1. science
2. engineering

Never Stand Still
Faculty of Engineering Magazine
What is the
future of
medicine?
Mining the Moon ⋅ Highest earning graduates
PLUS: WHERE ARE THEY NOW? Virtual Reality + Inventor of the Year
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Leighton Contractors. More than you’d imagine.
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up front
PROFESSOR
GRAHAM DAVIES
DEAN
FACULTY OF
ENGINEERING
The health industry is rightly revered. It is one of the undisputed linchpins of a civilised culture.
Many people don’t realise that engineering is a critical support of the health industry. Today’s
engineers are working at many levels on multiple aspects, to improve diagnosis, treatments,
applications, outcomes and the organisation of the healthcare system itself.
Engineers are involved in everything from the development of new hip or knee joints through
to revolutionary drug delivery using nanomaterials. The huge success of Cochlear can be attributed
primarily to engineers, and I am confident that the bionic eye currently being developed by engineers
at UNSW and elsewhere will be as much of a triumph.
As you’ll see in our cover feature this issue, UNSW engineers are involved in many aspects of
health care that you probably hadn’t previously considered, and not just in the Graduate School of
Biomedical Engineering. There are chemical engineers, computer science engineers, mechanical and
electrical engineers all working towards a healthy future for our society. So don’t miss this and other
stories in this great issue of UNSW Engineers.
Our mining
grads dig up
TOP DOLLAR
Mining engineering graduates from UNSW are
likely to earn more in their first year than any
graduate from any other degree in the country,
according to a recent study.
The annual survey by Graduate Careers
Australia showed that mining engineering
graduates have the highest starting salaries of
Mining engineering students Alison Tibbett and Morris van Schie
any graduate, earning at least $80,000 a year,
and UNSW graduates are the pick of the bunch.
“We are continually trying to improve the way we teach
“This is no real surprise – it has been going on the past
and maintaining strong links with industry.”
few years,” said Undergraduate Program Coordinator in
Chemical engineering graduates also rated highly,
the School of Mining, Rudrajit Mitra. “We have had really
earning an average of $61,000 a year.
high starting salaries compared to other schools both here
Overall, graduates from all UNSW faculties had a
in the Faculty and across the country, and we are happy we higher average starting salary than their counterparts at
are maintaining this standard.
other universities.
in this issue
4 Making News 8 Profile: Maryam Khajeh
9 Where are they now? 10 What is the future of medicine?
16 Schools of thought 21 Obituaries 22 Inbox
Our cover BSD hyperthermia equipment, courtesy of BSD Medical. BSD does not
currently have regulatory approval for sale in Australia.
UNSW Engineers is published by the Faculty of Engineering ⋅ unsw sydney 2052 AUSTRALIA Phone +61 2 9385 4023 ⋅ Fax + 61 2 9385 5456 ⋅ Email unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
Editor Ken Eastwood ⋅ Designer Fox Owens Creative ⋅ Printer Rostone Print ⋅ ISSN 1442-8849
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 3 making news
An electric night
Six people who first met 46 years ago at UNSW and
are still close friends were among the alumni who
gathered at the Faculty of Engineering’s Annual
Dinner in August. They graduated in 1971
from the School of Civil Engineering.
“Most of us worked at the water board
and because we were all part-timers, we all
managed to stay together,” said Geoff West,
who is currently the General Manager at Rocla,
an Australian sand mining company. “Since
that time, we have all married, had children,
and even grandkids, and we have all remained
friends. We usually meet three or four times a
year to get together.”
Mike Pyne, who went on to work for the Sutherland
Council but has since retired, fondly recalled his experiences
with the other five. “I remember going down to the
Roundhouse and always meeting our fellow students there.
We used to occasionally miss lectures and go down to the
Regent Hotel in Kensington and have a few beers there. It
was a good life – we developed great friendships.”
The Annual Dinner was a great time of celebration for
the alumni who graduated in the years 1961, 1971, 1981,
1991 and 2001, and graduates of all years from the School
of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications (EE&T).
“Collegiality and comradeship represent the true spirit
of engineering, and engineers have an enormous capacity to
enjoy themselves,” said Dean, Professor Graham Davies.
Graham shared the Faculty’s numerous achievements of
2011, such as the student-led solar car project, Sunswift Ivy
which broke the 22-year-old Guinness World Speed Record
by over 10 km/h, a mention that earned a loud round of
applause from guests.
John Eisenhuth, the keynote speaker who graduated
from the School of EE&T in 1977, spoke of his praise for
the university. “We wanted to come to UNSW because it
was considered to be the university for applied engineers. It
was the university that really produced quality engineering
professionals,” he said.
Currently the Executive General Manager of Distribution
Operations and Reliability at Ausgrid, John manages 2500
employees and has a budget accountability exceeding $700
million annually. He generously donated $10,000 on behalf
of Ausgrid to launch the EE&T Student Support Fund
for Improved Student Learning, in addition to launching
the School’s 60-year history book. The 288-page book
was launched in an electrical spark show and automatic
elevation, opening and closing of the book on stage. It can
be purchased for $88, including postage and handling,
by contacting the School of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications.
— Daniela Lai
Stellar research: how to mine the Moon
UNSW is
entering a new
phase of space
research, with
the arrival
this year of
Associate
Professor Dr Leonhard Bernold. After
decades of research in the US and
Korea, funded by space agencies NASA
and KARI, Leonhard joined the School
of Civil and Environmental Engineering
in February, and is looking at lunar
4 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
mining, construction and power supply –
research that is likely to be vital around
2025 when settlements are tipped to
be established on the Moon. Lunar
mining is likely to be needed so that raw
materials can be sourced directly from
the Moon, rather than shipping them at
great expense from the Earth.
“One of the challenges with
traditional forms of mining is the lack
of gravity on the Moon – most modern
mining equipment needs gravity. They
need traction for force,” he says.
Leonhard is therefore working on
suction mining techniques, using a
closed-circuit vacuum. “You use air as a
way to loosen the soil,” he says.
Using a lunar soil simulant sourced
from a basalt quarry, Leonhard is also
developing “lunar concrete”, based on
mixing fine basaltic material with a dry
polymer powder. “We’re looking at
how little of that you need.”
One of Leonhard’s Honours
students is studying how to store solar
power by heating basaltic material.
Recycling membranes
Reverse osmosis membranes
discarded from desalination plants
will become a bigger and bigger
environmental headache, unless
we can find another use for them.
Senior lecturer at the UNESCO
Centre for Membrane Science and
Technology Dr Pierre Le-Clech
has calculated that by 2015 some
800 tonnes will need to be disposed of
each year in Australia alone. Worldwide
there will soon be almost 300 large
desalination plants (those that produce
more than 50 megalitres a day), each
turning over tens of thousands of
14 kg polymeric membrane modules
every four years or so.
Pierre has been researching this
problem, endeavouring to come up with
a second life for these membrane units,
so they don’t just end up in landfill.
“Usually they will have lifetime of
4–5 years,” he says. “In our Australian
environment, sea water is of good
quality, so they will have a longer
lifetime. But there is an average of
about four years.”
Sydney’s desalination plant, which
produces about 250 megalitres a day,
is currently the largest in the Southern
Hemisphere, but will soon
be overtaken by several
others.
At one end of the scale
of options is the possibility of burning
the membrane units, either to turn
into syngas that can then be used as
fuel, or as a substitute for coke to be
used in steel-making furnaces.
Pierre says that the retired
membranes could also be used in
situations where they do not need
to perform as well as they do at a
desalination plant. “For example,
there are certain applications when
you don’t need such high levels of
purity, such as brackish applications.
We may be able to bury them and use
them to passively filter groundwater
for irrigation.”
Another use would be to treat
the old membranes and then use
them to help remove pathogens.
“Once the dense polyamide active
layer, responsible for salt rejection,
is degraded by chlorine and/or
permanganate attack, the treated
membranes have the potential to be
directly reused as porous filters for
other applications,” Pierre says.
He says he is also considering
whether they can be re-used for
humanitarian purposes in gravity-fed
water pump systems, for example
in developing countries. “But then
you’ve got relatively high costs in
transporting them.”
The project was funded by the
National Centre of Excellence in
Desalination Australia (NCEDA).
Tiny work, huge outcomes
Although its focus is on the tiny,
the new Australian Centre for
NanoMedicine (ACN) is already
having a big impact.
Launched in July, the ACN is
one of the newest multidisciplinary
centres within the UNSW fold. It
aims to build research teams to
create an improved future through
better drug delivery technologies,
diagnostics, imaging agents and
therapies.
ACN combines researchers from
the UNSW Faculties of Engineering,
Medicine and Science in conjunction
with The Children’s Cancer Institute
Australia, the Lowy Cancer Research
Centre and the Centre for Advanced
Macromolecular Design, to deliver
therapeutic solutions
to research problems in
medicine.
