Young Australian of the Year Marita Cheng is looking forward to talking with Prime Minister Julia Gillard about how the government's education reforms can get young people interested in maths and science.
The 22-year-old university engineering student is dedicated to encouraging other girls to take up studies in the field, where women may up only 10 per cent of the workforce.
In 2008, she founded Robogals Global to teach girls at secondary schools about science and technology in fun ways.
In just two years, the organisation ran workshops for more than 3000 girls in Australia and now has 17 branches across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.
Ms Cheng supports the Labor government's plans for further education reforms and said she was excited to read Ms Gillard's outline of them earlier this week.
"I'll be happy to talk to the prime minister about my thoughts on education and how I think we should shape it so kids get interested in maths and science from a really young age," she told reporters in Canberra.
"I think we just need to encourage kids just to stay in there and work over those hurdles and they'll be all the better for it."
A recent study commissioned by Australia's chief scientist Ian Chubb showed many students think maths, science and engineering subjects are boring and irrelevant to everyday life.
They also think university maths and science-related courses are harder than humanities studies and are the domain of nerds or geeks.
Ms Cheng said it was important to encourage children to be interested in science and technology "so that our kids can not just be consumers of technology but also creators of technology".
"As a community we need to support and rally our kids, especially girls, to get them engaged in engineering and technology from a young age so that Australia can continue to produce world class innovations," she said.
As far as her chosen profession - engineering - Ms Cheng said often children had no concept of what it was about because engineers didn't become teachers and so were not role models in schools.
"I think it's really important that we get engineers and engineering students out to schools to share with students what engineering actually is and what engineers actually do so that kids from a young age can understand what it means to be an engineer," she said.
She looked forward to spending her year as a representative of Australian youth meeting people from around the country and giving them a voice in a way that could make a difference.
And after that? She'll head back to the University of Melbourne and finish her double degree.
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