A belated International Women's Day event, the university invited female students from Canberra high schools to a morning tea at its John Curtin School of Medical Research, with the opportunity to hear from high-achieving women scientists on what it is like working in the field.

Jennifer Robertson said while she enjoyed science at high school, she was unsure about which discipline to pursue after graduating.

It was only when she got to university and found she enjoyed neuroscience and chemistry that she settled on a career in medical research.

Ms Robertson is now completing a PhD and doctor of medicine and surgery at the ANU, studying epilepsy in the part of the brain that processes smell.

She said it was an important area to understand, because it was where seizures propagated before spreading to the rest of the brain.

Ms Robertson said the research aimed to discover why it was so involved in the spread of seizures, which could lead to improvements in how the condition was treated.

''Hopefully the research will pave the way to developing a treatment that focuses on this region, so we can stop seizures early on and they'll be less damaging,'' she said.

Ms Robertson she found research fascinating and while challenging, it offered an opportunity for scientists to pursue their own interests.

''You become the first person to know something new, it's the discovery of new knowledge and for a little while you're the only one in the whole world that knows something new,'' she said.

Frequent international travel was one of the perks of the job, she said.

Narrabundah College year 12 student May Ung is studying chemistry and biology and hopes to study chemistry at the ANU next year. Ms Ung, 17, said she enjoyed science because she understood it.

Australian women are still underrepresented at the highest levels of science.