Already, 20
researchers are working
together on diverse
topics within the Centre,
including the eye disease
uveitis, liver fibrosis,
Participants at the International NanoMedicine conference, Professor
Sakthi Kumar, Tokyo University, Professor Jagat Kanwar, Deakin University,
the childhood cancer
Associate Professor Allan Coombes, University of Queensland and Dr
neuroblastoma and liver
Hans van der Voorn, Ion Science.
cancer.
In July, ACN hosted
Australian of the Year, Professor Ian
an International NanoMedicine
Frazer, on the creation of the HPV
conference at Sydney’s Coogee Beach
vaccine against cervical cancer.
that attracted 200 attendees from
In August, ACN’s first visiting
10 countries, with presentations on
professor, Professor Molly Stevens of
chemistry, biology and polymerisation. Imperial College London, spent four
It included a presentation by former
weeks at UNSW.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 5 making news
UNSW dominating
Top 100 engineers list
Engineers who graduated from UNSW have dominated this year’s
prestigious Engineers Australia Top 100 list, with more than a fifth
being UNSW alumni.
Twenty-two engineers on the list – which this year included 34
new names – received their degrees from UNSW, more than twice as
many as from any other university.
The Top 100 list is updated annually and showcases the wide
variety of areas where engineers hold influential roles in leadership
or contribute greatly to society through their technical expertise.
UNSW alumni on the list include Bruce Buchanan, Group CEO
of Jetstar, Grant King, Managing Director of Origin Energy, Emeritus
Professor Elizabeth Taylor, Chair, Board of Professional Engineers
of Queensland, Bob Every, Non-executive Chairman of Wesfarmers,
Perth, and Chris Roberts, CEO and President of Cochlear, Sydney.
For the complete list, see http://engineerstop100.
realviewtechnologies.com.
On track for a win
For the first time the
Formula SAE Project team
will use the same basic
car structure as last year,
tweaking it in the hope
that it will dominate the
December races.
Every year since 2000,
a UNSW team has entered
the Society of Automotive
Engineers race, hosted by
the University of Victoria.
“In the past we built a
new vehicle every year,”
says current project leader
Anton Messina. “The
basic premise is it should
be student designed
and student built, with
a motorbike engine no
greater than 600CC. It’s a step up from a go-cart.”
The UNSW vehicle uses a 550 CC Italian Aprilia engine with
a MoTeC engine control system. The front half of the vehicle is
extremely light but strong, with aluminium honeycomb panels.
“The focus is on acceleration and agility rather than top speed,”
Anton says. Modifications this year include a new air intake built
out of carbon fibre, and a new suspension set-up, featuring a super
light mould in a single piece of aluminium designed by mechanical
engineering undergraduate Simon Thomsen.
“In terms of gram for gram, reducing weight on the wheels is
much more significant than reducing weight in the car,” Anton says.
6 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
Strong mum inspires scholarship
The memory of how resilient her mother was
encouraged Judith Kay to set up an engineering
scholarship in her name: the Vida Balshaw
Scholarship.
“She was left a widow when I was 13,”
Judith says. “She had to go to work and
became a typist in an engineering firm. She used
to get very frustrated with the engineers who
didn’t do their work properly. She would give
them all an earful and they would snap to.”
Describing her mum as a “little feisty lady”
and one of the “second wave of feminists,”
Judith says she exemplified someone who just
knew what to do in a man’s world and got on
with it without making a fuss. “If I had not
had her support, I wouldn’t be the person I am
today.”
The scholarship – currently $5000 a year for
four years – has been set up to support a female
student entering an electrical or mechanical
engineering degree. There have been 10
recipients since the scholarship was first offered
in 1997, and it will be next offered in 2013
when the current recipient finishes their degree.
“My greatest desire is that there will be a
youngster from Mt Druitt who will get it,”
Judith says, as the aim is to support those from
tougher financial backgrounds.
Judith was the recipient of a scholarship
herself when she went through teachers’ college.
“It’s been a very positive experience at UNSW –
they are very good with their donors,” she says.
“The rewards have come back tenfold on the
money I’ve invested.”
Judith’s only ongoing requirement is that
the recipients write her a letter each year telling
her how they are going with their studies.
If you would like to set up an engineering
scholarship, please contact Stephen Wooldridge,
Alumni and Development Manager,
T: 02 9385 5985, E: s.wooldridge@unsw.edu.au
Indigenous mentoring
reaps double rewards
Both mentors and mentees are
benefiting from the Nura Gili
mentoring program that supports
indigenous engineering students at
UNSW.
“It’s one thing to be able to
study and pass a course, it’s another
thing entirely to try to pass on that
knowledge to others,” says Ed
Kearney, a Civil and Environmental
Engineering PhD student who mentors
second-year student Jacob Hyland.
“You can’t just have an inkling of
what the subject entails, you have to
understand it in its entirety.”
Ed began mentoring when he was
an undergraduate. “I don’t want to
sound too worthy, but I do enjoy
sharing the gift of knowledge,” he says.
Ed and Jacob
meet twice
a week for a
couple of hours
to pore over
the mysteries of
water engineering
and solid
mechanics. “Ed
helps me with key
concepts, that previously went a little
bit over my head,” Jacob says. “He
helps me frame the material and gives
it more context.”
Jacob, from Maryborough in
Queensland, was encouraged by his
school maths teacher and inspired by
Ben Lange, Australia’s first indigenous
electrical engineer, to attend an
Indigenous Australian Engineering
Summer School (IAESS) in Newcastle
University in 2008, and that’s when he
got his first taste of civil engineering.
He is now on an RTA scholarship,
and wants to be a civil engineer in a
rural area. “I was born in the country
and I want to get back out there. To
be part of building new things.”
Medal for Maria
New president of IAG
Professor Maria Skyllas-Kazacos, from the School of Chemical Engineering,
has won the international Castner medal, which recognises the outstanding
achievements of an authority on applied electrochemistry. The medal is awarded
biannually by the London-based Society of Chemical Industry Electrochemical
Technology Group.
Maria’s research interests span metal extraction, electrode materials and
membranes, but she is most famous for her work on the vanadium redox flow
battery, developed at UNSW during the late 1980s and 1990s. The battery is
regarded as one of the most feasible technologies currently available for efficient
energy storage, to help in the global reduction of fossil fuel consumption and
greenhouse gas emissions, and is now being commercialised around the world.
Professor Chris
Rizos, Head
of the School
of Surveying
and Spatial
Information
Systems, was
recently named
the new president of the International
Association of Geodesy, a position
that he will hold till 2015.
Parkinson Award
A win for our coastline
Dr Nagaraj Shivaramaiah, a Senior
Research Associate at the School of
Surveying and Spatial Information Systems,
has been awarded the Parkinson Award
for outstanding new research, by the US
Institute of Navigation. It is the first time an
Australian has won this award.
Nagaraj’s PhD proposed a number of improvements for
signal and receiver design in satellite navigation, particularly
for the most sophisticated and promising wideband signal
known as Alternate Binary-Offset-Carrier (AltBOC). Not
only did he produce a simpler, receiver-friendly signal with
all the same properties as AltBOC, but also developed a
less complex receiver. A major breakthrough was its ability
to overcome multiple signal reflection, a problem that has
plagued current GPS accuracy, especially in cities.
Australia’s coastlines are likely to benefit from the
prestigious 2011 Churchill Fellowship awarded to Alessio
Mariani, Project Engineer at the Water Research Laboratory.
His topic is Investigation of International Innovative Coastal
Engineering Solutions to Manage Beach Erosion.
Under the fellowship, Alessio will spend 4–6 weeks
travelling to countries such as Japan, the USA, the
Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy to inspect the sites
where coastal protection methods have been implemented
and to document their performance. He will also interview
the key experts in the field. The Winston Churchill
Memorial Trust has, since 1965, presented the fellowships
to Australians excelling in their field, allowing them to travel
the world to expand their knowledge so they can further
their contribution to Australian society. This year, Alessio
was one of 107 recipients.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 7 PROFILE
Mar yam Khajeh
The Sydney President of Engineers
Australia is back at UNSW in a key
commercialisation role.
G
ot an invention? Maryam Khajeh’s
specialty is taking engineering and
scientific inventions and developing ways
to commercialise them.
The 30-year-old UNSW Engineering alumni, who is
also the youngest ever president of the Sydney Division of
Engineers Australia, recently joined the team at NewSouth
Innovations (NSi) as a Commercialisation Manager.
Everything that is invented at UNSW gets commercialised
through NSi.
“This is exactly what I want to do at this point in my
career,” she says. “It’s really that nexus where law and
research and technology combine.”
With a CV full of qualifications and a passion for
innovation, Maryam is well suited to the position. She is
bright and bubbly and her eyes sparkle when she thinks of
the possibilities.
“Every issue we’ve got in this
country (infrastructure, healthcare,
energy, sustainability) is an engineering
issue… and they’re all tied to
innovation,” she says. “I’d like to see
innovation and technology be at the forefront of political
discussion and debate. Engineering minds are critical in
solving the problems.”
