innovation: are we getting it right? · sation itself and programs on collaboration promise new...

InnovatIonARE WE GETTING IT RIGHT?

Contributors discuss the Federal Budget impact on innovation and commercialisation,

the focus on picking winners and how Australia can do it better

AustrAliAn AcAdemy of technologicAl sciences And engineering (Atse)

number 156June/July 2009

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5Commercialisation gets a Budget boostBy rowan gilmore

7Innovation – have we got it right yet?By ron Johnston

10Picking winners is government’s real taskBy michael Vitale

13 The march of (technological) progress

18 Budget energy and innovation initiatives welcome

19 Eight visionary Australian innovators honoured

23 sTElr boosted by federal funding

25 EsE: a great recipe for hands-on science

26 We need a scientifically literate nation

30 ATsE helping develop tomorrow’s scientists and engineers

30 Energy White Paper: more strategic technology planning needed

32 ATsE hosts Taiwan workshop on water and energy issues

32 Water and climate collaboration key to national benefit

39 ATsE in FocusInnovatIonARE WE GETTING IT RIGHT?

Contributors discuss the Federal Budget impact on innovation and commercialisation, the focus on picking winners and how Australia can do it

better

AustrAliAn AcAdemy of technologicAl sciences And engineering (Atse)

number 156June/July 2009

Front cover: Enduring image of innovation – the Sydney Opera House. Photo: Brad Collis, Coretext

NICTA’s Smart Transport and Roads (STaR) project – page 7.

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ment risk, governments should not necessarily step in. The Commission argued that government intervention could be justified only when there were costs that had to be borne by a market leader that would benefit other followers (that is, spillover effects), and when there was additionality (that is, the firm would not have invested in commercialisation without government incentives).

Of course, that was 2007 and the world view of the fi-nance sector and some economists has since changed. In all sectors of the economy, we observe much more stimula-tory activity on the demand side, rather than solely on the supply side.

What seems to be obvious to most of us involved with commercialisation – that pumping more money into re-search does not automatically increase innovation within

One of the unexpected announcements in the Aus-tralian Government’s 2009-10 Budget was the al-location of nearly $200 million in seed funding to establish the Commonwealth Commercialisation

Institute, and ongoing funding of $85 million per year. With such a commitment, commercialisation, particularly of publicly funded research, looks set to accelerate once more.

As noted by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Sci-ence and Research, Senator Kim Carr, on Budget night, the challenge will be to leverage capital from industry, and particularly the superannuation funds, to co-invest in tech-nological innovation and, through that, to help shape the Australian economy for the future.

However, with an Australian culture that prefers in-

Commercialisation gets a Budget boostThe view that pumping more money into research does not automatically increase innovation within an economy seems finally to have become respectable thinking in politics

By rowan [email protected]

vestment in real estate and the occasional flutter on penny mining stocks, this could prove difficult. Indeed, most Australian venture capital funds investing in new knowledge-based industry have achieved historically poor returns.

As measured by their cumulative per-formance since inception, such funds es-tablished between 1985 and 2007 had a pooled return at the end of June 2008 of –1.4 per cent, although that rises to 3.9 per cent measured over a five-year horizon.

The return of the government to invest in pre-seed, seed and early-stage compa-nies is not only welcome – it is a brave de-cision as well.

Even when confronted by the venture capital data above, many economists deny there is market failure with early-stage commercialisation.

For example, in 2007 the Productivity Commission argued that just because the private sector would not take the invest-

Pumping

more money

into research

does not

automatically

increase

innovation.

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good track-records for picking winners, particularly with pre-revenue, early-stage companies. It is simply impossible to know from the multiplicity of seeds that are sown which will become thriving plants.

What is critical is to ensure that the well-known suc-cess factors for growth are in place, and to judiciously re-duce both the technical and market risks as the firm pro-gresses. Equally important is tolerance for the losers that wither, recognising that in cultures such as Silicon Valley, it is by learning from their earlier mistakes that ‘losers’ be-come ‘winners’ when they try again.

Perhaps cognisant of this, the government will want to ensure that it is not capital alone that it provides, but also the commercialisation expertise of organisations like the AIC to provide additional skills in developing collabora-tions, and in implementing commercialisation strategies.

Although funding and resourcing might be the big-gest challenges in commercialising research, establishing the collaborations necessary to develop a new product or service and delivering it into new markets are also essential.

