When Martha Cleary was studying the universe from Mount Stromlo Observatory she had no idea she would wind up working in venture capital.

She completed her PhD at the Australian National University in 1977 with a thesis on explosions in the interstellar medium. Now, as a director of Melbourne-based Momentum Ventures Ltd, she is working to support new hi-tech companies in fields including recycling, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, deep sea drilling, instrumentation and information technology.

"Venture capital is a tough business in Australia," she says. "It's so much easier in other countries to get new businesses off the ground. If you want to invest in mining, there's money to burn, but there are few willing to take on the level of risk in hi-tech start-up companies."

She says government programs to stimulate investment in fledgling hi-tech companies have been good but piecemeal, and have lacked a long-term view.

Cleary's first job was with ICI, where she worked in Australia and the United Kingdom on the commercialisation of technology and in new business development.

"In the 1980s, traditional markets were reaching saturation point and companies were looking for new places to invest," she says. ICI formed new divisions in new materials, medical diagnostics, instrumentation and software development.

In the 1980s, she was the first industry representative on the Labor Government's Commission for the Future. "I was selected because of work I had done on cycles in production in industrialised countries."

In 1988 she took up a job in the United States with Dendrite International, a company developing customised software for the pharmaceuticals industry. She held senior management positions at Dendrite, now listed on NASDAQ.

Cleary has applied her knowledge of cosmic explosions only once since graduating. At ICI, she developed a computer model to optimise blasting operations at the Mount Newman iron ore mine in Western Australia to get the right sized rocks out. "The maths were similar," she says.

"I've had an unusual career. But what I acquired from my science training was a trained mind. If you have a trained mind, you just add the database - from finance, sales, new business development, research and development, economics. If you've got the problem solving ability, it doesn't matter what discipline you apply it to."