Born in Iran, Maryam moved to Australia with her
family when she was five. She became dux at her school,
Mackellar Girls in Manly Vale, and decided that instead
of studying law, she would complete biomedical and
computer engineering degrees at UNSW.
“I chose engineering because I liked maths,” she says.
“If I chose law, I thought I’d really miss the technical
aspects of what I did.”
“I chose computers because at school I did some very
bare-boned programming in BASIC and really enjoyed it,
and I chose biomedical engineering because I wanted to
help people, but not have to deal with that emotional side
of seeing sick or dying people all the time like in medicine. I
really believed engineers could make a difference.”
Maryam’s thesis looked at developing automated
systems to detect honeycombing of the lungs in highresolution CT scans.
Then in fourth year, she completed a Diploma of
Innovation Management at UNSW to learn about
commercialisation of ideas. “I was the only engineer who did
it back then,” she says. “I really wanted to be on the edge of
technology.”
When she finished her degree in 2003, Maryam was
initially disappointed. “The IT bubble had just burst, so
it was hard to get a job in computer engineering.” But,
on a recommendation, she picked up a job as a trainee
patent attorney for Davies Collison Cave, one of the largest
intellectual property firms in Australia. Her training included
completing a Masters in Industrial Property (law) and
working with another patent attorney. “It’s like Jedi knight
training – you have to train with another patent attorney
for two years,” she says. Her position as a patent attorney
– which she held for almost seven years – included patent
drafting, prosecution, and validity analysis of patents for
local and overseas clients. “You get
backyard inventors all the way through
to sophisticated technical guys in big
companies,” Maryam says. “There
are so many different inventions in
different fields and you need to understand them and be
able to generate legal documents about it.” One high-profile
example she worked on was the “lights for the blind” brail
system.
She was grateful for the wide exposure to different ideas
and fields through her biomedical degree. “Biomedical
engineering gives you experience in so many different areas.”
All this has helped Maryam in her current role at NSi,
where she liaises constantly with groups such as CSIRO,
NICTA, IP specialists and scientists. “It’s not an easy job,”
she says. “It’s quite challenging because you’re dealing with
so many people day to day.”
Her voluntary role as Engineers Australia President keeps
Maryam busy with an average of an event per week – either
a meeting, or speaking engagement. There are about 18,000
members in the Sydney Division, and current issues include
a push to make a compulsory registrar system for NSW
engineers, as there is in Queensland. “It’s a difficult thing
to do, because it’s such a broad profession and has to be
relevant to all the industries within Engineering Australia.”
“Every issue we’ve got
in this country is an
engineering issue.”
8 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
Mongolian miners
W
hen Mining Engineering alumnus Katrina Nobes
started working in Mongolia last year, she didn’t
realise she’d be running into other UNSW graduates.
Katrina is the Senior Mine Planning Engineer for the
underground at Oyu Tolgoi, a large copper and gold mine
in the South Gobi region. “We moved here as my husband
was offered the role of Resource Geology Manager after
a long history within Rio Tinto Exploration,” she says.
“After six months of settling in and being involved in
some charity work and generally making friends in town,
I then secured my role.”
Katrina, who finished her degree in 2001, quickly
discovered Mongolia had some other UNSW graduates:
Tim Baitch (who finished in 2003) and Sam Bowles
(2002). “It turns out it is a very small world – even
though it is a global industry – as I remember these guys
from uni and have now developed quite strong friendships
with them and their partners. There is a large ex-pat
community over here.”
She says that adjusting to the –20°C temperatures
wasn’t the biggest shock. “So far I have avoided drinking
airag (fermented horse milk), however the biggest shock
is food related – the open butchers and meat markets
certainly take some getting used to. Sometimes when
driving out of town for a weekend in the countryside you
accidentally catch sight of a freshly slaughtered sheep
being placed in the boot of a sedan ready for a family’s
khorkhog dinner that night. Mongolians love their hot,
meaty meals.”
Katrina says she loves hearing the stories from all
around the world from other ex-pats, but has also
appreciated the family-focused Mongolian life. “The
Mongolians have very strong family bonds and its
common for three generations to share a home and help
with raising of the kids/grandkids.”
She encourages other engineers from UNSW to look
at working overseas. “I didn’t think that in less than 10
years from graduating from UNSW I would have worked
in Australia, Namibia, Canada and now Mongolia.”
The power of love
A
fter meeting in the power
electronics lab at UNSW during
their engineering studies, Kelly and
Simon Blyth have established both a
life together and a successful Sydneybased electronics design house.
With a solid team of engineers
and support staff around them, the
dynamic 29-year-olds, who were
married in 2009, greatly enjoy
working together, with desks beside
each other. “We think it’s fantastic,”
Kelly says. “We don’t understand how
people could not see their partners all
day long – we love it!”
Simon started the company, LX
Innovations, after finishing his degree
in 2005. Kelly went on to complete
a Masters of Commerce at UNSW
and then worked at ResMed before
joining the company. She now focuses
on project management, client liaison
and new client management, whereas
Simon is technical project manager.
Kelly says the company steers
electronics projects from conception
and development through to ongoing
support once a product has made it
to market. It partners with companies
here and overseas. Some clients are
large engineering companies for which
LX Innovations provides additional
resources, others are smaller companies
who need help seeing a project through
design and manufacture, and others are
“inventors who want to commercialise
an idea”.
“A lot of our products are
based on wireless technologies,”
she says. “We work with Cochlear
at the moment developing the next
generation of implants. We also
recently worked with the RTA on a
traffic-management system.” Another
current client is an inventive dairy
farmer who is developing a device
to maximise yield by detecting when
a cow is on heat. He is doing all the
trials himself.
“Because we work on such
different things, our engineers never
get bored,” Kelly says. “Each project
has its own challenges and each
project is urgent.”
The team at LX have been
nationally and internationally
recognised with many awards,
including EDN Innovation, Future
Electronics and Institution of
Engineering and Technology (IET)
Innovation awards.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 9 COVER story
What is the
of medicine?
UNSW engineers are at the forefront of many areas of medical research, and are
shaping the ways our health care will be delivered tomorrow.
T
oday you’re sick. You go
to a doctor and after tests, they
determine what is wrong, so
they can “fix” you with procedures or
medications that have worked for most
people in the past.
It’s a reactive system. But if
UNSW engineers have their way, in
the future medicine will be a lot more
proactive, warning health practitioners
and patients that something is likely
to go wrong. It might alert doctors
and nurses that an elderly patient is
probably going to have a fall because
of the way they are moving; or that
your individual genetic make-up will
predispose you to particular conditions,
and that you may react better with a
different form of treatment. Futuristic
health care will be more automated, yet
more precise, with pharmaceutical and
10 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
other treatments targeting only the area
of the body that needs it.
UNSW engineering researchers are
currently working on these and other
areas, often collaboratively across
schools and other faculties. “We’re
just doing everything – diagnostics,
wound healing, drug delivery, data
management – it’s exciting,” says
Professor John Whitelock, Associate
Dean for Research for the Faculty of
Engineering. He says that medicine
and engineering are a very good fit.
“Once you think of the body as a series
of tubes – which it is – and electrical
signals, then you can see the body is
primarily a combination of plumbing
and electrical systems all rolled
together. You could even argue that
most good medicos are Homo sapiens
bioengineers.”
Professor Anne Simmons, former
Head of the Graduate School of
Biomedical Engineering, agrees about
the importance of the engineering
mindset to biomedical research. That’s
partly what started the school 30 years
ago as a multidisciplinary research
centre between medicine, and electrical,
mechanical and chemical engineering.
“The reason for this school is to bring
together interdisciplinary expertise
to solve a whole lot of problems,”
she says. “It’s a real mixing pot. We
use engineering expertise to solve
problems. We’re up here in the medical
part of campus, and that’s where we
should be.”
The research program initially had
a big impact in the area of dialysis, and
later with 24-hour contact lenses. “We
really made a significant mark in these
areas in the world,” Anne says.
Currently, the two main focuses
for the School’s 50 PhD students and
500 masters students are implantable
bionics and tissue engineering,
but there are many other research
projects, including improving imaging
of neonates and rehabilitation
engineering. Much of the work is with
clinicians at Prince of Wales, St George
and St Vincent’s hospitals. Anne is also
excited that there has been an injection
of new funds for facilities, such as a
$1 million two-photon microscope,
and talent into the School. “We’ve had
quite a few young bright sparks come
in recently.”
That bionic eye
The most talked about project, though,
is the bionic eye, with UNSW part of the
Bionic Vision Australia consortium that
received $42 million to implant a bionic
eye in a person in four years. The project
is currently 1.5 years into that four-year
period, and has recently ramped up,
with the new clean room and research
facilities in the Samuels Building at the
Kensington campus. “There’s probably
50 people down there now – it’s a really
significant critical mass of people,” Anne
says. “It’s even more sexy than [the
development of] the Cochlear implant,
because seeing the videos of children
hearing for the first time, it just makes
you cry and thinking of that happening
with sight is even more heart-warming.
