Sue Keay

Dr Sue Keay, Research Director of Cyber Physical Systems at the CSIRO, has purely STEM qualifications – her degree and PhD were in geology before her career shifted to robotics. But, she says, creativity is ‘extremely important’ in her work designing robots.

‘We often look to the animal kingdom for inspiration for robots, looking at how animals run and jump to decide how to design their components. But in many cases we need to think beyond what we already know and that’s where creativity is important,’ she says.

‘When you merge creativity with a strong understanding of the physical world via science, technology, engineering and maths, then we can start to develop robots with capabilities never seen before.’