Lucky in love

Associate Professor Valerie Gay and Senior Lecturer Peter Leijdekkers have worked together in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology for 11 years. But the pair first met 25 years ago while developing the international standards for mobile telecommunication in Europe. Since then they’ve become partners in research and in life.

V: We met when we were representing our countries for telecommunication standards. I was representing France and he was representing Holland. At that time everything was pretty much decided by each country and we were developing standards to make sure everyone could work together, which is still something that's used today.

P: We were part of these very intense meetings that would go on for weeks, with people coming from all over the world to discuss the standardisation. In the evenings, everyone would get meals and drinks together which is sort of how we met. Then we were invited to one of these meetings in Australia so we thought, “Why don’t we spend some time together and travel a bit?”

V: Peter had never been to Australia and I'd never been to Australia so we both expressed the fact that we’d like to go and that’s how it started.

P: When we were here, we drove down to Melbourne and there were parts of the Pacific Highway that were still non-surfaced road. We had no concept of distance in Australia – it’s just something you have to experience – so we thought it would be easy to drive. We had a rental car and I remember we thought, “Ah! We don’t want to hit a kangaroo!”

V: Every six months there was a meeting somewhere else – France, USA, Canada, England, Germany. At the first meeting we didn’t really know each other and we were working on different parts of the standards, but towards the end we started working a bit more on similar aspects. Then after that we were working on the same documents and everything!

P: Val was still living in France and I was still in the Netherlands. So we had a long distance relationship for about seven years.

V: But we were both in IT so we probably had quite a lot of discussions by email during that time. Back then the emails were just lines – they looked more like texts – but I think this helped us.

P: Then when Val had the opportunity to do a sabbatical here at UTS in 1998, I thought it would be a good adventure. I quit my job and said, “Let’s try it!” And that was actually also the first time we lived together, after seven years!

V: We spent a year-and-a-half in Sydney, but then Peter got homesick. So we went back to the Netherlands for two years, before coming back here again.

P: As soon as we got on the plane back to the Netherlands I knew I was making a mistake. Val said, “Now that you’ve made this decision we’ll go back for a minimum of two years just to be sure.” So we did. Two years and one day later we came back.

V: I actually enjoyed it in a way because I could connect a bit more with Holland and get a bit of Dutch culture. And I think doing that made us stronger because once we came back to Australia we were confident that was where we wanted to be.

P: Val had a job as a Senior Lecturer at UTS and then by accident I also got involved in academia. She needed an extra tutor the day before a class on telecommunication started and I thought, “Oh! I know about that! I can do that!” 

V: So he got a tutoring job almost immediately. Then a few other jobs opened in the faculty.

P: I had all the qualifications and the experience so I was hired as a Lecturer. Everyone knew we were together – it’s never been a secret, but we're not the kind of people who walk around holding hands.

V: We’re in the same department but we don’t teach the same students or do the same jobs. I teach subjects like mobile communication, mobile commerce communication and contemporary telecommunication to postgrads.

P: I mainly teach to undergrad students in the domain of mobile app development. It’s very popular and I really love that subject. It’s my hobby and it’s my job. I deal with a lot of young people, which I like ­­– there are lots of different characters!

V: There are a lot of things we agree on, like the way of teaching and things like that. I believe technology is there to help, and if you can find an application to demonstrate this technology it will be more effective. I like the idea of being in a university of technology because I like my research to be applied.

P: Research-wise we’re in a win-win situation. I am very industry focused and hands-on and try to make a commercial application of something and Val has more of the research side to it so it works well.

V: Even before we were together, we were writing papers together in Europe.

P: We also work in cooperation with other universities and present papers overseas which gives us more opportunities to visit our families in France and Holland, too!