Description

"Creativity as Process"

This collaboration between science and art and design takes the form of a discussion and a paper. This initiative is the product of discussions between Professors Aitken and Minichiello overmany years which have centred on the need to find lasting pathways for multidisciplinary collegial thinking and research. This aim will be explored through the conference and paper and through the  FASTlab symposium series in partnership with Common Ground. This first discussion highlights the challenges and opportunities. It will explore the different ways that creativity is understood across the disciplines – and how this process might be developed into a methodology that can be applied to a range of practices. We shall consider how artists and scientists can develop a shared language that will enable a dialogue and the development of meaningful collaborations. Over decades,practitioners in the arts and in the sciences have developed highly specialised discipline-specific knowledge and practical skills. As exemplars, both of the participants’ disciplines (art/design and molecular/cellular biology) have had long histories and progressively acquired their own range of advanced technologies, dedicated language and philosophical underpinnings. The task that now lies before us is to develop strategies that will allow our respective disciplines to work together in order to generate novel solutions to complex problems and, specifically, solutions that would have been beyond the reach any given discipline operatingin isolation.  

Mario Minichiello, Professor of Design and Director of the Future Arts Science and Technologies Laboratory (FASTlab) at the University of Newcastle

Professor Mario Minichiello, Ph.D. studied at Leicester Polytechnic, Saint Martins, and Loughborough in England. He has over thirty years of experience in industry and academia including leading roles in the academy at Leicester DMU, Birmingham City University, Loughborough University in the UK, and the University of Newcastle in NSW. As a researcher, he has investigated and prototyped and visualized new ideas and experiences through a range of graphic mediums- He has developed his research using tacit and explicit knowledge with creative practices. As a Practitioner, he has had leading roles in design agencies, at the BBC, as well as the Guardian Newspaper as a political artist. He is Professor of Design and Director of the Future Arts Science and Technologies Laboratory (FASTlab) at the University of Newcastle. Minichiello has the rare distinction of working closely with Birmingham Children’s Hospital (UK), a world-leading teaching hospital, and with the Hunter Medical Research Institute, one of the foremost medical research centers in the world. He is the author and co-author of a number of books, journal articles as well as developing creative outputs and intellectual property.

John Aitken, Distinguished Emeritus Professor, School of Environmental and Life Sciences, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Professor Aitken, who arrived from the University of Edinburgh to take up a Chair in Biological Sciences at the University of Newcastle in 1999, is now a leader of a 50-strong research team studying fertility and contraception, which has attracted almost $50 million in funding.

During the last 40 years, Professor Aitken has been working to uncover the intricacies of the union between sperm and egg he has published over 480 research articles, given more than 350 invited lectures, and filed 12 patents. His work has been cited >16,000 times (h-index of 70), the highest citation index in his field.

Since arriving in Newcastle he has generated more than $37 million in research income and has been continuously funded by both the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). He has been elected a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the Australian Academy of Science and is currently President of the International Society of Andrology.

The world-renowned reproductive biologist has worked and studied at some of the world's most prestigious research institutes including Cambridge and the World Health Organisation, but says there is no place he would rather be than Newcastle.