Joanna Batstone

Doctor of Engineering

Monday 18th July 2022 - Orator: Dr Raul Santos-Rodriguez 

Listen to full oration and honorary speech on Soundcloud

Pro Vice-Chancellor,

It is my privilege today to give this oration on the award of an honorary degree to Joanna Batstone.

Joanna is a double Bristol graduate, having earned first a BSc degree in Chemical Physics in 1982, and then a PhD in Physics in 1985. After completing these, as most of our recent graduates that are here with us today, Joanna was presented with multiple choices and possible career paths: there were many areas naturally suited to someone with her background, there was a choice in between jobs in academia or industry, and there were different locations worldwide for her to consider. If I now tell you that she is currently the Director of the Monash Data Futures Institute at Monash University, you might think that she picked data science, academia, and Australia. And you would be wrong. But then, Joanna is a truly exceptional individual.

Let us head back to the 80s for a glimpse of where and how her journey began. Joanna’s story in Bristol starts not far from Wills Memorial Building. On a normal day, you could find her running from the Physics Building to Chemistry through the Royal Fort Gardens, jumping from lecture to lecture as fast as possible to make sure that she was on time. In her spare time, she would not stop running, going from her hall, Clifton Hill House, to play netball in Coombe Dingle. And all this while building long-lasting friendships – a few years later they are here with her today.

Joanna’s next steps took her to AT&T Bell Laboratories, NJ, where she continued her physics research, to then move back to the UK to a Lectureship in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Liverpool. However, when everything seemed to be naturally pointing towards an academic career, she decided to move to industry, joining IBM Research in the T.J. Watson Research Center in New York in 1989. For her research contributions during this time, she received the Burton Medal from the Microscopy Society of America, the Robert Lansing Hardy Gold Medal from The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society and the Cosslett Award from the Microbeam Analysis Society.

However, instead of playing it safe, her spell at IBM is one of understanding and embracing innovation and change in one of the most exciting environments that one could imagine. Try to visualise the early 90’s in the middle of the Internet boom. It was then that Joanna was able to leverage her unique experience buying research equipment online to move towards leading the new ecommerce activities. This allowed her to then focus on software research and the emerging need for data analytics. Her understanding of data placed her in one of the most exciting and impactful AI projects in history, IBM Watson. This was originally a question-answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, most famous for winning the TV quiz show Jeopardy in 2011. Thanks to Joanna’s team’s contributions, the project was the foundation of many of the AI advances that we see now daily in the news.

During her journey in industry, Joanna held a variety of technical and business leadership roles in IBM's Research Labs, from Senior Manager and Senior Technical Staff Member to Vice President and Director of IBM Research Labs. Under Joanna’s guidance, IBM was using AI and machine learning to tackle a range of issues, from assisting people living with diabetes and helping to identify malignant melanomas to using data to help stop human trafficking. Joanna was a pioneer on using data science for social good. However, while there is clear potential for AI and data science to positively impact the world, there are also risks that will exacerbate existing societal biases, prejudices, and inequalities. To this end, Joanna’s current role as the inaugural Director of The Monash Data Futures Institute is to continue to lead the way towards fully understanding the implications of these technologies in areas such as health sciences or sustainable development. This ethos strongly resonates with our own University strategy.

I hope that these few lines go some way to illustrate how and why Joanna’s career exceeds any expectations that I had set out at the beginning. She has managed teams in the US, Europe and Australia, both in industry and academia, in materials, ecommerce, software, data analytics and AI. And if that was not enough, Joanna is yet again pushing the boundaries of the most exciting open research questions, kindly inspiring the next generation of engineers and computer scientists to follow in her footsteps. She is a graduate of our University of whom we could not be prouder.

Pro Vice-Chancellor, I present to you Joanna Batstone as eminently worthy of the degree of Doctor of Engineering honoris causa.