National people development: Building education and training pathways for research and development adoption
There is a relatively small number of universities, education and training providers offering programs in the fishing and aquaculture industries. There is an absence of consolidated data on, for example who they are, how active they are, the programs they offer, and course participant commencements and completions. The extent to which these providers keep abreast of the latest R&D outcomes, how and where they access information on R&D outcomes and the degree to which the content of their training/education programs include the latest research outcomes is not known.
Understanding the current state of play in the provision and uptake of industry-related training programs will provide valuable information that can be used by FRDC and the fishing and aquaculture industries to make more informed decisions on how to most effectively ensure new R&D outcomes are accessed and used in current course content at universities and in vocational education and training. This could be, for example by developing incentives and close working partnerships with a cadre of active training providers best positioned to include both new industry practices, procedures, etc and the required underpinning knowledge in their training programs.
Due to the time and cost involved in updating course materials there is a limit to the extent well established training and education programs can be continually updated to include the latest R&D outcomes.
A related project activity therefore is to confirm with the industries their most critical and emerging jobs and functions and marry these to the most recent R&D outcomes. These are considered to be of the highest priority for inclusion in some capacity in training and education programs.
Final report
The Building Education and Training Pathways for research and development ( R&D) Adoption Project commenced in March 2017. The project explored how Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) could more effectively engage with education and training providers to create opportunities for enhanced dissemination of the outcomes of its investment in R&D through courses and degrees. The Final Report was completed in July 2017.
RRD4P: FRDC contribution: Precision to Decision Agriculture (Rural Research and Development for Profit Programme 2016)
Water abstraction impacts on flow dependent fisheries species of the Northern Territory, Australia - a synthesis of current knowledge and future research needs
Capability & Capacity: 2024 Australian/NZ eDNA conference - Early Career Research bursaries
This conference is organised by the Southern eDNA Society (SeDNAs - sednasociety.com), Australia and New Zealand's scientific society for the environmental DNA discipline. SeDNAS aims to promote best practices and help the adoption of methods across sectors, by closely working together with researchers, industry, and government. Conferences are organised biannually, alternating between Australia and New Zealand. The first conference (Hobart 2023) was uniformly well received by the attendees, particularly the focus on end-user applications and collaboration. Unlike many other scientific conferences, SeDNAs makes a point of inviting key stakeholders from industry and government to both attend the conference and present their own work or research needs. We found this stimulated discussions to be more likely to develop real-world research collaborations of higher relevance to end-users.
Including and supporting ECRs is an integral part of the mission of SeDNAs. We offer a range of sponsorship opportunities, but as part of our drive to ensure eDNA research benefits industry stakeholders, we are reaching out to key organisations interested in supporting ECRs to travel to the conference. FRDC bursaries would showcase the relevance of FRDC to upcoming molecular fisheries researchers and the broader eDNA community, while also offering FRDC a cost-efficient opportunity to remain abreast of the most cutting edge developments in the field.