With the lowest collaboration rate between the uni-versity sector and industry in the developed world, this problem must be tackled on a number of levels.:¢ �researchers need to be motivated to collaborate more

with industry, perhaps through the grants process; ¢ �market research needs to become much more wide-

spread to ensure the value proposition is both unique and has value to a customer; and

¢ �boards of companies need to recognise the imperative to collaborate and embrace open innovation, rather than do it all alone, if they are to prosper as the world economy recovers.With a 25 per cent increase in support in the May Bud-

get, innovation is again high on the national agenda. ‘Front-ended’ by big increases in science and back-end-

ed by the R&D tax credit, direct support for commerciali-sation itself and programs on collaboration promise new life for Australia’s emerging technological industries. t

DR RowAN gIlmoRe has been Ceo of the Australian Institute

for Commercialisation (AIC) since 2003. He is responsible for

leading the organisation in its mission to provide innovation

and collaboration services that help businesses grow. Prior to

his role at AIC, he was based in london and geneva from 1998

as vice President of Network Services (europe) for the airline IT

company SITA, now part of France Telecom. He is an engineering

graduate of the university of Queensland and earned his doctorate

from washington university in St. louis. He also holds adjunct

professorships in both the School of Business and School of

Information Technology and electrical engineering at the u

niversity of Queensland.

an economy – seems finally to have become respectable thinking in politics. Measures to stimulate the many new value chains that could be created from this research are back in favour around the world.

Furthermore, by helping early-stage companies com-mercialise products and services, government has recog-nised that, as well as yielding demonstrable economic benefits by growing emerging industries, positive environ-mental and social outcomes result in many cases as well.

The infusion of government-funded stimulus into the clean-energy sector is a good example where the outcomes will benefit the nation along multiple dimensions.

However, there are undoubtedly many who still believe that government should not co-invest in companies that commercialise publicly funded research. Their first posi-tion is to deny that market failure exists.

Yet the amount of venture capital invested in Austra-lia in genuine early-stage research is so low that markets in early-stage IP or pre-revenue companies barely exist. The evidence of the past 18 months in the biotech sector, where the commercialisation chasm is well documented, is that private capital has essentially dried up totally.

In 2008, only $10 million was committed in Austra-lia specifically for seed-stage investment, compared with $6.3 billion for all private equity investment. Not only is there market failure, there is almost no market!

The second criticism will be to blindly recite the man-tra that ‘governments can’t pick winners’. My view is that this claim needs closer observation.

First, the bailout of banks around the world would suggest that even the highest-paid and smartest analysts within industry have done an exceedingly poor job of pick-ing winners or, at the very least, in undertaking proper due diligence. One could argue that the due diligence required to receive a $2 million injection of funding from a venture capitalist (or a government grant for that matter) is much higher than that which preceded the numerous multi-billion dollar investments by many investment banks into their repackaged derivatives.

Further, at least in Australia when allocating innova-tion grants, it is not ‘government’ that makes the decision. Typically a panel of research peers or an industry advisory board will review the applications and sort the wheat from the chaff before advising the relevant minister. The probity standards are exceedingly high and generally well managed.

Finally, the number of Australian companies that have suffered lapses in governance with shocking consequences for their investors recently (for instance, in timber schemes or childcare centres) would seem to indicate that perhaps in-dustry is not as good at ‘picking winners’ as it might believe.

The truth is, neither government nor industry have

minister Carr may have to shoulder the additional challenge of reform to the public service to achieve his vision of an innovative Australia, powering ideas

By ron Johnston [email protected]

Much has been written about innovation in Aus-tralia. Since the Australian Centre for Innova-tion was established in 1992 there has been a major review of innovation on average almost

every two years, and many more reports in which innova-tion is central.

Consider this quote:“The picture that is emerging suggests a nation needs to have:

¢ �world-class firms capable of introducing innovations;

¢ �a system capable of quickly diffusing expertise and

technology throughout the economy;

¢ �competence at commercialising significant discoveries

and major technological advances; and

¢ �the capacity to generate its own innovations.”

Sound familiar? Terry Cutler’s review Venturous Aus-tralia or the ‘Powering Ideas’ White Paper? Well, no. This quote is actually to be found in The Innovation Framework: Recent Findings released by the Department of Industry Technology and Commerce in 1993!

So this time, it’s fair to ask the question: have we got it right?

The evidence presented in the Cutler review indicates that, more than ever, getting innovation right is a press-ing matter for the future of the Australian economy. It as-sembles a range of indicators which show that Australia’s innovation-related performance has declined over the past decade relative to many comparable OECD countries:

“Australia has slipped from fifth to eighteenth in the World

Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index. Our multi-

factor productivity grew 1.4 per cent a year on average

between 1982-83 and 1995-96. Growth has averaged only

0.9 per cent a year since then.”

It points to declining government investment as the key cause of this decline:

“Commonwealth spending on science and innovation has

fallen 22 per cent as a share of GDP since 1993-94.”

Hence, the substantial increase in investment in re-search and innovation by 25 per cent over the 2008-09

NICTA’s Smart

Transport and

Roads (STaR) project

will enable traffic

managers and road

users to predict and

respond to traffic

conditions.

