She’s a self-declared “technology evangelist” with an infectious passion for science who is on a mission to teach and develop tech that helps humanity.
So much so, UniSC’s Senior Lecturer in Computer Science Dr Erica Mealy’s insights are shared on media across Australia and internationally, and her drive to inspire the next generation of innovators and professionals has won her several teaching awards.
Dr Mealy’s career path to lecturer is proof that a technology degree can take you many interesting places – from coding to ensuring massive iron-ore freight trains run safely in the Pilbara region to analysing data to improve the Australian cricket team’s bowling and catching performance.
She has even turned wearables and technologies into an artform, with her work exhibited nationally and overseas.
As a researcher, Dr Mealy’s passion projects include IT safety, security and privacy for people living with a disability, making our cities smarter and designing new data-storing systems at a wildlife hospital so more time is spent saving animals and less on admin.
It is a career she was destined for. One of her first auditory memories was hearing a dot matrix printer, and her favourite school holiday experience was watching her technology-teaching father work in the computer labs at his school.
You are driven to inspire the next generation of innovators and professionals – why?
I am passionate about the fact that if technology is going to serve everyone then technology needs everyone to build it. And that means having people in our programs and courses from all walks of life.
There's famous examples of sensor hand dryers that would only work with Caucasian skin because the engineers, designers, technologists and testers that built them only had Caucasian skin.
There's examples of voice apps that won't understand Australian accents because it was developed in the US.
There are so very many examples of systems that fail because there hasn't been a diverse set of technologists and computer scientists thinking about what they're building.
At UniSC we’ve had students with cochlear implants and an AUSLAN interpreter, a student that was legally blind, others from all over the world, some who've been coding since they were in nappies and some who have never touched a computer before they've joined us.
They’ve become valued members of our tech student community and alumni.
Why should a future student consider computer science as a career?
Because it's becoming ubiquitous, which is a word that technologists use a lot – it just means computing technology, even AI, is becoming part of everyday life.
So, if you want to be the accountant who writes the next great software tool or the engineer that designs a system that makes bridges safer – all of these are empowered by computer science.
The thing with technology and design is that we only see it when it's bad. We don't notice good design as it's just doing what it's supposed to do, and so much in our world is good technology design.
That's come from people studying computer science.
Without computer scientists, we'd see more systems that breakdown, we'd see systems that don't support users, that leak data and cause all kinds of problems.
Computer science is such a foundational part of modern society, and it really gives you a platform to do some incredible things in the world.
What sets UniSC apart in this space, and gives its graduates the edge
I was really privileged to be involved in the design of our computer science degrees and our industry credential projects. We deliberately designed a new computer science degree, taking the best of international benchmarks, but also the latest curriculum.
We were one of the first that made an AI course a compulsory part of our program back in 2018, and we have a course on building AI called “practical machine learning”.
AI is a core part of how we see technology going forward so we wanted it to be a core part of our degree. We also were one of the first to do some work in the wearable technology space in some of our courses.
But more recently, we built in industry credentials, with certifications and professional certificates from Microsoft and Cisco. We are working with these great industry partners. We won an international award from Prodigy Learning – one of our platform partners.
It is also the way we structure our programs. We have industry-based lecturers and tutors, such as people from Amazon, teaching into our machine-learning and cloud courses.
We can have a balance of our incredible academics supported by people in the industry as well, working in this space on a day-to-day basis.
Our students really love having all those different voices in the mix.
Also, with our industry credentials and industry-powered curriculum, our students are being snapped up, often before graduating, as this gives them a competitive edge because it shows that they're meeting not just our requirements but internationally established standards.
I mean, that's it probably sounds a bit like a marketing spiel, but that's what I believe in my heart. We really do have a great offer and it's shown over the years.
Tell us about your journey to become an academic?
I think I think every teacher’s story starts with a good teacher themselves.
For me, I was really lucky I had some really inspiring teachers from primary school all the way through high school and university – not to mention growing up in a house with a technology-teaching dad.
I didn't really decide that I wanted to be a lecturer, I just kept asking questions.
I joked for a while, that I was doing my PhD due to a lack of better things to do but honestly it was that I've always been intrigued, asked a lot of questions and had an affinity with explaining things in ways people understood.
Technology is reshaping our world at an alarming rate, how is your research contributing to understanding the challenges and opportunities this presents?
The core of my research is about making technology that is fit for purpose, and uplifts humans. From looking at the potential harms of AI hype, including de-skilling humans, over-trust and myriad cybersecurity risks, to designing software that allows our researchers to focus on the science they want to do not just the endless inputting and processing of data.
I'm super excited about my latest research project, Project Cassowary, going live. We were supported by the .au Domain Administrator and doing a project that's working with Australians living with disability to help them keep their data and their information private and secure.
We are really empowering them to be first-class digital citizens.
There are so many people who don't have access to technology or don't have safe access to technology, so this research project is a real passion project for us to be able to tangibly help an underserved part of our community.
You often share expert commentary in the media, including a regular spots on ABC’s National Weekend Evenings and ABC Radio National’s Download This Show podcast, and articles in The Conversation. What are some of the favourite topics you have covered?
That’s a tough one – there’s some like the Digital ID discussions that have been really impactful, others that are downright hilarious chatting with Marc Fennell and now Rae Johnston from Download This Show and Sirine Demachkie from National Weekend Evenings about some of the weirdest uses of technology – like using AI to translate whale song, and sleep-influencers: why are the internet paying to watch people sleep, or more accurately wake people up in startling and weird ways?
But I love digging into the history of tech – some of my favourite pieces were those we looked at the official end-of-life of software like Windows XP, including discussing the memorial on a headstone for Internet Explorer in South Korea!
What are some of the proudest or most interesting achievements in your career/research so far?
It probably sounds clichéd, but I think my favourite moments are being able to see my students come to see their own potential and to step out into industry at the end of their degrees.
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