Dr Ann Bennett

Physicist

Dr Ann Bennett (Class of 2008) is the director of Iridesce Consulting, a new data and automation consultancy created during COVID-19. She is also a mentor for the Ageing Decelerator, a startup incubator focusing on ageing issues. Dr Ann says "I've pretty much always been handling equations and data – all in different environments". 

Prior to Iridesce, Ann led the machine learning program at Shine Lawyers, worked as a physicist researching malaria at Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology and has done a PhD in physics at UQ (forces in optical tweezers in biological environments), all since completing a Bachelor of Science and receiving honours in physics at UQ. Her first job after she left State High was at a bee-biorobotics lab at the Queensland Brain Institute, working as a research assistant.

Ann is the first generation in her family to do high school in Australia. Her BSHS journey started 6 years prior to Grade 8, as she attended a Viet school which was held at State High on Saturday mornings. Extra curricular activities were a big part of Ann's time at school with rowing, cross country and music all featuring in her five years of high school experience. She received the Brass Award in 2008 and was also in the 1st VIII in rowing. 

Her memories include the 5:30am starts for rowing (that sometimes accompanied 5:30pm finishes), skipping a fair bit of class to go to music lessons, performances, sporting and maths competitions and school trip to Japan. She remembers that they once they "lost" two students in Tokyo which was not helped by the fact that phones didn't work in the underground system. Ann also recalls, "There was that time a student (Monica Ng, dux in 2008) decided to do a biology EEI on fermented garlic and stunk up the top floor of E Block. There was a music camp, where they had a chilli eating competition and one of the girls (Emma Gregan, now a professional musician) got an eye infection from a seed stuck in her eye. That time at rowing camp in Sydney where half the students got sick. Having to save things on to floppy disc, or going to the counter to have something burnt to CD. Seeing Marriage of Figaro with the music and Italian students with the biggest plot twist. Seeing The Planets with the music students and Mr Ruben (band conductor) looked a lot like Holst".

Since high school, Ann recalls some of her highlights and enjoyable moments as a mixture of work, travel and other pastimes such as learning how to paint and shave bees at the Queensland Brain Institute, travelling around France, Japan, the US and Australia for PhD and postdoctoral work, creating Claimify.com.au at Shine Lawyers and assisting with crocheting sculptures for the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games.

When not working, Ann is a taekwondo instructor at UQ and still plays French horn in community bands and orchestras. Her advice to current students is to "have fun and to do things now as you may not have the time or opportunity later. There's more to life than work/classwork".