Key points
- For a century, CSIRO has helped transform discoveries into real-world innovations that touch almost every aspect of Australian life.
- From Wi-Fi and polymer banknotes to improved cotton varieties, solar hot water systems and contact lenses, CSIRO science helps Australians stay healthy, connected, productive and safe.
- From our historic breakthroughs to our emerging innovations, CSIRO science continues to shape the nation.
Most Australians encounter CSIRO science every day, often without realising it.
Our research supports healthier diets, medical technologies and disease prevention, environmental protection, safer infrastructure and digital connectivity, with benefits that flow through homes, workplaces, communities and industries across Australia.
By taking a closer look at how science is part of daily life, we gain a greater appreciation of the discoveries and innovations that help shape modern Australia, and the possibilities that lie ahead. Spend a day with us.
Science at home
You wake up in soft, durable sheets made from improved cotton varieties developed to use less water and fewer chemicals on the farm, while producing better fibre quality. You get ready for the day with a hot shower enabled by solar hot water technology, drawing on solar energy research that began in the 1950s. The extended wear contact lenses you slip in were the result of a global research effort involving a CSIRO polymer team, and the sunscreen you apply filters both UVA and UVB rays by mimicking natural sun protection used by corals on the Great Barrier Reef.
The breakfast table is full of CSIRO science. That bowl of cereal may contain BARLEYmaxTM, a CSIRO-developed grain with higher levels of dietary fibre and resistant starch that supports gut and heart health, while your peanut butter toast may be made with high-fibre Wise Wheat feeding good bacteria in your body. The nutrition advice that shapes healthy eating guidelines has also been informed by decades of CSIRO research into food, diet and wellbeing.
Before work, you feed the dog with scientifically formulated products designed to support pet health. You put on a load of laundry with Softly® wool detergent, developed by CSIRO to enable wool to be washed at high temperatures without shrinking. Finally, you bundle the kids off to daycare with nappies that incorporate 3D UltraAbsorb Fabric, a super-absorbent liner developed through a collaboration between CSIRO and Textor Technologies to help reduce leaks and keep babies comfortable.
As you leave home and start the working day, CSIRO science remains part of the journey.
Science at work
Whether you’re a farmer, nurse, miner, teacher, engineer, tradie, office worker or park ranger, chances are CSIRO science plays a role in your working day.
Every day, millions of Australians rely on roads to get where they need to go. For some, that means a daily commute. For others, including truck drivers, delivery workers, tradies, health workers and emergency responders, the road is part of the workplace itself. CSIRO research helps make those journeys safer for everyone with better monitored and maintained surfaces, brighter visibility markings, tunnel ventilation, fire safety and transport monitoring systems.
If you work in an office building, your workplace may be more comfortable and energy efficient thanks to the Data Clearing House, a platform which helps building managers make better use of their data to improve sustainability, occupant comfort and lower costs.
Did you pay for lunch with cash? Australia’s polymer banknote was invented by CSIRO to create a more durable note that is more difficult to counterfeit. Did you tap your card instead? Digital payments rely on wireless connectivity, which is also underpinned by CSIRO science. In fact, every call you make, email you send, and virtual meeting or online system you join depends on Wi-Fi, built on CSIRO’s pioneering WLAN research and now embedded in billions of devices around the world.
In healthcare, nurses and others are protected by surgical masks tested through Australia's first accredited face mask testing facility, which helped enable local production of essential medical supplies for frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Paramedics use the green whistle to administer emergency pain relief, while doctors and researchers draw on biomedical advances and medical innovations that help detect diseases such as Alzheimer’s earlier and improve patient care.
Construction workers are building more energy efficient and sustainable homes, electricians are installing solar panels and home batteries supported by grid integration research at our Renewable Energy Integration Facility, and truck drivers move goods across Australia as part of supply chains mapped by the Transport Network Strategic Investment Tool.
Teachers are tapping into our scientific education resources and programs to help build STEM capability and scientific literacy in the next generation. It is today’s students who will create our future workforce and lead the next century of discovery and scientific advancement.
A day in 2126
What might a typical day look like for an Australian 100 years from now?
If history is any indication, the answer is difficult to predict. The scientists who established CSIR in 1926 could not have imagined many of the scientific or technological advances we now take for granted. Yet their work helped lay the foundations for innovations that transformed the way Australians live.
Looking more closely at the science woven through everyday life offers a reminder that today's discoveries, and the people and innovation behind them, help shape the Australia of tomorrow.