FLEET’s impact on the wider community leverages interaction with education institutions, government, industry and the private and non- profit sectors.
FLEET engages students, teachers, and the public to encourage the participation of students in science subjects, raise an awareness for science in the general public and promote an appreciation of FLEET’s research.
The Centre shares the responsibility to support students and teachers to increase participation rates in STEM by linking the science teaching curriculum to cutting-edge research.
FLEET is the only Centre of Excellence asking all of its members to contribute 20 hours of outreach a year; the additional benefit is that it is valuable science-communication practice for Centre members. With almost 6000 hours spent on 515 outreach activities to date, FLEET members have reached more than 900 teachers, 21,000 students and over 33,000 members of the public.
Accessible science resources for school-age kids and parents include 89 home science demos sparking interest and curiosity in STEM in young children. These experiments have had over 100,000 views to date.
FLEET members have visited and hosted more than 80 school tours through FLEET laboratories, engaging students with relevant issues such as energy use in computing, how transistors work, and the new fields of science studied at FLEET. In a fruitful partnership with the Monash Tech School, FLEET has hosted lab tours providing hands-on science experiences for over 1200 secondary students and counting. In addition, virtual tours of FLEET labs were also developed to engage with students from remote schools, who do not get the opportunity to visit urban universities.
FLEET’s superconducting Mobius track is one of several innovative games and physical demonstrations developed at FLEET. The prototype is at Melbourne’s Scienceworks museum and two tracks are used as outreach tools by FLEET nodes.
FLEET’s Year 10 elective Future Electronics course, delivered in partnership with John Monash Science School (JMSS) each year since 2019, is the only school unit in Australia covering the history of semiconductors, computing and Moore’s Law, and building up from quantum fundamentals to the physics of advanced materials and digital operations. Surveying of past students conducted in 2021 confirms the unit’s impact in persuading students, particularly girls, to consider a future in physics (see case study).
FLEET researchers have participated in major community events such as Melbourne Knowledge Week (2018, 2019 and 2021) and Sydney Science Festival (2019). At the latter event, members engaged with over 9000 school students, ranging from preschool to secondary level, in just nine days.
FLEET members have briefed politicians and policymakers at the Victorian and NSW Energy ministries and the Victorian Department of Jobs, Precincts and Regions; hosted visits from Education Minister Simon Birmingham, ARC CEO Sue Thomas, NSW MP Paul Scully, and Melbourne MP and Greens Science and Energy spokesperson Dr Adam Bandt; and engaged with local MPs as part of Science in Parliament.
FLEET researchers have developed important semiconductor industry links including with global foundry Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. The Centre worked with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and provided consultation to include topological electronics in the IEEE International Roadmap for Devices and Systems.