These include breeding a new type of barley know as Kebari, which is gluten-free and is being used to brew gluten-free beer in Germany, as well as developing new grains which reduce the rate of colorectal cancer, which are being used in Japan.

But Dr Marshall was most bullish about a discovery that could help to solve the world's obesity problem.

He said CSIRO experts have started to identify the epigenome – a mix of chemical compounds that are added to single genes and regulate their activity – that are responsible for obesity.

"That's a big opportunity for Australia," Dr Marshall said.

Dr Marshall believes the CSIRO is on to a winner with its research into what causes obesity. James Brickwood

"We have done tests using twins and clones and we found that what the mother eats during the gestation period with these animals results in one normal-sized rabbit and one enormous rabbit. It's what's in the food that triggers the epigenetic changes. This is orders of magnitude more complex than genomics."

Deep space communications

In the past Australian scientists have been responsible for creating the world's fifth computer, for helping to televise the Apollo 11 moon landing, creating cotton that could be grown in Australia's climate and for building the radar system that was used to detect approaching Japanese aircraft that were going to bomb Darwin in World War II.


Dr Marshall believes a project from the same team of radio physicists responsible for inventing Wi-Fi, which also involves the group working with NASA to develop deep space communication and control technologies, could prove similarly transformative.

It stems from the CSIRO's long-running relationship with NASA dating back to the 1969 moon landing and Dr Marshall tipped major news to come from the scientists within the year.

"In Australia, when you look up at the night sky you're looking at the centre of the galaxy. In the US you can't do that," he said.

"We're a lot better at building communications systems than we realise. We invented the system that controls the traffic lights around the world."

The CSIRO is celebrating the first anniversary of the creation of Data61, the merged entity created from NICTA and the CSIRO's digital research division. In its first year $75 million has been raised by its portfolio companies and it has banked $135 million in new multi-year contracts.

It also recently had its biggest commercial payday through the listing of spin-out company Audinate. Data61 sold 70 per cent of its shares, but retained a 1.7 per cent stake.

Strategy 2020

Under the CSIRO's Strategy 2020 plan, the science and technology organisation has already increased its blue-sky pure science projects fourfold, after it hit an all-time low in 2014. By 2020 Dr Marshall intends to have lifted its investment on "pure science" 10 times.


Through this investment boost, the organisation has already increased how much intellectual property it has licensed by 25 per cent.

The strategy has been designed to enable the CSIRO to help Australia become a collaboration hub between researchers, universities, government and industry and in turn help boost Australia's global innovation rankings, which rate the country poorly when it comes to commercial outcomes, but strongly in terms of research.

Dr Marshall said that, since the strategy was implemented, the CSIRO had made it on to Thomson Reuters' 2017 Most Innovative Institutions list, coming in at number 18, up with organisations such as France's Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission and the US health and human services laboratories, which include organisations such as the National Human Genome Institute and the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a remarkable achievement under the strategy and the opportunity now is to bring the university sector along with us in a collaborative way. We have 30 per cent more students working in our labs and almost 100 per cent of what we do is collaborative," Dr Marshall said.

"The purpose of universities ... is to create, tech and invent ... they're doing three really important jobs well and I think it's unfair to say they have to do a fourth, but that's where the CSIRO can lead."

Dr Marshall says he will view Strategy 2020 as a success if the Australian scientific and venture capital communities start to resemble what Silicon Valley was like in the late 1980s.

"When I first moved to the US in the late '80s, the venture community there actually actively engaged with science. While at Stanford, there were venture capitalists coming to look at the lab benches. You don't see that here," he said.

"To me, that was the golden age. They invested in Intel, lasers that drove optical communications and it was all science. To me, that will be success."