NICTA researcher tops the world

Beverley Head
Friday, 14 October 2011 09:10

Dr June Andronick flies to MIT to collect an international technology award on Tuesday, and then it's back to Sydney for her 4th Kyu Aikido grading, a catch up with her two children and husband, and in between she'll probably get a little closer to saving the world by ensuring mission critical software works the way it's supposed to.

Just a typical week in the life of a NICTA researcher. Not.

Andronick at 32 is one of those petite, gamine French women prone to convincing more traditionally built Anglo Saxon journalists that they are in fact not part of the same genus. The apparent gap is not narrowed when Andronick starts discussing her specialty - formal verification - which uses mathematical reasoning to analyse computer code and prove that it will work as anticipated under a range of different conditions.

Put simply Andronick and her co-researchers are exploring how to develop software that doesn't crash. Their research should ultimately also help protect mission critical systems from cyber-attack by effectively quarantining core functions.

Unlike some research scientists Andronick is steeped in the real world, and understands that the value of her work will only be liberated if she is able to clearly articulate what she is doing and why it's important.

On Tuesday Andronick will step onto the podium at MIT to accept an award as one of 35 international innovators aged under 35 identified as world beating by the university's technology review journal. She then gets four minutes to tell her peers what she's working on and why.

Communicating tough concepts has always been an interest - as a young girl Andronick wanted to become a maths teacher, and follow in the steps of her father. Today she shares a teaching role at UNSW with NICTA principal researcher Professor Gerwin Klein, but instructing university students in an advanced topic in formal verification is a way distant from inculcating high school students in the mysteries of calculus.

Born in Caracas, Venezuela,   Andronick moved at the age of one to Ethiopia where she lived and was schooled until the age of 15. While her parents are French nationals they had always lived abroad, her mother pursuing an arts agenda, and her father working as a maths teacher and later setting up a computer science centre in Ethiopia.