Our people
Ravi Naidu
Born
in a coastal village in Nadi I‘m a third generation Fijian of Indian descent,
now a naturalised Australian.
Go back two generations and my grandfather was an indentured labourer. My dad was a farmer and mineral prospector who he taught about bio-prospecting – using plants as indicators for certain minerals. He also taught me to pan for gold. So there is no surprise in what I later chose to study.
My three brothers and four sisters were left without parents when my mother and father died in close succession. I was 19 and had considered many career directions. Medicine and teaching were top of the list of respected, valuable careers and when I fainted at my first sight of a blood transfusion – that left teaching.
In 1975 I graduated from the University of the South Pacific (USP) with a double major in chemistry and maths. After a period as a maths teacher, I accepted a junior chemistry lecturer‘s job at the USP and took study leave in the UK and NZ to complete my post graduate studies.
In 1986 I decided to spend the rest of my life in Fiji teaching and helping our community. My vision was to establish a network of teachers and community workers to help the poor. But the 1987 military coup cut through that dream. Despite an erosion of democratic principles in Fiji, I was determined to keep on working at the uni as Head of the USP‘s School of Pure and Applied Sciences until one Sunday in 1988 when several soldiers confronted me in my office. It was time to go. I found a job as a research scientist at CSIRO Land and Water (Division of Soils in 1989) and over the next 10 years worked my way up to become chief research scientist and program leader. Some good advice to change my research focus from water quality to environmental contaminants saw my career flourish.
But teaching was calling me back. I was attracted to UniSA‘s commitment to equity principles and its vision for research and technology. It is rewarding to educate a new generation about environmental contaminants and what we can do today to ensure a sustainable future.
My vision is to grow the Centre for Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation into a world class centre for contaminants research involving science, industry, regulators, local, state and federal governments – a facility that solves contamination problems at the same time as graduating professionals with the capacity to develop technology that will make Australia a world leader in environmental solutions.
Now with 300 technical papers and eight books under my belt, I feel it has been a long journey for the grandson of an indentured labourer!
Professor Ravi Naidu is director of UniSA‘s Centre for Contamination Assessment and Remediation.