Even if this prosthesis gives them just
light and darkness – and it is going to
do so much more than that – it will help
improve their quality of life. That’s what
we’re aiming for.”
“It’s going really well,” says Nigel
Lovell, a UNSW Scientia Professor of
the Graduate School of Biomedical
Engineering, who helps lead the research
streams in the bionic eye project and has
been involved for 10 years. “We will put
it in several individuals in 2013 and by
then we’ll have a next-generation device
as well.”
International competition to create
a bionic eye is stiff and a US company
has already begun human trials. “But
theirs takes six hours of surgery to put
it in front of the retina. Our device will
be placed behind the retina, which is a
much easier surgical procedure.”
Nigel says the eventual vision won’t
be the same as a sighted person. “You
won’t be able to perceive colour, as
you’re just stimulating a whole lot of
nerve cells irrespective of how these
cells encode colour,” he says. The vision
will be split into about 100 moving
elements, or pixels, each one providing
an intensity of light on a grey scale.
Anne and Nigel agree that one of
the most important aspects of the bionic
eye research program is the spin-off
technologies that could have a positive
effect in other areas of health care. For
example, the state-of-the-art electronics
and electrode manufacture techniques
could be used in other implantable
devices, such as the Cochlear device.
Although he is excited by the bionic
eye, Nigel is very aware that other areas
of health care research being undertaken
at UNSW will have a greater impact
on more people. “It will be absolutely
brilliant if we can make a prosthesis
that helps people see,” he says. “But
the irony is that we have a much, much
bigger health problem with chronic
disease in the elderly. Falls, heart
failure, pulmonary disease, etc. It’s not
as sexy, but the bigger issue for society
is how we manage that with an aging
population and rising health costs.”
For some years, Nigel and others
have been developing wearable healthcare devices for elderly people and
others susceptible to falls or needing
personal care in the home. In the
first models, the device automatically
detected a fall, and could alert medical
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 11 authorities – unlike the popular
VitalCall system, in which a button
usually needs to be pressed by the
patient. “It’s got a number of sensors –
barometric pressure, accelerometer and
gyroscope,” Nigel says. Later models
are more intelligent, analysing the
movement of wearers as they sit, stand
and get out of bed, then calculating if
they are becoming more susceptible
to falls. The smart device should
potentially allow earlier intervention,
and Nigel says it’s these sorts of easy-touse devices that people are willing to use
that will have a huge beneficial effect
on health care. “Then we can manage
people in their home, promoting health
care and reducing health care costs.”
According to Professor Eliathamby
Ambikairajah, Head of the School
of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications, who worked with
Nigel on the device, the new algorithms
that they developed accurately
recognised normal movement such as
“detecting a person walking uphill,
downhill, getting into the car”. Another
part of the research involved developing
sound signatures so the device can keep
track of sounds that connect to aspects
of the patient’s health – everything from
coughs to flushing the toilet. “This is
one part of telemedicine. The other part
will monitor heart rate, blood pressure
and energy expenditure,” he says.
Julien Epps, Senior Lecturer in signal
processing in the School of Electrical
Engineering and Telecommunications, is
working on similar warning systems for
mental illness – trying to determine signs
of mental illness from voice patterns to
enable earlier intervention or monitor
the progress of treatment. In one
12 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
project, in collaboration with the Black
Dog Institute and the UNSW School of
Psychiatry, Julien is working on finding
objective measures of depression, and
has found some differences in the
vocal cords between people with and
without mental illness. “If you carefully
select 20–30 millisecond segments of
speech and model the spectral envelope,
that seems to be the richest source of
information.”
Another project, with the
Ambulance Research Institute, aims to
recognise pre-suicidal speech, which
would be useful for emergency services.
“They have huge logs of telephone
calls that are grouped into categories –
usually into physical risk, rather than
mental state,” Julien says. “One trend
in health care is the trend towards
automation – lots of ambulance-call
services are moving towards telephone
triage systems. It’s a little bit ‘blue sky’
… but years down the track this could
become part of real systems. We know
it’s possible.”
Information
overload
Quite a few UNSW engineers with an
interest in health care end up at the
UNSW Centre of Health Informatics
at the top of Kensington campus.
Since 1999, the Centre’s principal
aim has been to map the complex
organisational systems that shape
today’s health system and to design
rigorous, system-wide interventions
that provide a sustainable platform for
future health systems.
The Director himself, Professor
Enrico Coiera, is a UNSW computer
engineering graduate, and a medical
doctor. “Engineering brings us tools,
but it also lends us an approach to
thinking about things,” he says.
“We understand that health care is a
feedback control system. That’s very
powerful: it’s a unique perspective.”
The Centre is trying to improve
patient safety within the health-care
system. “Two to three per cent of
hospital admissions have a very severe,
adverse effect on the patient,” Enrico
says. “Can IT be a safety vehicle?”
He points out ways in which IT has
harmed patients in the past: doctors
scrolling down a list to prescribe a
drug, and then, distracted for a second,
click on the wrong medication; X-rays
spun 90 degrees on a computer to aid
viewing, but the labels aren’t spun
with them, creating error. “It’s either
software error or user error. We need
to design these systems in a way that
it’s not possible to do things that are
dangerous – and that’s where good
engineering comes in.”
Enrico says the centre is also
studying how all the new reams of
medical information, such as genomic
knowledge, can and will affect clinical
practice. “How do you convert it all
into actionable informatics?” he asks.
For example, tapping into existing
knowledge to work out what genes
might cause a disease, or “what drugs
might be available to treat it that we
haven’t thought of using before?”
The centre is developing software and
systems in order to mine the masses of
data for new links that can improve
health outcomes.
In the School of Computer Science
and Engineering, Senior Lecturer
“This is the only
modelling work
internationally
that looks at
brain activation
during ECT”
Left: A model of the brain, developed by Dr
Socrates Dokos, helps ascertain for the first time
what happens during electroconvulsive therapy.
His models also show the electrical activity in
the heart.
Opposite: Nigel Lovell looks at one of the devices
that could help prevent falls in the elderly.
Below: An antibody.
Bruno Gaeta is working with Andrew
Collins in the Faculty of Science to
develop software that will help solve
a problem in immunology: analysing
the genes from which antibodies are
produced. “This research gives us a
hold on how individual genes affect
our immune response,” Bruno says.
“The existing programs
to study antibodies were
not working well – they
produced a lot of incorrect
results. Your body makes
antibodies on the fly by
cutting and pasting segments
of its genes, and working
backwards is hard. This
software gives us a chance to
study the antibody genes as
we have inherited them from
our parents.”
Bruno says one direct
application of the work
is in chronic lymphocytic
leukaemia. “It’s the most common
type of adult leukaemia, but it has
multiple forms. It can be really
aggressive, and will need intensive
chemotherapy, or it can be really
gentle.” These various forms currently
can’t be determined on presentation,
but if you analyse the antibody genes,
you could start telling them apart.
“This program generated enough trust
that a Nobel Prize winner [Andrew
Fire of Stanford University in the USA]
has asked us to analyse his results.”
Meanwhile, Dr Socrates Dokos
at the Graduate School of Biomedical
Engineering is using computer power
to model how the brain and heart
respond to electrical activity. Similar
modelling work has been important in
the development of the bionic eye.
The work on the brain is vital for
understanding electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT). “It’s one of the best ways to treat
depression, bipolar disorder etc, but we
don’t know how it works,” Socrates
says. “What happens if we move the
electrodes on the head or change the
amplitude or duration of these pulses?”
The currents are so large during ECT
that it saturates recording equipment, so
previously, electrical activity in the brain
could only be measured immediately
after ECT. “This is the only modelling
work internationally that looks at brain
activation during ECT,” Socrates says.
As all tissues in the brain don’t
act uniformly, his model includes
conductivity of different tissues, such
as neural tissues or the spongy
bone middle tissue of the skull, all
accurately determined by separate
testing. The model correlates with
clinical data coming from Associate
Professor Colleen Loo in the School
of Psychiatry. “For larger pulse
widths we are getting larger range
of areas of the brain stimulated,
including the brain stem, and
that may have negative effects on
breathing or heart rate,” Socrates
says. “It goes away if we use a
briefer pulse.”
His other primary project is
researching the electrical activity
in the heart, which is important in
understanding atrial arrhythmias,
a predictor of stroke. Usually, the
heart’s own clock (the sinoatrial node,
found on the wall of the right atrium)
propagates a pulse across the heart,
which triggers contractions first in the
atria, then the ventricles. “If there are
disruptions to that sequence, such as
due to disease, then it can get quite
chaotic in there,” Socrates says. This
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 13 creates an uneven or bad heart rhythm.
“In diseased atria you can get ectopic
sites of activation, so there is a region
around the veins that is exciting the
cells more often than the pacemaker
dictates. Blood becomes stagnant in the
atrium, which could lead to clotting
and eventually stroke.”