PHOTO: NICTA

Innovation: have we got it right yet?

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Researchers at Monash University are developing printable solar cells offering significant advantages over traditional solar panel technology. They are flexible, lightweight and transportable, making them attractive to the domestic market. Partially transparent, they can be installed almost anywhere including; home and car roofs, windows or glass panels. The cells float, making them ideal for pool or dam covers, reducing evaporation whilst generating energy.

Monash is a leader in solar cell research and the major centre for the development of nanostructured thin-film solar cells in Australia. Our expertise includes nanostructured semiconductors, organic electronic materials, printing technologies to novel photovoltaic concepts, micro and nanofabrication and solar fuels.

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Budget to $8.58 billion must be welcomed, particularly given the deficit being faced.

But the key questions are whether and how this invest-ment will enhance Australia’s innovation performance.

First, there is a significant restructuring of the archi-tecture of governance of the innovation system. A consid-erably strengthened Chief Scientist and Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council (PMSEIC) will be charged with introducing a greater foresighting ca-pacity to innovation policy.

A series of Innovation Councils have been established to provide advice and intelligence on industry and inno-vation system needs. Enterprise Connect has the role of developing and delivering services to firms. In addition, the establishment of the Commonwealth Commercialisa-tion Institute, presumably to replace the axed Commercial Ready scheme, has been announced.

Much of the success in promoting innovation in coun-tries such as Finland and Sweden has been attributed to the strength of their intermediary organisations linking the worlds of research and commerce. Hence much will depend on the performance of the new intermediary or-ganisations in Australia.

Second, seven Innovation Priorities have been identi-fied to focus the production, diffusion and application of new knowledge. This is a significant step towards elevat-ing the place of innovation in national performance, but their generality, as in ‘supporting high-quality research that addresses national challenges’, ‘a strong base of skilled researchers’, ‘fostering industries of the future’ and ‘more effective dissemination of new technologies’, will pose large challenges for implementation and assessment.

Third, most of the new funding addresses major con-straints in the public research sector.

While appropriate, strengthening Australia’s supply-side inputs to innovation appears to be largely a continua-tion of past policy and what we know how to do best. The approaches to the more difficult challenge of promoting an enterprise-based culture of innovation, which lies at the heart of the Cutler analysis, are less well developed.

The significant exception is the replacement of the R&D tax concession by tax credits, which would appear to be far more supportive of the many small and medium-sized enterprises that perform the great majority of the in-dustrial R&D and innovation in Australia.

An apparently bold target is announced: to increase the proportion of businesses engaging in innovation by 25 per cent over the next decade. Latest OECD data shows that currently less than 30 per cent of Australian firms re-port a product innovation in the past two years, whereas in most other countries the figure is around 50 per cent.

But the 25 per cent increase would only raise the Aus-tralian proportion of innovation firms to 37.5 per cent, still well behind our competitors. Nor is it clear how Enter-prise Connect and the Clean Energy Initiative will deliver it. What may be needed are even more demanding targets, and mechanisms to drive their achievement.

Perhaps the biggest gap in the White Paper, particular-ly when compared with a recent similar report in the UK, is the role that is charted for government in empowering innovation. In Australia government is certainly a signifi-cant funder and promoter of innovation. But the vision of government departments and agencies as beacons of innovative achievement, leading in the development and adoption of innovations in meeting social challenges and delivering public services, is nowhere to be seen.

Indeed, there is reason to speculate that this and pre-vious reports on innovation have not achieved their in-tended effect at least partly because the procedures and practices of modern public management, with their appro-priate emphasis on accountability, risk management and outcomes, have created an ethos that has great difficulty in encompassing the new, the different, the unexpected.

Minister Carr may have to shoulder the additional challenge of reform to the public service to achieve his vi-sion of an Innovative Australia, powering ideas. t

These views were nourished by fruitful discussions with my colleague Don Scott-Kemmis

PRoFeSSoR RoN JoHNSToN FTSe, founder and executive

Director of the Australian Centre for Innovation at the university

of Sydney, has worked for more than 25 years in pioneering better

understanding of the ways that science and technology contribute

to economic and social development, of the possibilities for

managing research and technology more effectively, and of the

processes and culture of innovation. He is also one of Australia’s

leading thinkers about the future. He led the major national

foresight study ‘matching Science and Technology to Future Needs’

by ASTeC. over the past eight years he has conducted more than

100 futures projects for private and public sector organisations in

Australia, Asia, europe and the Pacific.

In Australia government is certainly a significant funder and promoter of innovation. But the vision of government departments and agencies as beacons of innovative achievement, leading in the development and adoption of innovations in meeting social challenges and delivering public services, is nowhere to be seen.

