Out of the Ordinary: Geoff Burchfield
Johanna Elms

To describe Geoff Burchfield as your ‘run-of-the-mill’ scientist, tinkering about all day in a white coat, would be to undervalue the nature of modern day science. Rather, Geoff is part of a new breed of scientists who combine their love of science with the need to communicate about issues of science to the broader community. He is a multifaceted scientist: a zoologist, researcher, reporter, science journalist, television presenter, and now director of the Australian National Youth Science Forum.

Burchfield’s source of energy is his enthusiasm for his work. At the age of six, he was entranced by an ABC program, On Safari, presented by a Belgian biologist. “Every week was a series of eureka moments, and I wanted to know more and more about animals,” says Burchfield smiling. In fact, the most important thing Burchfield tells science students is “follow your passion within science, because that will give you the energy to push doors open that remain closed for others.”

Burchfield states “Curiosity!” as the main factor that led him to science, a factor Burchfield feels he shares with the majority of science students. Love of the outdoors gave him a desire to work with animals. Completing a Bachelor of Science (Honours) majoring in Zoology at the University of Sydney, Burchfield describes his study as the most satisfying experience of his life. His PhD thesis involved observing the relationship between foxes and the native fauna in areas of New South Wales (NSW), an experience that proved to be life altering. Two years into his research, the fox population that was the focus of Burchfield’s study was poisoned, and his PhD research could not be finished. At the time, Burchfield was devastated, but he now looks on the event as “a godsend”, enabling him to compile his research into a masters degree and move on.

Skills such as photography, film making, and brilliant communication soon found Burchfield a job as the science journalist for Channel Seven’s Nightly News. He later moved into different areas of television, where he was an animal wrangler for the show A Country Practice and he starred as Mr Doo Bee in the Channel Seven show Romper Room. Burchfield finally found himself as the lead journalist for ABC TV’s Science Unit, working on shows such as Quantum. While Burchfield views science communication in Australia as productive, he is saddened that professional science communicators select only small amounts of science for public viewing. He feels that scientists themselves should have a larger input in expressing their research to the wider community – “scientists underestimate the outside interest into their research.”

“Gain the broadest, strongest science training possible,” is advice Burchfield passes on to hundreds of Year Twelve students every summer. Burchfield loves being the director of the National Youth Science Forum (NYSF). NYSF is a two-week forum held in Canberra for 300 of Australia’s most promising future scientists and engineers.

Burchfield sees his job as creating a network involving those in industry and universities with future scientists of Australia, while providing an outlet for students to begin networking and discovering their passions in science. He realises that most students have no idea where they want to go or what they want to do. Consequently, Burchfield sees that it is important to emphasise the need for students to be flexible, “Don’t be afraid to change direction in study, life, major, or goals”. Who knows, a “godsend” may bring about the most fruitful career of them all.

For more information of the National Youth Science Forum see:

http://www.nysf.edu.au/

This article was originally written by Johanna Elms, an Advanced Science student at UNSW, for the Australian contribution to the World-Wide Day in Science project 2005. For further information on this project in 2005 and previous years, go to:

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/worldwide/

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