Socrates uses a combination of
modelling and electrical tests with
rabbit hearts. “We’re the only ones in
the world taking detailed recordings
from tissue and applying it to the
model.” He says that using this
method, he can also check the potential
efficacy of drugs, by soaking tissue
in the drugs and seeing how it affects
electrical conductivity.
Go with the flow
Just as Socrates is modelling the
body’s electrical pathways, others
in the School of Mechanical and
Manufacturing Engineering are
modelling blood flow. For example,
Dr Tracie Barber is using her expertise
in aerodynamics of racing vehicles to
help understand how stents in arteries
affect blood flow. “We’ve got people
in fluid dynamics, and now we’re using
it for something that clinicians can
use – it’s not generally what you’d use
mechanical engineering for,” she says.
By studying flow around stents
(small devices put into collapsed or
diseased vessels to help keep them
open), Tracie has discovered their
inherent problems. “Often a stent
is put in, but it results in re-stenosis
(narrowing of the vein or artery),” she
says. “The stents create a very threedimensional flow, and downstream
there’s a jet that causes damage to the
arterial wall.” Tracie is also modelling
what happens when needles are
constantly put into the same arteries,
such as occurs with dialysis treatments.
Working with Tracie, third-year
PhD researcher Caroline O’Brien is
studying stents that exude a drug in
order to stop platelets forming around
the artificial obstruction and keep the
blood flowing. Too much of the drug
could be toxic and too little means it
won’t be effective. Caroline’s modelling
is showing that “the amount of the
drug released and distribution in the
14 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
Above: Images showing interrupted flow in a stented
artery. The fluorescence image shows marker drug
deposition accumulation in areas of low flow.
Opposite above: John Whitelock.
Opposite below: Human colon carcinoma cells
exposed to cerium oxide nanoparticles (green). Particle
uptake into cells was confirmed by the co-localisation
(yellow) of particles with the lysosomes (red).
vessel is dependent on that flow field
past it.” The flow varies considerably
depending on where in the body, and
whose body.
For example, “with the renal artery,
you get a lot of the drug on the cranial
side, but lower amounts on the caudal,
but stenosis occurs on the caudal side,
so you’re getting less drugs where you
need it. It’s an asymmetrical distribution
of the drug, which is not good.”
Because every vessel is different,
and every person is different, the model
can be adjusted based on an MRI scan.
“It’s patient-specific,” she says. “We
can change pretty much everything. We
can program in specific wave forms and
make it vascular or arterial.”
Caroline says understanding how
flows are interrupted in the body is
relevant to any local-based drug delivery
system, such as contraceptive implants.
It’s also vital in understanding how any
artificial intrusion in a body will affect
fluid movement.
down to size
Across many technical fields, engineers
are now working at the tiniest scale to
bring about large changes – and perhaps
none more so than in health.
“We’ve launched a new centre – the
Australian Centre for NanoMedicine,”
says Professor Tom Davis of the
School of Chemical Engineering, and
Director of the new Centre. Its aim is
to bring together a multidisciplinary
team of internationally recognised
polymer chemists, engineers and other
technologists with clinical and medical
practitioners to deliver improvements
in health through understanding how
things work at the smallest scale. “It’s
a very complicated area,” Tom says.
“We go through the chemistry and
engineering side, to modelling and then
testing on animals and clinical trials. It’s
a very long production line.”
One project Tom is working on
involves designing nano particles
that will help in positron emission
tomography (PET) imaging. “We can
incorporate iron-oxide particles that
will then show up in imaging. They can
incorporate RNA or drugs at the same
time.” He says the advantage is that
they can then target the particles much
more effectively. “It’s also good from a
research point of view, because you can
see if it’s targeting the right areas.”
Dr Megan Lord, Research
Fellow at the Graduate School of
Biomedical Engineering, has a team
of about 20 people working on
different nanoparticles, endeavouring
to understand their capabilities. For
example, they have discovered that
metal oxide particles are suited to
treating arthritis, because they can help
stem inflammation. “They mop up
the free radicals,” she says. Polymeric
particles, on the other hand, are more
suited to delivering cancer drugs.
Megan says one of the benefits of
working with materials 1000 times
smaller than a cell is that they can easily
deliver things – such as pharmaceuticals
– inside a cell. “It allows uptake into
the cell,” she says. “My work is very
focused on how cells take up particles.
Does it cause cells to die? How do the
materials interact with the body?”
The work could have profound
effects on targeting parts of the
body – such as tumours – with
precise treatments. For example, Dr
Victoria Timchenko, of the School
of Mechanical and Manufacturing
Engineering, is developing models of
how nanoparticles can be heated to
aid hyperthermia treatments. “The
use of heat (hyperthermia) is an
effective treatment for some cancers
when combined with chemotherapy,
radiotherapy, or both,” she says. “There
are many other medical applications
for fluid and heat transfer research. For
example, nanoparticles, separately or
in combination with liposomes can be
used for drug delivery and also for the
combination of hyperthermia treatment
and drug delivery.”
The nano work also looks at
designing surfaces on the nanoscale –
either with roughness or coatings – to
see if they can change the impact of
implantable devices, such as stents. For
example, with a coating of Perlecan
(heperan sulfate chains) “we can get
endothelial cells to stick to the material
and we can stop platelets adhering to
the vessel,” Megan says. Stents that
ooze drugs will eventually run out, so
Megan hopes that structures can be
designed on the nanoscale that will have
the same effect, and will be more stable
over time. “You’re getting heparin-like
qualities out of a molecule.”
improved
healing
Yet another team of researchers are
studying how tissue regenerates, and
how we can use that understanding
to aid healing. “You can cut out twothirds of your liver and it will regrow,”
Megan says, yet that is not true for
most of the body’s other parts. “All the
machinery to grow bones is switched off
when we reach adult life.” Yet in some
organisms limbs and other body parts
do regenerate into adulthood.
One of the clues that UNSW
researchers have been examining in
order to understand healing is the
chitosan bandage that was developed
by the US Army, and shown to
dramatically improve healing in the
battlefield. Chitosan comes from the
exoskeleton of crustaceans. “We were
engaged to understand how it works,”
Megan says. “Basically it promotes
platelet adhesion.”
“It makes a friendly environment for
the healing to occur,” John Whitelock
says. “It’s aiding the remodelling. It’s
making a very friendly environment that
the cells can then remodel in the most
effective way.”
John says now there is an
understanding about how it works,
current research is focused on chitosanbased future materials. “Using the same
building blocks of chitosan, and putting
them into a polymer that then can be
used as a delivery agent for the signals
to control the wound healing.”
Similar work has seen Dr Helder
Marcal, of the Australian Centre for
NanoMedicine,
receive widespread
publicity for
regenerating the
severed nerves of
rats, using a gel
interlaced with
molecules from the
regenerated limbs
of axolotls.
John says much
of this research
comes from trying
to understand
how living tissue is
built in utero. “For
example, building
a bone – how do you get a mixed tissue
of bone and cartilage that’s one mixed
unit?”
John’s work, which has major
implications for arthritis, involves
generating cartilage tissue. “We’ve
got some of the best cartilage tissue in
the world, but it’s a matter of having
enough, in the right time frame, to be
useful. One day we might be able to
make a great volume of tissue, but don’t
want to get too carried away with overengineering things that aren’t going to
be that useful.”
Instead, John emphasises that
the diagnostics need to be better
understood. “At the moment we still
only understand about 10% of the
signals for arthritis,” he says. Current
diagnosis for many illnesses involves
looking at the “factory” or the organ to
see how something is working. “We feel
that doesn’t give you an early enough
picture, because if the scaffolding is
falling apart, it may be causing the
factory to work harder. So it may
appear to be functioning well.”
The key then, is to locate the bits of
“scaffolding” that indicate something is
not as it should be.
“In arthritis, what we are looking
at is molecular diagnostics signalling.
Can we use those bits of scaffolding
as diagnostics to understand what is
happening? The next question is how
are you going to measure those signals –
is it a dipstick or a blood test?”
The complexity of human bodies
and the health care systems around us
will continue to give engineers plenty
to ponder over the coming decades,
as they work towards a healthy future
for us all.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 15 schools of thought
school of CIVIL & ENVIRONMENTAL engineering
Soil data will revolutionise construction
Safety standards
in the construction
industry could be
revolutionised with
world-first research
that is developing
ways to account for
soil strength changes
associated with
variations in moisture
content.
“We’re looking
at particularly
complicated aspects of
soil behaviour – what
Calibration chamber
happens when the
amount of moisture changes a lot – either through drought
or flooding,” says Senior Lecturer Dr Adrian Russell.
“Conventional design methods are based on ideas
developed many decades ago for fully saturated soils, eg
Terzaghi’s bearing capacity theory and Rankine’s earth
pressure theory. The need is to update these so they are
relevant to soils which vary in their degree of saturation.”
Adrian says that for the past 15–20 years UNSW
engineers have been developing an understanding of the
basic mechanics of soil behaviour under different moisture
conditions, but they are now modelling and developing
practical applications that will feed into design codes. The
work will be useful in everything from house construction to
much larger projects, including dams, airport runways and
slope stability. It could hopefully prevent such disasters as the
25-metre hole that opened up on a road in Bellevue Hill, in
Sydney’s east, in 2009.
