New Zealand scientist reflects on Fulbright experience

Harriet Fulbright's speech in the Grand Hall at Parliament last year gave Helen Anderson a greater understanding of the vision behind the international education exchange programme. She felt inspired by the speech and this made her reflect more deeply on her own Fulbright experience.

Dr Helen Anderson

"Senator Fulbright's vision to facilitate the exchange of people so they ultimately learn about other cultures and potentially avoid conflict is increasingly important right now. I was incredibly impressed and felt a great deal of empathy with Mrs Fulbright's speech."

Helen was a New Zealand Senior Scholar in 1990. She undertook research in seismology at the C F Richter Seismological Laboratory at the University of California.

"My Fulbright experience was intriguing. I received all this information from the NZ-US Educational Foundation (Fulbright New Zealand) about how successful Fulbright scholars were and their role as leaders in the world and I felt very intimidated by this. As a scientist, this wasn't how I saw myself."

"It was a fantastic experience and gave me confidence that I was a valid contributor on the international scene."

Helen had previously done a Phd at Cambridge in England so already had some good contacts with European researchers.

"Fulbright gave me the stepping stone to make connections with some very senior US researchers - many of whom I continue to work with."

"Looking back on my Fulbright experience, I now have an understanding of the leadership thing that Senator Fulbright talked about - and these are skills I believe I gained as part of my experience in the US."

Helen believes it's very important for New Zealand scientists to have a good relationship with their US colleagues.

"The US are leaders in the world of science and technology. It's useful for people like me and others to go to the US and challenge them. People tend to rush to the hot issue in the US.

"New Zealanders have quite a breadth of skills and I felt I was able to contribute and ask some hard questions about how they were connecting a particular piece of research with other research going on. We've never had enough resources and people so I think we're really good at thinking creatively."

"I certainly don't and never will feel like a junior partner with US researchers. What I do feel is that we bring a particular kind of provocative and lateral thinking perspective to the research that they do."

Helen's specialisation is the mechanics of very large earthquakes, in particular, the Macquarie Ridge earthquake south of New Zealand in 1989 which, at the time, was the biggest earthquake in the world.

Shortly before Helen and her family arrived in Santa Cruz, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake occurred, destroying much of Santa Cruz.

"I worked with a postgraduate researcher at the Richter Laboratory. We were trying to find out how the Macquarie Ridge earthquake ruptured, ie, how the crack propagated in the first few seconds of the earthquake. We wanted to know how deep it had originated.

"One of the great things we found was that it originated much deeper than most earthquakes that occur in the ocean and it propagated downwards into the mantle rather than up through the crust. This produced an interesting number of side effects.

"So it was a very interesting earthquake to study from the point of view of being very large, occurring in the ocean and having fundamentally different characteristics from large earthquakes in continental areas such as Loma Prieta. And although everyone assumed I was there to work on the Loma Prieta earthquake, it was a nice balance with what was happening on Santa Cruz."

Helen is now the Chief Scientific Adviser at the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. Her work includes keeping the Minister up to date on any issues that involve science and looking across government to ensure that science and technology are used effectively.