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funds directly, without the competitive proposal processes typical of many grant programs.

For example, Healthy Futures, the 2006 Victorian Gov-ernment statement on the life sciences, included $50 mil-lion to support the expansion of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, $16 million to facilitate the merger of the Austin Research Institute and the Burnet Institute, and $35 mil-lion to create a new Australian Regenerative Medicine In-stitute at Monash University. The statement contains no justification for the choice of these particular institutions to receive government support, nor any indication of how the success of these investments will be judged. The exer-cise must be seen as a clear instance of picking winners.

In the commercial sector, the Victorian Govern-ment VicStart program awards funds to assist companies to utilise and exploit science and technology for export, growth and profit – another instance of picking winners.

The point of these examples, and the many others that could be given, is that governments are already in the busi-ness of selecting the individuals and organisations that they believe to be the most worthy recipients of citizens’ money.

There is no other sensible way for many government programs to function, and there is no reluctance on the part of many governments to dispense funds to winners chosen by processes that are neither revealed nor measured – just reluctance to admit that that is what they are doing.

The practical objections to government attempts to pick winners often exhume examples such as the Victorian Economic Development Corporation, a venture capital fund that lost $110 million before it collapsed due to poor management and a lack of accountability. (It is not often noted that VEDC’s $15 million investment in AMRAD eventually earned back almost half of its losses, nor that its investment in Biota kept licensing revenues from the flu drug Relenza in Australian hands.)

There is no question that investment decisions must be made in a careful and transparent manner. The fact that things are sometimes not done properly is not proof that

The goal of government support for commercial R&D is to encourage projects with large social benefits but inadequate returns to private investors, and around the world many governments offer

such support.There have been relatively few rigorous attempts to

demonstrate the benefits of such support, and there is an ongoing dispute about ‘picking winners’ – although theo-retical objections to that approach rarely seem to stand in the way of accepting cash when it is offered, even if not all the companies shall have prizes.

Objections to picking winners are generally either philosophical – the government should not be making choices among competing demands – or practical – the government is not able to make such choices successfully. Both sorts of objections lack factual support and fly in the face of actual government practice.

Taking the philosophical question first, governments are constantly making choices – that is, they are constantly picking winners – and there is no reason that this behav-iour should not extend to selecting recipients of support for R&D.

Grant programs, for example those run by the Austra-lian Research Council and the National Health and Medi-cal Research Council, are exactly exercises in picking win-ners. How else could they be run – as lotteries?

It might be argued that the government itself is not directly picking winners in these cases, but surely working through proxy peer-review committees chosen by govern-ment does not change the essence of the situation.

Moreover, in many cases, government does dispense

Picking winners is government’s real taskObjections to picking winners are generally either philosophical or practical – both lack factual support and fly in the face of actual government practice

By michael [email protected]

Grant programs, for example those run by the Australian Research Council and the National Health and Medical Research Council, are exactly exercises in picking winners. How else could they be run – as lotteries?

www.ATSe.oRg.Au

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they cannot be done properly, or indeed proof that they are not usually done properly.

In fact, published peer-reviewed studies show that governments have been, and can be, effective at selecting commercial R&D projects to receive support. It is impor-tant, of course, to design appropriate selection procedures and to measure the outcomes, but these are what citizens would expect of any program that disburses public funds.

It should also be noted that, in general, performance shortfalls are only rarely taken as an indication that gov-ernment should not be involved in a particular area. From transport and health to bushfires and swine flu, govern-ment bodies have recently performed less than adequately. However, in many such cases government does not even admit to the existence of problems, much less propose that it not be involved in the future.

Yet the failure of some admittedly high-risk invest-ments in R&D seems to frighten the horses and raise con-cerns about ‘backing winners’.

Given that neither the philosophical nor the practical objections to ‘picking winners’ hold up, what is behind the concerns that continue to be expressed?

From the government side, it may simply be an unwill-ingness to make a commitment that will be measured by the objective and unambiguous terms of the marketplace.

Picking individual winners for research grants or or-ganisational winners for uncontested funds has an advan-tage for government: the winners are not going to com-plain, and neither are the losers, who hope to get in on the next round. Moreover, the success criteria are generally suf-ficiently vague as to make retrospective analysis unlikely.

Picking winners in the commercial realm is subject to much clearer outcome measures, and may therefore be avoided via an appeal to philosophy and practicality.

From the commercial side, objections to picking win-ners often seem to boil down to objections to the picking of other winners.

In essence, the reluctance of government to pick win-ners and the objections from some elements of the private sector to having the government pick winners may boil down to a reluctance to compete on a level playing field and a reluctance to be measured.

While these are understandable human emotions, they must not be allowed to stand in the way of effective govern-ment support for commercial research and development.

