Our bold vision for the future

Monash University has come a long way in 50 years. We ask Monash leaders, teachers, students and researchers where they think we will be in another half century.

Professor Richard Larkins, Vice-Chancellor

Monash is superbly positioned to become one of the world's great universities over the next 50 years. Its unique international footprint, the location of its largest campus in the centre of what should become one of the world's leading innovation precincts and its continuing innovation and creativity will ensure that the stunning progress that it has made in its first 50 years will be continued.

Its strong commitment to human rights, social justice and environmental sustainability will mean that its success will have a very positive social impact. Its research will be driving Australia's economy and having a positive impact on the planet's sustainability, peace and security and on health and public policy. Its creative artists and scholars will be enriching the world's cultural life. Our educational programs will be preparing the brightest students around the globe for a world where technology will have changed the way we learn and work and in a world where business, the professions, research, governance and justice will be conducted on a global basis.

Shelly Paterson, first-year law student, third-year languages student.

Environmental, technological and ethical issues will undoubtedly become the foremost concern for tomorrow's society. Monash University will inevitably adapt itself, as it has done over the last 50 years, to reflect this change in society.

There will be changes to the way subjects are taught, reflecting a greater emphasis on resources, international relations and intellectual property. There will also be transformation in teaching methods for universities. Students may not have to physically attend the university campus. Lectures and tutorials will stream as video conference calls over high-speed wireless internet and be offered in multiple languages to gain the attention and interest of a larger international market.

Students connected to video tutorials may have the opportunity to participate in recorded virtual scenarios in which knowledge will be tested in a variety of practical situations.

A focus on engaging campus life by universities will provide the necessary counter balance to the global freedom that tomorrow's technology will allow.

Dr Alan Finkel AM, Chancellor

Fifty years from now, many full-scale universities will be operated privately as training grounds for huge international companies, dramatically redefining the role of a university and the meaning of a degree. In all universities, industrial sources of funding will be essential for survival. As a result, the research emphasis will be ever more directed towards the discovery of products, technologies, processes and designs that can be commercialised, with commercial-inconfidence issues undermining universities' traditional determination to publish and share knowledge.

Through patient research funded by tomorrow's economic powerhouses (today's developing countries), hydrogen fusion will finally be viable for the production of electricity. The availability of hydrogenfusion electricity will be none too soon because in 2058 most transport, heating and cooling, and manufacturing will be driven by electricity rather than fossil fuels or bio fuels. Most air transport will run on non-fossil liquid fuels manufactured by the catalytic conversion of carbon dioxide and nitrogen, powered directly by sunlight or by electricity generated from non-fossil fuel sources.

Sub-orbital space flights will routinely take passengers on long-haul flights such as Melbourne to London or Moscow to Rio in two hours instead of 24. Sub-orbital flights will be the preferred mode of transport for the senior staff of Monash Global University (still fiercely independent) when they make site visits to the furthest of our 38 international campuses.

Professor Richard Boyd, Deputy Director, Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories (MISCL)

We stand at the brink of a revolution in medical treatments - stem cell-based therapies and MISCL will play a major role. The combination of immunology and stem cells 'as body repair kits' will provide patients with “non-rejected” treatments for many if not all degenerative diseases caused by poor life style selection such as smoking and diet, and those arising through early abnormal foetal and new born development.

There will, of course, be failures and threats of human cloning, but science will challenge the former and legislation will prevent the latter. Stem cell banking from the umbilical cord, placenta and amnion will be compulsory for new-borns because of the enormous value such cells will have later in life. Governments and health insurance companies will attest to that.

For those born during the first 50 years of Monash life, adult stem cells will be derived from within tissues and new ones formed by emerging technologies, without banking their new-born cells.

Manipulation of HSC with anti-viral genes combined with thymus regrowth strategies and anti-retroviral drugs should provide a realistic framework to halt hideous diseases such as AIDS and facilitate vaccination against them. Cancer will still arise because nature makes mistakes, but new, highly cancer-specific treatments from the molecular biology revolution will be great weapons, together with rejuvenated immune systems and smarter vaccines.

Foundation Professor Shane Murray, School of Architecture

In 2058 Monash Architecture graduates will face a world of unknowable challenges and opportunities. Rather than responding with pre-formed solutions they will bring to these challenges an aptitude for posing the right questions and for developing big picture responses. They will be international professionals of the highest calibre, distinguished by their proficiency with architectural design, not only as an agent for achieving inspirational building, but also as a contributor to our social and environmental sustainability. Their architectural knowledge will not be confined to the service of elites, but will be developed to contribute broadly across society.

The complex entwining of digital networks with physical space will have transformed work, leisure and many factors which define our daily lives. While many Monash Architects will focus on shaping the physical material of our cities, many will be engaged in providing leadership in the new and expanding roles of the contemporary architect.

Some will work in developing virtual environments; others will apply the unique expansiveness of architectural design thinking to business, engineering, health, education and entertainment.

Dr Susan Lim (MBBS(Hons) 1979) Surgeon

Enter 2058 and advances in both robotic and biotechnology will usher in the era of cellular surgery.

Robotic surgical workstations will enable surgeon scientists to operate at the cellular level, using femtosecond lasers to gain entry into cells. Optical tweezers held by tele-micromanipulators will delicately operate on mitochondria and genetic material in cells of diseased organs such as the liver. The repair of diseased organs and tissues using stem cells will be routine.

With tele-robotic surgical systems, remote or long distance surgery will relegate medical tourism to the status of a virtual industry. Patients will no longer travel, but will have the ability to dial up remote surgeons who will operate the master controls of the robot, with local surgeons at patient-side effecting telemanipulator positioning and instrument change.

Due to increased longevity and improved quality of life with stem cells, 'baby boomers of yesteryear' will achieve centurion status as technosapiens, navigating robotic vehicles, assisted by robotic manpower. Alas, global legislation will endorse cloning, causing social upheaval and propelling the practice of medicine into uncharted territories.

Caroline Durre, Lecturer, Department of Fine Arts. Granddaughter of Sir John Monash

What technologies will be available to visual artists in 50 years? Whatever they are, artists will seize on and exploit new materials and media as soon as they are in the public domain, often in ways their inventors didn't imagine. New sources of imagery from as yet unexplored microscopic or interstellar worlds will likewise be cannibalised by artists. As they have historically, artists will have a passionate interest in the possibilities of new media and their imaginative potential, new images and their critical capacity.

At the same time, art will, and must, offer sensual presence in an increasingly mediated world, critique in an increasingly disempowering world and subversion in an increasingly coercive world. And the future of art in the University? Perhaps art practice will have returned to its origins in the atelier, divorced from the ill-fitting language and unwieldy bureaucracy of the university. I envisage artists enfolded into the studio; however this will be a studio newly imagined as a localised, engaged node of practice, networked across the globe. Here art practice will find opportunity, collaboration, and validation.

*Vision statements have been shortened for space reasons. To read the full text go to the 50 years website.