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03 October 2023
Things are only impossible... until they're not
We sit down with UniSA’s Vice Chancellor and President, Professor David Lloyd, to learn a little more about the man co-leading the potential creation of a new university in South Australia.
In a hallway in UniSA’s chancellery offices, there’s an abstract model of Adelaide’s west end. The buildings are carved wooden blocks, except those belonging to UniSA, which are made from blue glass, highlighting the footprint of the University.
Perched atop a tall wooden block next to the miniature Bradley Building is a Lego Batman. It’s the sort of thing most VCs would roll their eyes at, and ask their EA to remove, but mention it to UniSA Vice Chancellor Professor David Lloyd, and he says with a grin, “I put that there,” before adding with a frown of mock annoyance, “but people keep moving it!”
First in family
Prof Lloyd grew up in Dublin, before the Cold War had thawed, and when Ireland was doing it hard.
“I remember watching the movie War Games, where Matthew Broderick plays a high schooler who accidentally hacks into a supercomputer that controls the United States’ nuclear strategy,” Prof Lloyd says.
“One simulation he uncovers has the Soviets dropping a nuke right next to Dublin, and I remember thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not good.’ But this stuff was right at our doorstep; there was this constant sense of impending doom.
“At the same time, there was massive unemployment and poverty in Ireland – I think it was The Economist that wrote an article at the time describing Ireland as the backside of Europe.”
Against this backdrop, the young David Lloyd was shaping up to become the first in his family to attend university.
“My parents were supportive of that, but at my school, not many people went on to university. Still, there was a sense that, if you could go to uni, you should, mainly because it was one of the few opportunities available to us to actually find a job.
“And so I went to uni, although, as first in family, with no one to guide me through that, I didn’t really know how it all worked. My only plan was to get a bachelor's, get a master's, get a PhD, and well that was going to take about seven years wasn’t it, so hopefully that’d be long enough to figure out what comes next…”
Education for all
Many years later, sitting with a cup of tea (there’s always a cup of tea) in his office at UniSA’s City West campus, Prof Lloyd has become much better at planning. He now also has the lived experience to understand the value of higher education to communities.
“Education is a powerful thing,” he says. “And it used to be that education was accessible only by the elite, which, to my mind, propagated a divide.
“And so, as [former UniSA Vice Chancellor] Denise Bradley said, increasing access to education levels the playing field. If you can come from whatever background and acquire whatever knowledge is useful for you, you have that, plus the parity to be able to engage with people.”
It’s no surprise that Prof Lloyd's convictions so closely match those of Professor Bradley – her legacy of equitable, accessible education was a big part of what drew him to the role at UniSA.
And for anyone who has read one of Prof Lloyd’s blogs, it’s also no surprise how he expands on Prof Bradley’s vision.
“The notion of advancement of humanity depends on education, science and technology – that's your Star Trek piece, right? Through education, you transcend the base elements of humankind, and you become galvanised, enlightened, and go out and find things.
“And you can't do that unless you’ve got education, because who's gonna build the spaceships…”
It’s fitting that a Star Trek fan should be co-leading the potential creation of a university for the future in South Australia – after all, if it proceeds, this venture is going bravely where no one has gone before. More critical to this mission, however, is that Prof Lloyd has a proven record as a leader who relishes the challenge of breaking new ground.
Over the past decade, he has overseen major changes at UniSA – a complete academic structure transformation; a new purpose-built online curriculum; savvy, fiscally responsible campus redevelopment. These all demanded a transformative approach – and have a lot in common with the challenges that lie ahead.
Prof Lloyd says these kinds of challenges have been central to his career, both as an academic administrator and as a researcher before that.
“I came to the end of my PhD just after the human genome had been decoded, and there were new insights into the way genes coded for proteins, and how interactions occurred with those proteins.
“For the first time, we were able to model that with a computer, and use that to develop more effective medicines. Pretty much nobody in Ireland was doing it, and there was one group at Trinity that had decided they were going to start, but nobody knew how to use the computer.
“I'd done some modelling, so I knew enough to be semi-dangerous. And then I went on, learned lots more, and I got the knack.
“What I discovered is that I like doing things when they’re new and interesting – when they’re first. If you look at my publications, we published a lot of firsts – like, theoretically it should be possible to do this thing, so we’ll demonstrate that it can be done.
“And if I look back at my scientific output, the stuff that I am happiest with is where we were really pushing the envelope.”
Given Prof Lloyd was regarded as a global leader in his field before hanging up his lab coat to move to South Australia, his track record for pushing the envelope is pretty good. And that bodes well for the work that lies ahead.
“We’re potentially building a new university, for the people, that will be up there with the world’s best. So, yeah, we’ve got a big job in front of us – lots of unknowns to negotiate, lots of innovations to put in place,” Prof Lloyd says.
“But that’s what universities do – we innovate, we come up with better ways to do things, so I have great confidence in where we’re going.”
And who knows, given everything happening in South Australia at the moment, we might even get to build a few spaceships…