Logically, private sector executives who object to gov-ernments picking winners should refuse government mon-ey when their organisation is chosen and, equally logically, responsible government employees who have a principled reluctance to make choices and be evaluated on the out-comes should find another line of work. t

Further reading¢ �Den Butter, Frank A G, and Seung-gyu Jo, ‘Pros and Cons of

‘Backing Winners’ in Innovation Policy’, Tinbergen Institute

Discussion Paper 09-012/3, February 2009, http://papers.ssrn.

com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1345748

¢ �Hollinger, Peggy, ‘France bets all on picking winners’, Financial

Times, 24 June 2005, 13

¢ �Klette, Tor Jacob, Jarle Moen, and Zvi Grilliches, ‘Do subsidies

to commercial R&D reduce market failures? Microeconometric

evaluation studies’, Research Policy, 29 (2000), 471 – 495

PRoFeSSoR mICHAel vITAle teaches, researches, and consults in

the areas of commercialisation and innovation. He is the Director,

Commercialisation, of the Asia–Pacific Centre for Science and wealth

Creation at monash university, and is a member of the university’s

Commercialisation and Intellectual Property Advisory Committee.

Professor vitale also teaches at the melbourne Business School,

macquarie university and the Australia and New Zealand School

of government, as well as in executive programs in the public

and private sectors. He is chairman of the Australian Centre for

Posttraumatic mental Health and a director of Australian Science

Innovations Inc. He is president of the Harvard Club of Australia

– victoria and a member of the victorian Branch Committee of

AusBiotech.

Picking

winners –

governments

are constantly

making

choices.

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The march of (technological) progressTechnology sometimes moves more quickly than our ability to absorb the changes – even in such simple devices like remote controls and mobile phones

By Ziggy [email protected]

Our forebears 100 years ago could not have dreamt of the emergence of television, computers, satel-lites, lasers, iPods, or Google and Facebook. Nor of a global population (then approaching 2 bil-

lion) trending towards 10 billion people 150 years later in 2060. Or that a 21st century challenge would be an ageing population, not a prematurely dying one.

The defining technologies of the 21st century may not yet have taken form, but we can be certain that society’s challenges, our way of life, and our standard of living will be reshaped and improved by inventions and system leaps yet ahead.

Looking at the recent past, when Paul Keating handed government to John Howard in March 1996, none of am-azon.com, eBay, Google or Yahoo! were yet a significant public enterprise.

All subsequently listed in the following three years and helped propel the dot.com era.

In 1996, one in five Australians owned a mobile phone. The phones were mainly analogue and in the hands of commercial and tradespeople. The mobile phone had just arrived as an important productivity tool. Today, there are more phones than people and all are digital with features far beyond simple voice calls. And they resemble mobile video handsets more than telephones. No business – or teenager – can operate without one.

Although the personal computer had appeared in the early 1980s, by 1996 only one in three Australian homes owned a computer and fewer than one in 20 had internet access. Today, more than three-quarters of homes and all businesses have a PC, and almost all of them also have some form of internet access.

In 1996 domestic internet access speeds were just 14.4 kilobits a second. Content was text-only – no video, let alone YouTube. Outside of engineering and technology firms and universities, email was just appearing in the more progressive businesses. Today, almost all enterprises have internet access, with the Government recently announcing

an ambitious plan to build a national high speed, 100Mbs broadband network.

In 1996, wireless text messaging was not available in Australia – at all. Today more than a billion SMS messag-es are sent each month, a volume to be further increased by the number of tweets being broadcast by the Twitter message service. Subscription television had just been launched on the back of a controversial dual cable rollout, but plasma and LCD screens were yet to appear.

The past two decades have seen an evolution from analogue products (think vinyl records, black telephones tethered to wall sockets, photographic film, 26-inch boxy televisions) to an all-digital ecosystem largely shaped by advances in the broad categories of IT, communications and the internet. The last industry to convert to a digital base is free-to-air network television, which will belatedly join the 21st century by 2013 according to the Govern-ment’s timetable.

Spending on information technology has lifted to about half of many firm’s capital budget with large invest-ments still ahead to address remaining legacy issues and new opportunities.

Ubiquitous communications have given meaning to the concept of 24/7. Technology sometimes moves more quickly than our ability to absorb the changes – even in such simple devices like remote controls and mobile phones.

Where are we heading?The CEO of IBM, Sam Palmisano, recently offered his perspective about a world becoming smarter as intelli-gence is incorporated into more environments, which are increasingly linked.

He pointed to the following:¢ �two billion people (out of a global population of seven

billion) will be on the web in 2011. At the same time, we are heading toward one trillion connected objects – cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines;

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Getting the best for industry from R&D infrastructureThe Australasian Industrial Research Group’s

(AIRG) winter conference in Canberra

will examine how the nation’s research

infrastructure can impact the R&D and

innovation activities in various industrial sectors.