“All the current design methods really only work in
saturated soils,” Adrian says. “We have to seriously question
all those established procedures and redo them all.”
He says that in the past, engineers basically just applied
very large safety factors to construction. “You’d take a guess,
based on your knowledge and expertise, and then for safety,
divide it by three.” This inaccurate method won’t work as
droughts and floods become more extreme with climate
change, and also often doesn’t work for sudden saturation of
the soil, such as burst water pipes.
“At the very least we need to identify the risks and the
likelihood of certain things happening, and if they do happen,
how severe it will be.”
school of photovoltaic & renewable energy engineering
New hired gun
The School has just welcomed into its
halls its third recipient of the coveted
IEEE William R. Cherry Award for
outstanding contributions to the
advancement of photovoltaic science
and technology. Other recipients are
Professors Martin Green and Stuart
Wenham.
Professor Allen Barnett, formerly of
the University of Delaware in the USA,
joined the staff in September. “This
is the leading university group in the
world in photovoltaics and the lead
is getting wider based on the vision
of the present leaders and the UNSW
administration,” Allen said. “SPREE is
clearly the best academic and university
research organisation in the world. My
colleagues from all over are excited
about me joining – as am I.”
Allen didn’t come from the US
alone – his wife accompanied him,
16 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
and several of his students from the
University of Delaware, where he has
been working since 2003.
One of his roles there has been as
Executive Director of the Solar Power
Program, which has been developing a
40% efficiency solar panel.
His resume includes a long
period in photovoltaics, including
founding the company AstroPower
in 1983 to develop and market the
world’s most cost-effective solar
cell. AstroPower became the world’s
largest independent manufacturer of
solar power products and a leading
provider of solar electric home power
systems for the mainstream residential
market. Most of its assets were sold to
GE Energy in 2004.
A prolific writer and researcher,
Allen has authored more than 250
scientific publications, holds 28 US
patents, and has received 7 R&D 100
Awards for new industrial products.
His research focus here will be
broad, including systems and the
cost of electricity, but will focus
particularly on very high efficiency
and broadening the research areas to
thin Si and the III-V compounds.
“I have visited Australia four times
and find the people at UNSW, Sydney
and Australia very welcoming,” he
said. “The UNSW commitment to
solar and the people were critical parts
of my decision,” he said.
school of mining engineering
Reality check
The advantage of a Virtual Reality
facility is not just that you can
experience things as they really are, but
that you can encounter things that you
would never experience in real life.
Dr Rudrajit Mitra, Undergraduate
Program Co-ordinator, says the School
of Mining’s Virtual Reality Training
and Research Laboratory allows mining
students and personnel to see things
they could not survive. “Our students
have to do 80 days of training, so they
spend a lot of time in mines,” he says.
“But there’s a lot of things underground
that you really can’t see. On top of the
roof for example. Or things that no
one has lived to see because it causes a
fatality. For example, we can show what
happens when an outburst occurs. In a
real mine the students wouldn’t be able
to see these things.”
The Virtual Reality Laboratory
has been running for about three years
now, and Rudra says the existing
modules are being improved, and new
modules are being developed. “It is
evolving,” he says.
It consists of a
360-degree screen
with 12 projectors on
top. Users stand in
the space wearing 3D
glasses. “It’s similar to
iCinema, but they have
a 10 m area, and ours
is 7.5,” Rudra says.
In the
sustainability module,
students are given a
green-field scenario, where they have
to place all the parts of a mine in the
landscape, while taking into account
other “interest factors” in the area,
such as tourism. “It gives the students
a way of thinking about where to put
these things,” Rudra says. “But what
are the cost implications of that – that
is one of the things we are putting into
the module now.”
In one of the modules being
planned, the laboratory will be able
to show how coal was formed, taking
people through the millennia-long
process both above and under ground.
Rudra says the virtual reality
laboratory is also respected for
its practical applications, because
training, research and simulation
can be undertaken in a safe and
forgiving environment. The virtual
environments replicate real mine sites
and risk-taking behaviour can be
identified without putting personnel
at risk.
Mining companies are showing
interest. “One company plans to
develop a similar set-up at their own
site, for training equipment users, such
as people driving trucks or boggers.”
school of PETROLEUM engineering
Taking it to Thailand
In November, fourth-year student Omer Albarzanji will
be representing UNSW at the International Petroleum
Technology Conference in Bangkok. Omer is one of 75–100
students invited from around the world for the IPTC Young
Members’ Programme.
“There will be a lot of company representatives there,”
Omer says. “We will be split up into groups and each group
will be given a small project to do while we’re there.”
The students will work with company representatives and
present their results at the end of the conference.
This year, the IPTC theme is “Technology and
Operational Excellence: Keys to Sustainable Global Energy”,
but Omer says the early indications to the students suggest
they may be working on “the transition of students to
professionals and working globally”.
Omer is the president of the UNSW student chapter of
the Society of Petroleum Engineers, a global society that
is one of four that supports the IPTC. He will finish his
petroleum degree
this year, but still
has two years to go
of his commerce
degree, majoring in
finance.
Last year he worked on reservoir engineering in Perth for
BHP Billiton. “I went through two years of raw data that
needed interpreting,” he says.
He says the IPTC’s theme this year is highly appropriate
for his industry. “Oil companies at the moment are going to
look at being more sustainable… there is a real mindset to be
as sustainable as possible.”
Recently the organisers of the IPTC agreed to make
its annual schedule predictable. It will be held during the
first week of December in the Middle East (primarily in
Doha, Qatar) during odd years and during the first week of
December in even years in the Asia Pacific region.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 17 schools of thought
graduate school of biomedical engineering
Design your own stem cell
By controlling the environment in
which stem cells are grown, we may be
able to help determine which organs or
tissues they grow into.
Stem cells are located in vivo in a
complex microenvironment described
as a stem cell niche and the activity
of these stem cells is governed by a
number of complex signals they receive
from the niche. Artificial stem cell
niches can be engineered to mimic the
complex microenvironment in order to
understand the mechanisms that control
the fate of the stem cells.
Vice Chancellor’s Postdoctoral
Research Fellow Yogambha
Ramaswamy is investigating how
the mechanical stimuli of the niche
influences the differentiation of stem
cells. She says some stem cells may
develop into muscle, bone or cartilage,
depending on the environment in which
they develop. “It’s recently been shown
that the mechanical
properties
affect stem-cell
differentiation,” she
says. “We are going
to vary the stiffness
of the hydrogels and
see how the cells
respond.”
Hydrogels are an artificial 3D
matrix for stem cell study that have a
high water content. Yogambha has been
developing a new bio-synthetic hydrogel
that can mimic the in vivo environment.
“The combination of a natural and
synthetic polymer gives an advantage
of having both the biological signals as
well as mechanical properties – so it’s
like having the best of both worlds.”
So far, 2-dimensional systems have
been used for studying the mechanisms
that regulate stem cell activity. These
systems have formed a strong basis
for understanding these mechanisms
but the cells are restricted to a planar
environment which hinders their
cellular activity. As such, researchers
are now shifting towards 3D systems to
study stem cell responses as they closely
mimic the microenvironment of the
stem cells.
Yogambha says that this hydrogel
can hopefully provide some answers as
to how mechanical cues can influence
the stem cell differentiation in a 3D
environment and thus contribute
towards understanding this mechanism.
school of electrical engineering & telecommunications
A greener internet
Computers – and the internet in particular – are using too
much power, so Dr Vijay Sivaraman is working on reducing
their power consumption by a factor of 100 in the next
5–10 years.
“Energy consumption of the world is a concern and at
the moment the ICT [Information and Communications
Technology] sector is about 3% of the total energy
consumption, which is about the same as airlines, but
growing rapidly,” Vijay says. “Traffic is doubling every two
years on the internet and power consumption is doubling
every five years or so.”
He says this has two major implications: firstly, the
actual energy consumption of the equipment, and secondly,
the heat generated means large computer facilities need vast
cool rooms to store computer technology. “Some of this
equipment you could cook a pizza on top of it, it’s so hot,”
Vijay says. “Cooling costs can be high.”
One and a half years ago, Vijay and his team at UNSW
joined the GreenTouch consortium, a group of 50 organisations
dedicated to creating a sustainable internet. He says there are
many ways to improve the efficiency of internet technology.
18 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
“Firstly, using
more optics and
less electronics is
generally more
efficient. The
problem with
doing that is the internet works with packets and the routers
read the packets and direct them. You can’t do that with
packets in the optical domain yet, so you really have to set
up circuits. You also lose efficiency with optics.”
Vijay says another area he is researching is profiling
which routers you could save energy on. “If you want to
save power in your house, you switch off lights you are not
using,” he says. “In core networks, very often the load is
quite low – 10–20%. There are spikes, so you need to wake
up your system quickly when you need it.”
