My name is Professor Louise McWhinnie and I am the Dean of the Faculty of Transdisciplinary Innovation at UTS.

I took on the role as the Dean of the Faculty because of my investment in it over the last few years, working as part of a small team, developing UTS’ first transdisciplinary program: the BCII. I’ve designed and delivered educational programs at Universities across three countries within 3 continents in the world, but this is an immensely exciting challenge, a new transdisciplinary faculty, a world first.

Why wouldn't we - and you - want to be part of this, actually designing the future, not accepting and morphing into a future that’s designed for us, but being active participants in its creation. UTS is not only forward thinking, it’s also agile.

So many universities across Australia have spoken to me about the new faculty and said: “only UTS could have created this”. Part of the reason for this is the fact that the faculties look beyond the traditions of their disciplines and their boundaries, they think how far we can work in terms of transdisciplinarityto create new solutions for a future world.

The excitement about transdisciplinarity is actually working beyond the boundaries, stepping on the cracks in the pavement, the actual act of working beyond the traditions of the disciplines.

By working with people across multiple disciplines, new solutions are found, new answers to issues, sometimes new questions are raised; this is the excitement, this is the way in which more than one single discipline produces the answers to today’s problems.

1So, what’s all the hype about innovation?

Well, innovation occurs across the university. I actually prefer to talk about transdisciplinarity, where ideas are formed between disciplines, this is an incredible time, it’s a new industrial revolution, in fact it’s a technical revolution of immense speed.

Being part of UTS provides an incredible advantage, it’s a chance to be part of the future, a future where ideas are created.