devote her life to helping people in some way.

She was inspired by the example of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, so she wrote to the Sisters of Charity working with Bourke's indigenous community then went to Bourke for three months after her HSC.

"It was actually a wonderful experience," she recalls, "but it was hideously hot and I never drank enough water; I kept fainting all the time.

"I realised that my impact on that group was zero; they had a bigger impact on me.

"And that's where I also realised that the world is divided into two sorts of people - those who help the individuals and those that are interested in changing the system.

"And I realised I was a change-the-system person.

"Mission is not necessarily going out there and tending the wounds, although there is a role for that and it's needed; it can be going out there and making a difference in a bigger way."

Now 45, Catherine has found her role as mother, scientist, volunteer and communicator.

She received a Public Service Medal in this year's Australia Day honours for her research in physics, promotion of science through a weekly ABC radio show, TV and speaking engagements and for being a role model for women in science.

But she always believed - first as a student at St Anthony's primary school, Marsfield, and then at Santa Sabina College, Strathfield - that she wouldbe a high school science teacher.

She even chose Thomas Aquinas as her confirmation name because she read that he was a wonderful teacher.

Catherine studied physics, chemistry and maths for her HSC, as did her older brother, Bernard, who had nurtured her interest in science as a younger girl.

She was attracted by science research but thought it was completely out of her grasp.

Santa Sabina's head of science, Sr Rosemary Kinney, was particularly encouraging, and Catherine enjoyed entering science competitions, which brought her small prizes.

She won a Department of Education scholarship at Macquarie University where she studied her undergraduate science degree, followed by a diploma of education and an honours year.

By that time she had decided to try for the higher goal of research after all.

"Heather Adamson, my first year biology lecturer, was the one who made me realise that maybe I could be good enough to get first class honours and get scholarships to go on to do graduate work," she says.

"To me that was a bit of a shock and I thought well maybe I can, I'll give it a try. And when I did my honours year I worked really hard."

She won the necessary scholarship to do graduate work and followed that with a PhD.

Securing a job at the CSIRO soon afterwards was "a dream come true", she says.

Since then, she has had the opportunity to fulfil her earlier ambition to work with young people, as an ambassador for science to girls and young women.

Through the CSIRO's Women in Science program, which ran through the 80s and 90s, Catherine spoke to girls at hundreds of schools about keeping their options open by not automatically shunning the sciences.

"At that stage girls were doing very low level maths which immediately reduced the number of choices they had if they were going to university," she said.

"For most of them it was seeing life as having a job until they got married and had kids.

"Well, the world has changed so much now, it's almost frightening - like it's gone too far the other way.

"Now they're saying: 'I'm not going to get married, I'm not going to have children' and they have what I call the Legally Blonde idea that they can be beautiful and have this amazing career and everything else as well.

"In many ways I think that is a wonderful role model for girls in realising that they can still be feminine and achieve, but what I've tried to put across is that to some extent you've got to be aware of what's going on around you and you have to actually put in a little bit of hard work," she says.

"I've often talked about something that I learnt quite late - that the more effort you put into something, the more success you have and the more you enjoy it."

Catherine's other message to girls is to make the most of their gifts and try to use them for the benefit of the community.

"I've told them that not everybody can be a high flier, and to me that's terribly important, because I think that too often our society judges people by the level of their pay packet, or the car they drive, or the way they dress or where they live, and I think it's not a good society that does that.

"I think one of the signs of a good society is where you have strong volunteerism," she adds.

Catherine has volunteered for many committees and community initiatives apart from Women in Science. She is an assistant Scout leader, something that she became involved in through her three children, Julian, 13, Kathleen, 11, and Dylan, 9.

She is involved in the Women In Science Inquiry Network, which was established to increase women's participation in the sciences.

And she is a former national president of Scientists Against Nuclear Arms.

"Science is an incredibly powerful thing; it can be used well and it can be used badly," she says.

"We will always have our struggles, but, while animals fight against each other and have their pecking order and stuff, humans are able to rise above that and understand the psychology behind all that, and yet we often don't.

"One thing I really like about my involvement with Scientists Against Nuclear Arms is that I'm a scientist getting together with other like-minded people, saying: 'Hang on a minute, there is a different way'."

Catherine says science is an expression of humanity, just like art, opera or ballet.

She says her love of science stems from her lifelong fascination with nature - she is a keen bushwalker - which places her in a dilemma.

"The work that I am related to has actually contributed to telecommunications or to technology, which means the world is different, possibly better," she says.

"The thing that I struggle with is that this entails using up energy and resources.

"On one level it would be nice to have a simpler world, but, unfortunately, we have a lot more complicated world and also it's like a Pandora's box: Once it's open, you can't get the lid on again."

Catherine is now conducting a research project using superconductivity to make magnetic field sensors.

It can be applied to many areas, including medicine, mineral exploration, metal detection in food, spacecraft testing and defence.

Among the women Catherine draws inspiration from are Diana Temple, retired associate professor of pharmacology from Sydney University, and her older sister, Mary Foley, who is head of St Vincent's Hospital at Darlinghurst.

Their mother Moira, who died at 37 from a cerebral haemorrhage when Catherine was nine, was "a huge influence because she was also a manic person getting involved in far too may things", Catherine says.

Moira was an architect who worked on many Catholic churches and schools and other buildings, including St Catherine's Villa, St Anthony's primary school and Curzon Hall when it was a seminary, all in Marsfield.

"She was an amazing woman," says Dr Foley.

Catherine, the fourth of seven children, says that all of her family, including her aunt, Ursuline Sr Pat Kennedy, are "terribly important to me, and have had a big influence on the way I do things".