Melb students launch Aust Triple Helix

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 1, No. 4  30 April - 14 May 2007 ]

University of Melbourne students have launched an Australian edition of the international student-run science journal The Triple Helix.

The journal was launched at the University’s Bio21 Institute in Parkville recently as part of the 5th World Conference of Science Journalists.

Melbourne is the first Australian university to form a local student chapter of the international journal – established at Cornell University in the USA in 2004.

Chapters of The Triple Helix operate at Ivy League and other US universities including MIT and at Oxford and the National University of Singapore.

The journal addresses issues concerning science in law and society.

The inaugural Australian Triple Helix looks at a vaccine for cervical cancer, the impact of natural disasters in India and our search for happiness. Its main feature focuses on universities as knowledge factories and how universities are shifting to a market place paradigm.

The Triple Helix is the only international journal of its kind run completely by students. Melbourne’s editorial committee is made up of about 25 students from faculties including Commerce and Law, Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences, Engineering, and Science.

Melbourne’s edition will take submissions from undergraduate students at Melbourne and from 28 other universities around the world. Each chapter publishes its own edition twice yearly.

“The Triple Helix will provide undergraduate students at Melbourne with a global platform for expressing their opinions and research findings,” says President of the Melbourne chapter, Ms Sook Jin Ong.

Speaking at The Triple Helix launch, Associate Dean of Science (Communications and Development) Associate Professor Phil Batterham said the journal embodies all three of the strands of the University’s commitment to its own symbolic ‘triple helix’ – excellence in Research, Teaching and Knowledge Transfer.

“In writing about research, the students are learning as well as transferring knowledge to the community,” he said.