This focus is driven by a belief that

heavy investment in major government

and university research infrastructure is not

bringing optimal results for industry.

Titled ‘The importance of Australian

national research infrastructure to industry and

the economy’, the conference will discuss this

disparity and the economic impact of better

access to and usage of this new infrastructure

by industry.

The conference program notes that both

Australia and New Zealand have invested

heavily in major research infrastructure –

examples of which (in Australia) include

NCRIS and the MNRF program before it, the

Synchrotron, the new nuclear reactor at

ANSTO and lots of other instrument-driven

capabilities in universities and CSIRO, all of

which are capital-intensive.

It is recognised that many of these

pieces of major equipment, and the skilled

people who work with them, have significant

potential to accelerate the progress of

Australian industrial R&D, although their

present use by industry appears to be less

than optimal.

Therefore, it seems timely for the AIRG to

sponsor an assessment of how the nation’s

research infrastructure can impact on various

industrial sectors’ R&D and innovation activities.

A brief informal survey conducted by

some AIRG members has suggested that

various Australian industry sectors may be

using these highly competitive facilities to

quite different levels.

Meanwhile, although the capabilities now

exist in Australia, and while similar facilities are

being used overseas by industrial competitors,

some major Australian companies (or even

industry sectors) might not be fully aware of

what could be available locally and how it

might then impact upon research productivity

and outcomes.

The meeting will explore the impact of

industry usage and consequent measurable

economic impact on the economy. Several

other key issues potentially impacting the

consideration of Australian industrial R&D

staff relative to its use of this national research

infrastructure will also be considered.

The conference will be held at Parliament

House on 20 August, preceded on 19 August by

a dinner with key Opposition Parliamentarians.

more information: [email protected], or meg Caffin, 03 9864 0913

¢ �one in two people globally now own a mobile handset – 3.4 billion;

¢ �an estimated two billion Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags were sold in 2007, embedded in products, passports, buildings, toll-road sensors – even animals. This number should rise to 30 billion by next year; and

¢ �massively powerful computers can be affordably applied to processing, modelling, forecasting and analysing just about any workload or task. And to monitoring the in-teractions between these trillion connected objects.For the first time in history, almost anything can be-

come digitally aware and interconnected – and it will be. He goes on to list modern society’s key processes and how they will be transformed and made safer and more effi-cient. For example:¢ �energy – where homes and individual appliances will

be continuously monitored, and an intelligent electric-ity grid balanced to reduce energy costs to users;

¢ �financial systems – even the most sophisticated systems designed and deployed just a decade ago were built for a different world. He says that given the complex-ity, speed, and scale of today’s financial markets, those systems are as antiquated as the horse and buggy. For instance, in the global currency market, US$10 trillion can be traded on a single day. This is a far bigger and

more complex market than our currently damaged debt markets;

¢ �food distribution – addressing supply-chain inefficien-cies, reduction in ‘food miles’ (the distance travelled by food from farm to your kitchen) and ensuring the integrity of the food and minimisation of food-borne infections;

¢ �healthcare – online access to a patient’s health history and records would cut administrative costs, reduce medical error rates and improve patient outcomes; and

¢ �traffic systems – congested roadways, imperfect se-quencing of lights and searching for parking spots probably cost us billions of dollars annually in lost hours, petrol costs and polluting exhaust emissions.He goes on to cover air travel (1400 new international

airports by 2050), weather forecasting, oil field manage-ment and water systems. His point is that information technology from, say, 1996 couldn’t even have begun to seize the opportunities and attack these problems. Neither could you have done it four years ago – IT was too expen-sive, too hardwired and too underutilised, with too many distributed parts in an unconnected world.

Now there is the potential in 2030, when computers are expected to rival the capacity of the human brain, to suggest unimaginable opportunities ahead. One well-known global

15JuN/Jul 09


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company’s mission statement ‘To digitise all the world’s in-formation’ no longer sounds like corporate hubris.

Still, to help you recover your composure about such upcoming technology intrusions into our ordered lives, let me note that many interesting innovations of recent years mostly arise from technologies and systems that have evolved in a leisurely fashion, sometimes over decades.

The concept of machine-readable barcodes was patent-ed in 1952, but the Universal Product Code that helped revolutionise supply-chain management became ubiqui-tous only in the past decade.

The fax machine – a basic business tool from the 1980s – facilitated development of home-based businesses when affordable models led to accelerated use in the mid-1990s and drove the installation of a second phone line in many Australian homes. Of course, it is heading for extinction.