He says another area of research is based on the principle
that equipment is more energy efficient when operated at full
load. “If you could somehow force your traffic to go through
a smaller set of routers and just switch the rest of it off, that
would make it more energy efficient,” he says.
school of computer science & engineering
Software priority
In less than six months, a 23-year-old
graduate of the School of Computer
Science and Engineering has set up his
own company and released the first
and second versions of software that
is helping businesses and small teams
manage tasks and prioritise projects.
Adam Brimo’s company Mijura,
set up with fellow Computer Science
graduate Prashant Varanas, recently
released the second version of its
PriorityCentre software, which helps
employers or team leaders know what
their employees are working on at any
moment, how long they have spent
on the task, and easily allows them to
change the priorities of the team.
“What we’re really focusing on are
easy-to-use and simple productivity
applications for businesses and teams,”
Adam says. “The software runs entirely
online in the web browser, so there’s
no need to download software. We’ve
just released the second version of the
software and we’ve taken on a lot of
the feedback that our customers have
offered us.”
Adam says that he was working
at an investment bank while he was
completing his Computer Science
and Arts degrees at UNSW, and
realised how inefficient most project
management systems are. “There
were a lot of inefficiencies and
idiosyncrasies in the way it was
being done,” he says.
Rather than stay at UNSW and
complete his masters, he says he
wanted to start his own company:
“earn some money”.
At the moment, during the beta
phase, the software is offered free
and Adam hopes it will remain free
for small groups. During start-up, the
company is funded solely by Adam’s
savings.
“Actually starting a software
company, as long as you do all the
design and programming yourself, it’s
very cost-effective,” he says.
When he was at UNSW, Adam
hit the headlines nationally for setting
up a website called Vodafail.com,
which gave a voice to the thousands
of Vodafone customers who were
experiencing mobile service problems.
The site was hugely successful, logging
16,000 complaints and 900,000 page
views, leading to him being on the
cover of Readers’ Digest magazine
Adam Brimo (left) and co-founder Prashant Varanasi
and receiving Choice magazine’s 2011
Consumer Activist of the Year award.
He says his time at UNSW prepared
him well for setting up the software
company, although it couldn’t prepare
him for everything. “I’ve learned so
much. The skills for example, in setting
up a company, dealing with legal and
marketing issues – it’s a lot broader
set of skills than I got at CSE. But in
terms of software engineering, it helped
me immeasurably, being able to figure
things out on your own. Taking on
software development challenges and
learning how to learn. I can’t thank uni
enough.”
school of MECHANICAL & MANUFACTURING ENGINEERING
Inventor of the Year
Professor Liangchi Zhang has been named the Inventor of
the Year by UNSW’s commercialisation arm, NSi.
The Scientia Professor and Australian Professorial
Fellow, and head of the Laboratory for Precision and Nano
Processing Technologies, was given the award in September
for developing a cutting tip for the mining industry
that improves wear resistance and decreases energy
consumption and dust generation.
The tip is made from a diamond composite and
Liangchi said it can be applied to disks or drums used in
mechanical mining.
“It’s a combination of the shape and material,” he said.
“Mostly it’s the shape that is responsible for the reduction of
energy and dust minimisation. The force you have to use is
smaller so you are really reducing the wear of the diamond.
“It’s got
a provisional
patent and
is currently
commercialising
with our
Vice Chancellor Professor Fred Hilmer presents Liangchi
with his award
corporate
partner Bradken.”
Liangchi said the tip, and the processes to create it, have
been developed over the past three years as part of an ARC
Linkage grant.
Fifteen UNSW staff and students were finalists in the
annual inventors competition. Liangchi won the Science
and Engineering category and then became the overall
Inventor of the Year.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 19 schools of thought
school of SURVEYING & SPATIAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Seeing the forest and the trees
An aerial-mounted surveying system
that can quickly and accurately identify
individual tree species, tree height,
crown diameter, number of trees
and trunk size is being developed by
Associate Professor Samsung Lim and
Emeritus Professor John Trinder as
part of an ARC Linkage project.
The technology, which is using
full waveform lidar (light detection
and ranging), will enable the efficient
measurement of thousands of forest
resource field plots. It is usually not
practical to investigate every tree in
a forest, so in traditional methods,
forestry workers sample trees and
measure their height, crown diameter
and trunk size, and then extrapolate.
“Without lidar, we have to sample a lot
of trees in order to make sure
the results correctly represent
the true situation,” Samsung
says. “We can reduce
the number of samples
significantly by using lidar.”
Lidar is currently used
by forestry departments
here and overseas, but most
applications involve “discrete lidar”,
which provides only a few points per
tree. It is generally used to generate a
digital elevation model, or to estimate
a biomass, rather than individual
tree structures in order to establish a
forest inventory. Full waveform lidar,
however, can provide the vertical
details of trees. “How much detail we
can get and how accurately we can
get it depends on the data processing
algorithms,” Samsung says. “Our
research focus is to develop a novel
algorithm to detect the details of trees
as much as possible, and as accurately
as possible. Then our software will
be developed to process the data as
quickly as possible. This also requires
a novel algorithm to classify trees from
the whole point cloud, and visualise the
tree parameters.”
school of chemical engineering
Power store
With its high energy content, hydrogen
is one of the most likely alternatives
to fossil fuels, but we are lacking
compact storage facilities for it. Efforts
over the last decades have targeted a
range of materials capable of storing
hydrogen with high density. Light
metals can absorb hydrogen, but we
need successful strategies to control
the properties of these materials for the
practical storage of hydrogen.
“The way hydrogen is stored
in material is by using temperature
and pressure,” says Senior Lecturer
Dr Kondo-Francois Aguey-Zinsou.
“For example, at 400°C and under a
pressure of 10 bar, magnesium is going
to absorb 7% of hydrogen. At 400°C
and under vacuum, all the hydrogen
stored in magnesium can be released.
“The problem with materials
capable of storing hydrogen is that
they required high temperature and
pressure (more than 400°C and 100
bar or more) for reversibility storing
20 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
hydrogen. Ideally these conditions
should be around 100°C and
pressure below 100 bar for practical
applications.”
Since joining UNSW in 2009,
Francois has established a state-ofthe art laboratory with the aim of
developing by 2015 the first generation
of materials capable of storing 3%
of their weight as hydrogen at room
temperature.
Currently the best materials,
developed in the 1960s, only store 1%
of their weight as hydrogen at room
temperature.
“For vehicle application the
minimum hydrogen storage capacity of
a material should be 6% of its weight,
for portable electronic or stationary
application (e.g. for electricity storage
from renewable such as solar or wind)
a figure around 3–4% would be
sufficient,” he says.
Francois recently teamed up
with Dr Cyrille Boyer, of the Centre
Dr Cyrille Boyer (left) and Dr Kondo-Francois AgueyZinsou
for Advanced Macromolecular
Design (CAMD), to develop the
building blocks that would allow the
realisation of such room temperature
storage materials.
They have developed the first
hybrid nano-architecture enabling
room-temperature storage of
hydrogen. In it, a metallic particle
enables the storage of hydrogen and a
polymeric shell restricts the oxidation
of the light metal with oxygen or
water.
Currently, this material only stores
1% of its weight in hydrogen around
the ambient temperature, but the team
is working at boosting the storage
capacity toward the 3% target.
Obituaries
Emeritus Professor Antoni Karbowiak
Luciano Ferracin
Antoni Karbowiak, the
Head of the School of
Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications 1972–76,
died in July this year while on
holidays in Germany.
Born in Warsaw in 1923,
Antoni grew up in war-torn
Poland and found his way to
Britain as a refugee. He enrolled
at University College, London,
under a British Government
scheme that enabled Polish
servicemen to study in
the United Kingdom at the
government’s expense. After
completing a science degree in
engineering in 1949, Antoni began a master’s program with a focus on
microwave technology, then a PhD on the propagation of surface waves.
His early work helped with the development of the optical cable.
Working at Standard Telephone Laboratories in Britain, he mentored
Charles Kao, who went on to win the Nobel prize for physics in 2009,
and mentioned Antoni in his acceptance speech.
In 1964, Antoni became the inaugural Chair of Communications at
UNSW. From the following year he led the School’s Communications
Department until his retirement in 1988. He built the School’s facilities
for optical communications research (the first in Australia), an area in
which the School would later excel.
With the support of the Vice-Chancellor’s Unit, Antoni also assisted
UNSW’s student recruitment efforts by running annual secondary
schools seminars from 1968 to 1979 to inspire high school students to
pursue engineering studies and to introduce them to new technologies.
From 1970 to 1971 Antoni returned to Britain on sabbatical,
consulting to the British Post Office Research Laboratories (now part
of British Telecom) on future communications systems using coaxial
cables, waveguides and optical fibres.
He returned to UNSW in 1972 to accept the Head of School post,
remaining in the role for four years. During that time the School’s research
developed in the field of digital communication, laying the foundations for
the School’s more recent work on data communications and networks. In
1976 he resigned the headship to have more time for research.
