Tara Croft

I grew up in a really small little town down in the snowy mountains of New South Wales called Berridale, population 800. 

I've always been pretty interested by medicine and medical science. One key lesson from my time at UTS was collaboration and medical technology means community impact. 

I joined the UTS field hockey team in 2001 and 25 years later I have not missed a season and I still play for the UTS hockey club and I love it. Being active and outdoorsy is not only fulfilling, but I think it creates a lot of empathy. You can take those experiences back and apply them to, to your everyday work. 

My company today is called Baymatob. My role now allows me to identify a problem that I want to solve and make sure it gets into the hands of the people who need it. If you're a mum giving birth today, you're monitored with exactly the same technology that monitored your grandma in 1960. And so we are quite literally going from analog to AI in one big step. 

Through the wearable sensor that is Ollie, we get lots and lots of physiological data from both mum and baby. We are able to predict complications before they occur so that clinicians can act proactively. We're giving the gift of time so they in turn can give the gift of life back to these mums.

I speak at a lot of industry events and a lot of conferences. I speak a lot on the topics of women's health and also women in leadership and women in STEM. Bringing women's perspectives to innovation is really important because they bring their lived experience into that process. 

The students studying STEM and working in the workforce of STEM today are quite literally designing the world in which we're going to live in tomorrow. 

I do teach here so I come back once a week. The campus looks and feels so different. It's more a visionary future-looking feeling. UTS has really transformed. The facilities, the labs are really high-tech and really cutting edge. And I love that with the students in my classroom. I get to engage with this next generation of innovators who are coming through and that's exciting. 

UTS is not just a university to me. It's a community and it's a community where innovation's able to thrive and where that innovation can really impact and improve the world in which we live.