Since some productivity-enhancing innovations often emerge in prior periods, it should be possible to predict some of the technology forces that might shape this gen-eration’s experiences. For example, smaller more powerful batteries will increase portability and underpin wireless in-teractivity of … everything.

The Global Positioning System, available for civilian use since 1983, together with continuing microminia-turisation of componentry (such as cameras), will enable

location-based products and services and appliances to proliferate. Low, earth-orbiting satellites will provide de-tailed views of all surface-based features – as Google Earth hints at today.

Continually increasing affordable computer process-ing power, bandwidth and data storage, friendlier user in-terfaces, coupled with proliferating devices (Blackberries, iPods, motor vehicles) will most assuredly push personal and corporate productivity to record levels, while raising a number of public policy issues such as privacy.

But predictions can also misjudge the uptake of seem-ingly appealing products and processes.

In the recent past the promise of video telephony/conferencing, voice activation technology, smart cards, HDTV, telecommuting, virtual reality and artificial in-telligence have fallen short to various degrees, although it may well be just a timing issue.

Systemic changes aheadDuring the 1970s France showed how a national strat-egy obsessively followed could build a better future for its citizens. Traumatised by the impact of the first oil shock in 1973-74, which saw interruptions to their key energy

mContext (a NICTA Project)

enables mobile devices to

compress large amounts

of data – in particular,

Xml, text and multimedia

information – while

maintaining low access

and update costs for all

desired operations, which

is essential for devices with

limited resources such as

mobile phones.

PHOTO: NICTA

Promotes growth, innovation and the public profile of science and medical research to achieve better outcomes for the people of NSW through:

• Funding to foster and build NSW research capabilities

• Legislative, regulatory and policy advice

• Creation of research networks and hubs

• Science communication and public engagement

• Forums, workshops, conferences and promotions

• Strategic investments in areas of State strength

The NSW Office for Science and Medical Researchwww.osmr.nsw.gov.au

ContactNSW Office for Science and Medical ResearchT: 02 9338 6700E: [email protected]

17JuN/Jul 09


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fuel – Middle Eastern oil – and massive price hikes, a coalition of industry, trade unions (communist) and the government agreed to introduce nuclear power to achieve national energy security and independence.

In the next 15 years, 57 nuclear reactors were built (now 59), which now generate about 80 per cent of France’s electricity while supporting ‘non-nuclear’ nations such as Denmark and Italy with exported nuclear power. France is a country three times ours in population and GDP but with a smaller greenhouse gas footprint!

Australia does not yet see its industrial processes under similar threat, although the GFC may yet come close to having such an impact. But with considerable vision and conviction, the government is putting in place key tech-nology policies with principles around which our industry and society will organise.

First, the commitment to clean energy, while still hotly debated in some quarters, will inevitably see dramatic in-creases in efforts directed at new energy platforms and solutions that prevent GHG emissions from fossil fuels reaching the atmosphere.

ATSE has published a number of authoritative techni-cal reviews in this area which I have no doubt will grow in consequence. There appear to be few truly objective com-mentators on the subject of global warming and climate change. Of course, ATSE’s members cover the spectrum of public opinion on this subject, but the Academy’s techni-cal judgments are supported by the wide and deep exper-tise of its members leading to scholarly, well researched and authoritative studies to date.

The second strategic initiative is the commitment to building a high-speed national broadband network. Few government or individual industry strategies will have as wide-ranging and important an effect on our economy as the availability of affordable internet access with world-class bandwidth by all Australians.

This policy is an example of informed government leadership and will lead to an environment within which many exciting and unforeseen applications and businesses will emerge even as the details of NBN execution poten-tially lead down unexpected paths.

On the topic of technology, there are certain laws that can be relied upon to produce breakthroughs as well as continuous change – like experience curves and Moore’s Law. These often underpin our confidence in claiming that no matter the (technical) problem, a solution will most certainly be found. The only points of dispute might be in the time estimated or the emergence of social issues such as ethical considerations and privacy.

But when a nation agrees on its priorities, especially when reinforced by a real and visible urgency, strong gov-

ernment leadership makes an emphatic difference and ac-celerated progress follows.

Technology-friendly cultureMany factors influence a nation’s productivity, competi-tiveness and wellbeing: education, work practices, quality of infrastructure, regulatory framework and so on. The role of technology and innovation is especially important, although the near-term connections are sometimes hard to quantify.

The modern economy runs on brainpower and skills. Initially, the new digital economy was owned by the young. Beginning in 1996, most high-school graduates were internet trained. By 2016, 20 years later, half the Aus-tralian workforce will be of the internet generation, where web usage, and search and networking dexterity will be core skills – albeit in the hands of young people where only 35 per cent of 25 to 34-year-olds will have a bachelor-level qualification.

And mobile computing devices will be the ubiquitous tool of trade.

