A fantastic way to celebrate the recent 2024 International Day of Women, we introduce you to Sara Tanovic, an alum from the 2017 ASO Summer School.

Q: What influence did Summer School have on your education and career?

A: My summer school experience inspired me to move away from home and study a Bachelor of Philosophy at ANU. After graduating I worked in industry for a bit but ended up back in academia, this time to pursue a DPhil in Chemical Machine Learning at the University of Oxford. Specifically, I help teach computers how to predict synthetic routes so that we can make new molecules faster.

Q: What do you enjoy about your current profession or field?

A: My field of working is constantly evolving thanks to advancements in deep learning algorithms and open source research. Our programs used to be driven by hand-coded heuristics, but now the focus has shifted towards leveraging these powerful new techniques to automatically learn how chemical reactions work from huge amounts of data, and even propose new reactions! In spite of all the negative press around machine learning recently, it’s so exciting to see these algorithms being put to good use to speed up the drug discovery process.

Q: What unexpected experience or event has influenced your current professional life?

A: When I first came to university I was convinced that I was going to be a chemist, but of course things never play out exactly the way you plan. When the COVID lockdowns drove us out of the lab I found myself gravitating towards more computational research and found that I loved the new challenge of translating my love of chemistry into computer science. I now can’t imagine myself doing anything other than coding, but we’ll see what the future holds!

Q: Beside science, what other interests do you have?

A: Despite being a purely computational scientist, I love cooking! I’ve managed to transfer my skills from the lab into the kitchen, and as an added bonus I get to eat and share whatever I make. My friends and I are so obsessed with ice cream to the point where we have our own ice cream appreciation society where we share reviews – it’s been particularly useful for keeping in touch while our careers have taken us around the world.

Q: Do you still keep in touch with anyone from your Summer School cohort?

A: I met some of my closest friends at Summer School and it’s been amazing to watch us all grow up together and do amazing things with our careers. The best part of Summer School was the female friendships I made – being a girl in STEM can be hard at times, but having a support network of girls who were all in the same position as me made the experience so much more fun. I’m still constantly inspired by how far we’ve all come and so grateful to ASI for bring us together.

I also have to give a shout out to my boyfriend Dylan (IChO 2017) – we met at summer school and are still best friends 7 years later. We definitely bonded over our shared love of chemistry (pun intended).

Q: Have you volunteered in any of ASI programs?

A: I’ve done so much with ASI – from teaching at Chemistry Olympiad Summer Schools and Curious Minds camps to being a team guide at the 2019 Asian Physics Olympiad. Every time I’m astounded by the enthusiasm and dedication our students bring to their studies, and I’m reminded of why I decided to pursue a career in STEM in the first place. I would highly recommend it to anyone who wants to be involved with teaching the next generation of scientists.

Q: What is your favorite ASI experience?

A: As much as I loved my time as a student at Summer School, being a staff member for six years was the highlight of my time at ASI. While it helped me hone my presentation and teaching skills, the best thing I learnt was the importance of having fun with your work. ASI and our program directors created the perfect environment for us to grow as teachers while allowing us to experiment with new styles, like creating whacky pHun test questions and teaching quantum chemistry with cheese.

Thank you Sara for sharing your story with us!

Learn more about our Alumni Program!