As a boy, Tim St Pierre loved playing with his magnets; now he’s a physics professor who is passionate about linking physics and biology through magnetic resonance imagery.
UPON meeting Tim St Pierre it’s easy to see his passion for physics, as he speaks of Albert Einstein and quantum mechanics with amazement, still fascinated by atoms despite being well into his career.
Professor St Pierre was recently awarded a coveted Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering Clunies Ross award for developing Ferriscan, a technology that uses magnetic resonance imagery scanners to detect iron overload and its associated medical complications, superseding the method of conducting an invasive and dangerous liver biopsy.
Having a career based on the physics of magnets within the biology field is somewhat of a full circle for professor St Pierre.
“I remember being given a set of magnets (as a child), I can see them now. I used to go around everywhere seeing what was magnetic and what wasn’t. I was totally fascinated that with a magnet you can move something without touching it and that compass needles always point north,” he says.
“I just thought this was completely amazing. I think it is kind of strange that what I am working in today, I still have to talk about magnets nearly every day.
“To be honest, I am still using some of the observations I made as a child in this high-tech stuff. I quite often have to explain to doctors what is going on in these machines. I say to them ‘well you must have had a bar magnet when you were a kid; I had one’.
“The stuff I was observing as a kid, I am still using today, it’s kind of spooky.”
Professor St Pierre says he didn’t know the word physics until he started studying it at the age of 11 at school, but it quickly became his favourite subject and he chose to follow this in his tertiary education, studying physics in his undergraduate degree.
It was during his doctorate studies in Liverpool, England, that he started to link physics and biology, eventually approaching a biologist and requesting to partner with him to complete research on molluscs that form in the Indian Ocean.
“I came to Perth in 1986 for a three-month visit, and I never went back [to the UK],” professor St Pierre told WA Business News.
He began to work in applying physics to biology at the University of Western Australia and, in 1995, diverted his attention to MRI scanners and levels of iron, beginning the journey to develop the Ferriscan technology.
After presenting his final product to the physics department at UWA he was urged by his colleague to patent it.
“In 1999, I envisaged I was going to be an academic for the rest of my life, working in the lab and doing all that kind of stuff, but what changed everything was my head of department at the time at the university (of WA), said you have got to patent that,” professor St Pierre says.
“Up until 1999 I had absolutely no idea I was going to go in to business. In 2000, I started a company.
“I thought, what a pain, I can’t be bothered. But the next day he [the department head] came with all the papers and said you have got to patent this.”
Fast-forward 10 years and Ferriscan is now being utilised in 106 medical centres in 25 countries, and professor St Pierre hopes it will soon be adopted by the federal government as a reimbursable medical service.
Last year, professor St Pierre’s company, Resonance Health, the vehicle for the development of Ferriscan, made a full year’s financial profit for the first time, a success he says is one of the highlights of his career.
But highs have come with the gruelling work of transitioning from an academic career into the world of business.
“I would say in 1999 I knew absolutely nothing (about business); it is now 2010 and I think I know something,” professor St Pierre says.
Bringing in the right people to help with business development was one of the keys to success for the company.
“Liza Dunne was brought in by the second investors as the project manager. She also brought in a lot of experience in the business world. That is when the nature of the company started to change. We were still based in the physics lab at UWA … that was 2004. Since then I have been learning on the fly,” he says.
Professor St Pierre says his biggest challenge on this steep learning curve has been sticking to his guns to get Ferriscan widely adopted.
“The challenge has been sticking with it that long; it’s good. I am still just as keen, probably more so than I have ever been.”
Biggest business lessons?
That the most important things in business are, number one, common sense and number two, integrity. I really strongly believe in those two things. If you ever tried to make a decision based on, ‘we might be able to get away with this’, eventually you will get caught out.
Career highlight?
“The Clunies Ross award is a highlight, that is acknowledgement from my academic peers that the effort from what really amounts to 20 years of plugging away at something has been recognised at a pretty high level. Another highlight would be the first year Ferriscan made a full year’s financial profit, which was last year 2008-09.
Biggest career challenge?
“It seems like one massive challenge. I think keeping going at something that takes years to reach fruition is a challenge. I have two brothers who work in the landscaping business, and they can go to a site and it is a dump and two weeks later they have created this fantastic place and they can stand back and say ‘I did that’. In my case, I am are trying to do something where the outcome might be 10, 20 years down the track.
