The University of Queensland’s Dr Tatsuya Amano has been announced as the British Ecological Society’s 2024 Equality and Diversity Champion.
The award recognises an individual or group who have campaigned to highlight the importance of equality and diversity and worked to make a difference or served as an inspiration to others.
Dr Tatsuya Amano leads UQ’s translatE project, an innovative, world-leading initiative to tackle language barriers and promote diversity in science, helping address environmental crises.
“We already know that collaboration involving a diverse group of people can better solve problems and deliver higher levels of scientific innovation and impacts,” Dr Amano said.
“As we face down several global issues, such as biodiversity and climate crises, the need to tap into a diversity of people, views, knowledge systems, and solutions is more important than ever.
“Through our work, we’ve shown, for example, the importance of non-English-language literature in evidence-based conservation, and the considerable disadvantages faced by non-native English speakers in science.
“We’ve also been reviewing the current status of support that is – or isn’t – available to non-native English speakers, proposing solutions for making academia more multilingual and linguistically inclusive.”
Dr Amano said the success was not only his, but that of his incredibly diverse team.
“Since the launch of this project I’ve worked with over 130 people from around the world, who collectively are native speakers of 17 languages,” he said.
It’s their skills in a variety of languages, understanding of the diversity of cultures, knowledge on local biodiversity and science, and above all their passion for science and conservation, that have brought this project a long way.
“I only know Japanese and English, so our project would certainly not have been possible without their contribution.
“Unfortunately, I’ve never met many of the collaborators in person and had an opportunity to thank them directly, because we are such a diverse group scattered across the globe, so I’d like to dedicate this award to all the project members/collaborators.”
Moving forward, Dr Amano and his team will be investigating the potential of AI technology in helping us overcome language barriers and solve global challenges including conservation.
“It excites me to think what we can collectively achieve to make the world a better place, if all the barriers and burdens were removed for so many talented people to fully participate in science,” he said.
“That said, while AI might help solve some of the existing issues including language barriers, it will almost certainly bring new issues relating to equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), as well as environmental footprint.
“I’m keen to think about how we can make the most of AI technology to overcome, not further broaden, EDI issues in ecology, conservation, and more broadly science.”
Media: Faculty of Science Media, science.media@uq.edu.au, +61 438 162 687.
