Reflecting back on his time as an undergraduate student at UNE, University medallist Dominic Waters says it’s the friendships and connections he’s built that he’ll cherish most.
“I have so many good friends that were made over the course of my undergrad while living at Duval College,” he says. “It was quite special to be able to spend your day learning about really interesting things in class, and then come home to an entire college full of friends to have dinner, play sport and socialise with.”
A natural academic since his days as a high-achieving student at Lismore’s local public school, Dom glided through his Bachelor of Science, graduating with First Class Honours in 2020, winning scholarships and awards along the way.
“I was lucky enough to receive the Cec Spence Memorial UNE Country Scholarship during my undergrad, and the Keith & Dorothy Mackay Honours Scholarship during my Honours project,” he says. “Both of these allowed me to study without needing to spend time working during the teaching periods which was a big help.”
Most recently, he received the prestigious University Medal, and was asked to give the Vote of Thanks at his catch-up graduation ceremony in April.
Image: Dominic on stage at his graduation ceremony giving the Vote of Thanks after being awarded the University Medal.
“I never found that science education was something to be endured,” he says. “Whenever I found something challenging, it made me want to understand it even more, so it’s a bit of a self-sustaining positive-feedback loop. I think the main contributor towards getting these awards was that I studied something that I was interested in and genuinely enjoyed.”
Dom says the encouragement he received from his lecturers and supervisors also played a part in him realising his potential.
I also loved that I was given opportunities to help and get to know other students from very early on in my degree.
“You never really feel anonymous at UNE,” he says. “My best example of this was in a second-year genetics class that had over 100 on-campus students. Over the course of the first three practical classes, the lecturer had memorised the names of every single student in the class, and I found this level of support and interest in student welfare to be consistent across all of my lecturers.
“I also loved that I was given opportunities to help and get to know other students from very early on in my degree by running tutorials through the peer-assisted study session (PASS) program. I was also an Academic Mentor at Duval College, and I’ve since worked as a demonstrator in an introductory breeding and genetics unit. I was even fortunate enough to deliver some lectures last year, which I enjoyed immensely.”
Almost finished his PhD in Quantitative Genetics under the supervision of renowned geneticists Professor Julius van der Werf and Associate Professor Sam Clark, he hopes to continue on this path of teaching others and contributing to ground-breaking research.
“I’m currently looking at ways to identify animals and plants that show ‘robustness' to environmental variability,” he says. “Livestock and plants have to cope with a lot of environmental variation from one year to the next, so we could reduce the impact of this by selecting robust animals and plants that perform well across these conditions. After completing, I’m hoping to continue my research with the genetics team at UNE.”
Dom is set to complete his PhD mid-2023. You can read more about his research here.
