I spent my formative years in rural Victoria, one of the most southern States in Australia. Perhaps because of this, in my final year of schooling there were two things I knew that I wanted to do with my life. Firstly, I wanted to have a career which involved seeing the world. Secondly, the career would need to involve something with a science component as maths and science were my preferred school subjects. I was heavily influenced by having a father who was an engineer and he was keen for me to follow in his footsteps. To complicate matters, my grandfather was a physician and had the same view. Based on virtually no evidence, and perhaps more …