From Mediterranean diets to engineering futures: Catherine Itsiopoulos and the purpose of STEM

At universities, the word transformational is so routinely deployed now, that it loses meaning. Strategic plans committedness it, leaders invoke it, consultants invoice for it.

Yet occasionally, the term carries weight—anchored not successful branding, but successful biography. For Professor Catherine Itsiopoulos, the recently appointed Deputy Vice-Chancellor of RMIT’s STEM College, transformation is neither metaphor nor managerial embellishment. It is the throughline of a vocation that has moved from objective wellness and dietetics to world leadership, from metabolic pathways to organization culture, and present to 1 of the largest and astir analyzable STEM portfolios successful the country.

RMIT’s STEM College operates under the motto “Together transforming the world done STEM”and Itsiopoulos does not shy distant from the ambition, but is clear-eyed astir what transformation indispensable mean if it is to beryllium much than window dressing.

“Training and probe should beryllium transformational,” she says, “but they indispensable besides person intent and impact.”

From wellness to systems

Before entering elder world leadership, Itsiopoulos built her vocation successful wellness sciences, focusing connected the prevention and absorption of chronic illness done diet—particularly the traditional Mediterranean diet. Her probe examined cardinal metabolic pathways agelong earlier “lifestyle medicine” became a fashion. Alongside her technological publications, she authored 4 Mediterranean fare cookbooks, bridging research, civilization and practice.

Grounding matters. It shaped however Itsiopoulos thinks astir STEM. She does not spot siloed disciplines, but arsenic an interconnected ecology—melding medicine and nutrition, agribusiness and exports, municipality infrastructure, transport, buildings, bridges and technology.

“How bash each these disciplines coalesce,” she asks, “to really transform our lives for the better?”

The question for Itsiopoulos is not poetics oregon rhetoric. Nor is it confined to laboratories.

Students standing and sitting successful a space laboratory installation astatine RMIT STEM College. Photo: RMIT

Fit-for-purpose

Itsiopoulos is keen connected the thought of a fit-for-purpose workforce. “I’ve built and led health-led programs,” she says, “and my absorption has ever been connected gathering an empowered workforce that serves communities.”

Pressed connected what that means, she doesn’t retreat into abstraction.

“Imagine a workforce that isn’t acceptable for purpose,” she says. “We’ve each seen that.”

For Itsiopoulos, fit-for-purpose is not astir compliance oregon show metrics. It is astir alignment—between people, roles, skills, civilization and mission. That applies arsenic overmuch to world staff arsenic to nonrecreational services teams.

“Everyone should beryllium acceptable up for success,” she says. “That means being successful the close job. Sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you thought it was for you—but it isn’t.”

It is an unusually frank admittance successful university leadership. So too is her acknowledgement that nonaccomplishment of acceptable is not ever personal.

“Sometimes it’s the close relation and the wrong management,” she says. “Or the close relation successful the wrong organisation.”

“Well, yeah. Exactly.”

Culture problems successful institutions

Itsiopoulos formally became imperishable successful the relation successful in December 2025, aft serving arsenic interim since precocious 2024. What she inherited was paradoxical.

STEM is RMIT’s strongest-performing college. It attracts precocious student demand, benefits from sustained authorities argumentation support, dominates postgraduate employment outcomes, and generates astir 70 per cent of the university’s probe income. Its engineering schoolhouse is the largest successful Australia.

And yet.

“Our civilization surveys showed STEM staff were the slightest engaged crossed the university,” she says. “People weren’t happy. They weren’t engaged.”

Performance, it turned out, was masking dysfunction. The Vice-Chancellor was explicit when appointing her: the assemblage was delivering—but astatine a cost.

The effect was not structural tinkering, but taste reconstruction.

Ensuring much women bash STEM, particularly those from divers bakgtrounds is 1 of Itsiopoulos’s objectives. Photo: Depositphotos

‘We care’

Under Itsiopoulos’ leadership, the STEM enforcement articulated a deceptively elemental values framework: We care.

It is not a slogan. It is operationalised arsenic a decision-making test.

“Care underpins collaboration, accountability, respect and empowerment,” she says. “We use it arsenic a pub δοκιμή when making captious decisions.”

The operation is embedded successful enactment signifier and deliberately socialised crossed the college. In an situation dominated by engineering, technology and manufacture partnerships, it signals a recalibration of what excellence looks like.

Not softer. More quality and diverse. Itsiopoulos is driven to spot much women successful STEM and peculiarly culturally divers women.

There is simply a important beingness of women successful wellness she says but “in but engineering, the statistics truly are poor, astatine lone 13per cent. and I want to spot it inch retired to 20 per cent arsenic σύντομα arsenic possible.”

To that she has programs engaging divers taste communities and within them women.

Industry, research—and space to think

RMIT’s STEM probe is unapologetically industry-focused. Education is research-led and co-designed with industry, for industry. In engineering, applied outcomes are often the superior driver.

But Itsiopoulos is wary of axenic instrumentalism.

She understands that some research—particularly successful health, κοινωνικά systems and design—does not present contiguous commercialized returns.

“In wellness and nutrition,” she says, “research drivers often travel from clinicians and researchers trying to amended however we understand health, prevention and care.”

That includes therapies, methods and practices aimed not conscionable astatine treatment, but astatine prevention and prime of life.

Advances successful diabetes and cardiovascular drugs, she notes, are extraordinarily effective—extending beingness careless of diet.

“But then the question becomes,” she says, “what bash we mean by healthier?”

Epidemiology tells us we are surviving longer, but not ever better.

Lessons from Ikaria—and the city

Itsiopoulos’ Mediterranean fare probe inevitably leads to long-life cultures: Ikaria, Sardinia, Okinawa.

What unites them is not a superfood oregon dietary trend, but a signifier of living: caller section food, carnal enactment embedded successful regular life, strong κοινωνικά connections, minimalism and clip outdoors.

“Lifestyle management,” she says, “is astir diet, exercise, sleep, stress—and κοινωνικά connectedness.”

She is nary romantic. We bash not each unrecorded connected static Mediterranean islands. We unrecorded successful ample municipality expanses. We request roads, bridges, medicines, transport and technology.

The situation for STEM, then, is translation: however to plan urban, technological and κοινωνικά systems that retrieve some of the protective features of traditional lifestyles without pretending we tin instrumentality to them.

That includes acknowledging inconvenient truths.

“Highly processed nutrient is cheap, accessible and convenient,” she says. “You tin take your household retired connected a humble budget, and it tin beryllium fun.”

But, she adds, such nutrient should beryllium a uncommon treat. Cooking astatine home, she argues, is fundamental—not lone to carnal health, but to intelligence wellbeing.

Transformation, she suggests, lies not successful moralising idiosyncratic choices, but successful designing systems—food, cities, work, transport and technology—that marque healthier choices easier, not harder.

Purpose, not jargon

For Itsiopoulos, STEM is not simply astir skills pipelines oregon innovation ecosystems. It is astir purpose—applied rigorously, humanely and without illusion.

Transformation, successful the her hands is much than a buzzword. It is simply a demand: that universities nutrient knowledge, radical and systems that genuinely amended lives, guided by a workforce with values—one that, arsenic she insists, cares.

Implementation, of course, tin look a Sisyphean task successful ample world institutions. Yet, successful a assemblage that too often oscillates betwixt marketplace logic and bureaucratic inertia, Itsiopoulos’ insistence feels quietly—and possibly productively—radical.