As a consultant to Telecom, he conducted research into Australia’s
telephone network, which was in urgent need of modernisation.
In 1982, in a government appointment, he wrote the report for the
Committee of Enquiry into Telecommunication Services in Australia.
Antoni retired in 1987 as an Emeritus Professor, but continued with
the School as a supervisor of research students for many years.
In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal by the Australian
Government for service to Australian society in telecommunications.
With the National Broadband Network very much in the news, it is
with sadness that we note the passing of a man who was a pioneer in
this area.
Luciano Ferracin, the Faculty of
Engineering Development Officer
since 2000, died earlier this year at the
age of 63.
A popular host and MC at the
Golden Jubilee lunches and Annual
Engineering dinners, Luciano was very
active in the organisation of alumni
events and contributed significantly to
the Faculty’s Development and Alumni
program. He was instrumental in
refinancing and obtaining scholarships
for the Faculty’s rural scholarships
program, as well as obtaining
corporate and private donor support for
new scholarships and initiatives.
He was always very concerned
about the regard in which the
Faculty was held and in enhancing
its reputation. He was proud of his
fundraising achievements, which saw
the Faculty’s income from sponsorship
rise steadily from a minimal base to a
significant level.
Luciano will be remembered for
his sense of humour, engaging smile
and the time and effort he put into
Faculty activities.
In recognition of Luciano’s
contribution the Faculty has
established The Luciano Ferracin
Memorial Rural Engineering
Scholarship, to be offered annually
with a four-year tenure of $10,500
per annum.
Direct to Your Inbox
In response to requests from Faculty of Engineering alumni, UNSWEngineers is now
available online at: www.eng.unsw.edu.au/unsw-engineers-mag
We are now offering UNSWEngineers as both an e-magazine for online reading and a
PDF version to download and print.
You may also wish to browse through the archived copies of your alumni magazine.
If you have not yet done so, please send us an email at unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.
au and let us know if you would like to switch to the electronic version only. Please kindly
state your full name and student number if you have it, or current postal address.
UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011 ⋅ 21 Inbox
EARLY COMPUTERS
I first started studying Radio Engineering at the University
of Technology as a part-timer in 1955. I did not complete
the course but in the late 1960s I went back to the then
University of NSW, again as a part-timer and eventually
graduated in Mechanical Engineering.
I had various involvements with computers at UNSW. I did
not see the
6000-valve
computer at
UNSW, but
as I worked
at CSIRO
Radiophysics,
I saw a little
of the similar
computer
at Sydney
University.
My memory
of those two
computers
was the persistence of the phosphorous coating of CRT
tubes. It had to stop every 100msecs and re-write memory.
The input was paper tape, as in teletypes, and the easiest
way of transporting this to the computer was in a garbage tin.
Later I was involved in the installation of the first
computer at the University of New England. It was an IBM
1620, the same as one installed at the same time at UNSW.
The computer had a memory cycle of 1 MHz and a memory
of 60k. The language was binary coded decimal. It was made
up of discrete components, i.e., transistors, condensers and
resistors and no display. The memory was later supplemented
with large floppy discs and tape recorders. The printer output
was an IBM, Selectric (golf ball) typewriter. This typewriter
was completely worn out in 12 months.
Two years later I went to work at the NASA Space Tracking
Station at Carnarvon, WA. There I was put into the computer
section and was responsible for the Apollo displays. These
were the first computer displays and required six 19-inch
racks of electronics to drive them.
After the tracking station I returned to study Mechanical
Engineering in an attempt to escape from computers. Of
course, I had to do numerical analysis with the UNSW
computer, which was an IBM 360. That computer had
integrated circuits, which were very new at that time. It was
100 times faster than the 1620 and had to be fed with IBM
punched cards. Fortunately I was again working with CSIRO
and they employed people to punch them for you. As there
was no internet, a courier came in the morning to take the
boxes of cards to the computer and returned the printouts in
the afternoon.
Ron Cottis, BSc (Eng), Long Beach, NSW
write to us
Please keep those emails coming to us. Let us
know what you or other engineering alumni are
doing, or your thoughts on our research priorities
as we determine the future of medicine. The best
letter in the next issue will receive a bottle of the
Faculty wine, made by Serafino in McLaren Vale,
SA. Write to: unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
22 ⋅ UNSW engineers ⋅ Issue 24 ⋅ OCT 2011
Please nominate what you think
the world’s greatest engineering
innovation is – it might be something
obvious like electricity, or something
critical in your field that is little known
elsewhere. Email your suggestions
to unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
with a short explanation of why you
have nominated it, and you could win a
bottle of Faculty wine.
Bright sparks
According to the Sydney President of
Engineers Australia, Maryam Khajeh,
there is no engineering marvel greater
than electricity. “It underpins everything
that we do,” she says. “It’s a pivotal
invention that changed the world.”
Among the litany of famous names
that sparked the electrical revolution
are Andre Ampere, Georg Ohm, Luigi
Galvani, Alessandro Volta, Benjamin
Franklin, Thomas Edison, George
Westinghouse and Alexander Graham
Bell. But the person credited with first
studying electrical phenomena such as
static electricity was the Ancient Greek
philosopher and mathematician, Thales of
Miletus. He lived around 600BC.
Calling all 1962 graduates
The Golden Jubilee Lunch for 1962
graduates will be held on 8 May 2012 in
The John Niland Scientia Building. The
1962 graduation ceremony was held on
4 May. Alumni from that year will be
sent an invitation, or can contact Alumni
Development Manager Stephen Wooldridge
on S.Wooldridge@unsw.edu.au
At the Leading Edge of
Engineering Research
Never Stand Still
Faculty of Engineering
The Faculty of Engineering
at UNSW is known for its
pre-eminence in engineering
studies and research in
Australia through:
ƒƒ Achieving worldwide recognition of
excellence in pure and applied research
ƒƒ Offering a research-led curriculum at
undergraduate and postgraduate levels
ƒƒ Cooperating closely with industry, business
and the wider community by
�developing collaborative research to address
contemporary industrial and environmental needs
�providing continuous education for professional
engineers
Call +61 2 9385 5000 Email eng.faculty@unsw.edu.au
www.eng.unsw.edu.au
CRICOS PROVIDER CODE 00098G
Great reading
Stock up on these School histories
The Faculty has published the following History Books which
highlight the evolution of the Faculty and its Schools, as well as the
multidisciplinary world of engineering.
Faculty of Engineering
Plenty of copies are still available of this extensive work, which includes
more than 300 photographs. Order online at www.unswpress.com.au
or call 02 8778 9999.
1 9 57 – 2 0 0 7
the School of
Surveying
Spatial
information
SyStemS
and
Civil & Environmental Engineering
Copies are available from the School of Civil and Environmental
Engineering. Order online at www.civeng.unsw.edu.au/about/
our_history/index.html Further information, contact Tricia Tesoriero:
p.tesoriero@unsw.edu.au 02 9385 5549.
Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications
Copies are available from the School of Electrical Engineering
and Telecommunications. Order online at www.eet.unsw.edu.au/
HistoryBook, or contact Silvia Collings 02 9385 4009.
Mechanical & Manufacturing Engineering
Copies are available from the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing
Engineering. Order online at www.mech.unsw.edu.au
mech@unsw.edu.au 02 9385 4093.
Mining Engineering
Copies are available from the School of Mining Engineering. Order
online at www.mining.unsw.edu.au Further information, contact Chris
Daly: c.daly@unsw.edu.au 02 9385 4514.
Surveying & Spatial Information Systems
Copies are available from the School of Surveying and Spatial
Information Systems. survsis@unsw.edu.au 02 9385 4182.
FACULTY CONTACTS
Faculty of Engineering
The University of New South Wales
UNSW Sydney 2052 Australia
Tel +61 2 9385 5000  eng.faculty@unsw.edu.au
www.eng.unsw.edu.au
Business Development and Alumni
Stephen Wooldridge
Tel: +61 2 9385 5985  s.wooldridge@unsw.edu.au
Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 3911  biomedeng@unsw.edu.au
www.gsbme.unsw.edu.au
School of Chemical Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 4319  chse@unsw.edu.au
www.chse.unsw.edu.au
School of Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications
Tel +61 2 9385 4009  eet@unsw.edu.au
www.eet.unsw.edu.au
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 4093  mech@unsw.edu.au
www.mech.unsw.edu.au
School of Mining Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 4515  mining@unsw.edu.au
www.mining.unsw.edu.au
School of Petroleum Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 5189  peteng@unsw.edu.au
www.petrol.unsw.edu.au
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 5033  info@civeng.unsw.edu.au
www.civeng.unsw.edu.au
School of Photovoltaic and
Renewable Energy Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 6155  pv.course@unsw.edu.au
www.pv.unsw.edu.au
School of Computer Science and Engineering
Tel +61 2 9385 6625  bradh@cse.unsw.edu.au
www.computing.unsw.edu.au
School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems
Tel +61 2 9385 4182  survsis@unsw.edu.au
www.ssis.unsw.edu.au