Dr. Ryan says her division provides the mathematical firepower required to solve all of these problems: "That's what my whole division is about, and my job is to provide the scientific leadership for the division as a whole. Also, I see my job as really trying to elevate knowledge about and appreciation of the importance for the mathematical and statistical sciences in Australia.
"If you don't have those really strong underpinnings in the mathematical, statistical and quantitative sciences, you can't get to the applied answers that you need."
According to Dr. Ryan, dedicating more money to the development of advanced computing technology is one of the key ways Australia can try to keep up with the demands of modern science.
"Science is often just inundated with massive amounts of information. So in order to be able to synthesize that information -- to pull it all together and start to see the patterns and figure out what it's really saying, you need very advanced computational techniques.
"The ability to transmit and gather information is just changing at an exponential rate. And so our statistical and mathematical fields have to evolve to be able to handle that data and that's where that very advanced computing comes in."