Very excitingly for our team, Glyph has recently become the basis to a new Boston-based biopharmaceutical company called Seaport Therapeutics, which specialises in neuropsychiatric medicines in areas of high unmet patient needs including depression and anxiety disorders.

12pm: Over lunch, I might wander into the lab, where our scientists are preparing their samples for analysis. These days I don’t spend a lot of time doing hands on [lab] work. I miss that.

1pm: Next up is a meeting for Her Research Matters (HRM). I’m currently co-chair of this grassroots-driven, outcome-focused collective. It’s a Monash project that has been running since 2019, aiming to promote, sponsor, and foster an inclusive and equitable leadership environment so women in academia can reach their full potential.

This work is so important. More than half of science PhD graduates and early career researchers are women, but they make up only 17 per cent of senior scientists in Australian universities and research institutes. HRM has greatly enhanced the culture in our faculty, and we have seen more women rise to be professors and leaders as a result.

2pm: I still have several more appointments, as each fortnight I meet individually with each of the PhD and honours students and post-doctoral fellows in our lab. We discuss their data, progress, plans and big ideas, and I give them encouragement and feedback on their work, including their presentations and written pieces.

4pm: One last email check! As long as it’s not a Monday, when our whole lab meets, it’s off home to pick up kids for some more chaos: swimming, gymnastics, soccer, tennis or badminton.

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