Inspired by George Paxinos, Matt is passionate about links between Australia and Greece.
Scientia Associate Professor Matthew Baker in the School of Biotechnology & Biomolecular Sciences (BABS) jokes that he can literally put his work – with bacteria – on ice and go home at the end of the day. He finds it “handy for time management”.
Matt recalls becoming interested in molecular motors as an undergraduate chemistry student at ANU, and he started working with bacteria while doing his PhD in biophysics at Oxford, where he was a John Monash Scholar.
He now leads a team of 10 in BABS, most of whom work on how bacteria “swim” and a few who work on in vitro synthetic biology, which he also teaches.
“We simplify life and see how we can create complexity one component at a time. Cell-to-cell communication is what makes multicellular life work, so we are trying to build different synthetics that can communicate across membranes,” he says.
From January to June this year Matt spent his sabbatical in Greece, at the University of Athens (EKPA) and the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology (IMBB) in Crete. His wife – Associate Professor Eleni Giannoulatou at Victor Chang Cardiac Research institute – is Greek and his children are Greek citizens, and he says he has always wanted to try living there.
“I’m inspired by George Paxinos who is a UNSW professor and at NeuRa. He’s the only person who’s a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and the Academy of Athens and I really admire the impact he has been able to have in both countries.
“I’m passionate about long-term links between Greece and Australia – there’s synergy in terms of long histories and skills. There’s a big Greek diaspora in Australia and both countries share the trauma of bushfires as well as that area of research.”
Science communicator and broadcaster
While in the UK, Matt participated in FameLab, the British Council’s live science communication competition, and was also a DJ, playing mostly Jamaican dancehall music.
“I recklessly performed a poem in the FameLab final, which was popular although I didn't win the £10,000 prize. But then my profile blew up and I had more opportunities to perform raps and poems about science. I went in a lot of festivals in the UK, particularly the Green Man Festival in Wales, which was a lot of fun. They have a stage powered by solar and I did improvised rap where the audience would shout out topics to ‘Dr Baker’.”
“Then I came to Australia which is a different ecosystem with not as many opportunities in live performance and science communication. And I was finding the late-night DJing hard, so I started doing more family-friendly daytime community radio.”
Matt says he first realised there was a radio audience for science when, in 2015, he was named a Top 5 Under 40 Scientist in Residence at the ABC – a joint ABC RN and UNSW Sydney initiative to discover Australia's next generation of science communicators and give them a voice. After that he became a regular on ABC’s Nightlife and Radio New Zealand.
A budding fencer at 10
Having lived in New Zealand until he was 10, Matt now belongs to the New Zealand fencing team.
“I tried to start fencing when I was eight years old in Dunedin, in New Zealand. They’d never had a kid wanting to do it and they didn't even have any gear, so they told me to come back when I was 11.
“When we moved to Australia, I eventually found a group of kids fencing on a Saturday morning. I started winning stuff and was a Junior National Champion. I went overseas to Hungary to train ahead of representing Australia at the Junior World Championship in Antalya, Turkey.”
Matt continues to fence. While he stopped fencing for Australia in 2016 when he became a father, he decided he wanted to return to fencing internationally in 2017 and joined the New Zealand team, where early this year he was ranked number one. Last year he did a full circuit of World Cups and this week will compete at the National Club Team Championships, fencing alongside students from UNSW.
Can you tell us about some something about you that might surprise your colleagues?
I was DJing in the UK and was really into Jamaican dancehall music and made a documentary in Jamaica.
What's the best advice you ever received?
Obviously, not everyone is the same, so from a group leader perspective you shouldn't manage everyone as if they're the same.
What's one thing that makes you happy?
Riding my bike to work.
What day in your life would you like to relive?
I lost at the 2018 Commonwealth Championships [fencing] and I really shouldn’t have, but the same day I received my first grant – an ARC Discovery Project grant. It was like fencing and science came together.
What's the best thing you have heard in the last year?
There’s some Mexican music that’s like classic big brass and also gangster rap, and a song by Ian Cordova that I really like called ‘El del la letra B’.
Listen to Matt on The Scholars Podcast on General Sir John Monash Foundation’s LinkedIn.
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