IF YOU are not sure whether you want to work in industry, academia, or a government lab, then Australia is a paradise. There you can do all three at once, by joining one of the country’s cooperative research centres.
They are a solution to a very Australian problem. Until the late 1980s, Australian researchers often worked in isolation. The vast distances between cities stymied interaction, both between fellow academics and between researchers and industry. The government’s chief scientist at the time, Ralph Slayter, was concerned that this was hindering the translation of state-funded research into successful new products.
So he…