Technically competent people will be needed – to help allocate increasingly scarce capital to the best investment alternative, to manage large and small engineering projects, to inform and drive public debate and policy and to make reasoned judgments about new technologies, which are not always free from controversy and concern and some-times push us out of our comfort zones.

Realising the potential within our technically enabled society will not happen automatically. There is an impor-tant technology leadership role – for our universities, CSIRO, our national and industrial R&D laboratories, our great Academies, our governments – which could also deliver community understanding and support.

And it seems to me that ATSE, through forums such as this evening, is leading the way in illuminating the central role of science and technology in modern society and in celebrating our technology heroes. t

This is an edited version of Dr Switkowski’s address to the ATSE Clunies Ross Awards dinner in Sydney in May.

DR ZIggy SwITkowSkI FTSe is chair of the Australian Nuclear

Science and Technology organisation (ANSTo). In 2006 he chaired

the Prime minister’s Review of uranium mining, Processing and

Nuclear energy, whose report re-introduced nuclear power into

Australia’s energy debate. He is a former chief executive of Telstra,

optus and kodak (Australasia). Presently he is a non-executive

director of Suncorp, Tabcorp and Healthscope, and Chair of

opera Australia. Dr Switkowski is a graduate of the university of

melbourne with a PhD in nuclear physics.

Budget energy and innovation initiatives welcomeThe Academy welcomes a number of the 2009

Federal Budget initiatives, particularly in the

area of energy and innovation.

ATSE applauds the Government’s Budget

decision to invest $4.5 billion to support the

growth of clean energy generation and new

technologies, and to reduce carbon emissions

and stimulate economic activity through the

Clean Energy Initiative.

ATSE sees this as a strong response to

its recent call for an investment of $6 billion

by 2020 on RD&D in new power generation

technologies (made in ATSE’s December 2008

report Energy Technology for Climate Change:

Accelerating the Technological Response).

It supports the Government’s proposed

investment of up to $100 million in

partnership with the energy sector for the

development of a new National Energy

Efficiency Initiative – using 21st century

technology to assist transition to a low carbon

economy by encouraging a smarter and more

efficient energy network, using smart grid

technology and smart meters in homes.

ATSE also commends the commitment

to invest $4.1 million over three years to fund

a strategic approach to the nation’s energy

security. This reflects the importance of ATSE’s

April communiqué calling for a major increase

in base-load electric power generation

capacity and the urgent introduction of new

energy technologies to meet the expected

growth in demand to provide the energy

security Australia requires (communiqué

from ATSE International Workshop, April 2008

titled Electricity generation: Accelerating

Technological Change).

“These Budget measures accord with the

Academy’s focus over the past year on clean,

adequate, reliable and affordable energy

as a fundamental for Australia’s economic

prosperity,” said ATSE President, Professor Robin

Batterham, in a media release.

“We also welcome the innovation focus

in Powering Ideas: An Innovation Agenda for

the 21st Century, supported by a proposed

$3.1 billion boost in funding over the next four

years,” he said.

The Commonwealth spend on science

Energy Technology for Climate Change:

Accelerating the Technological Response called for

an investment of $6 billion by 2020 on RD&D in

new power generation technologies

www.ATSe.oRg.AuJuN/Jul 09

FoCuS

18 INNovATIoN

from the corporate tax rate and thereby

create greater certainty in the level of

assistance.

“ATSE particularly welcomes the four-year

funding extension of $185.5 million to National

ICT Australia (NICTA) to ensure the long-

term viability of this vital centre of research

excellence, which is a key asset in Australia’s

innovation system,” Professor Batterham said.

ATSE acknowledges a number of other

Budget initiatives and its increased focus on

science and innovation.

ATSE also welcomes the Government’s

response to the Review of Australian Higher

Education, Transforming Australia’s Higher

Education System, and its allocation of some

$2.6 billion over four years.

Some of its key features include:

¢ �a demand-driven, student-centred model;

¢ �funding provided for each student eligible

for a university place;

¢ �increased participation, targeting a lift from

32 per cent (now) to 40 per cent (2025)

of the 25 to 34-year age group holding a

bachelor degree or higher;

¢ �an extra 50,000 commencing tertiary

students by 2013; and

¢ �infrastructure funding through the

Education Investment Fund. t

and innovation increased from $6.9 billion in

2008-09 to $8.9 billion in 2009-10 – an increase

of 25 per cent, the largest increase on record.

The 2009-10 Budget allocation to science

and innovation is 0.73 per cent of GDP, which

returns expenditure to levels that existed in

the mid-1990s.

“The Academy continually argues its belief

that enhanced RD&D in our key science and

technology fields is a key to a technology-led

recovery from the global financial crisis – and

to successfully addressing the challenges

of climate change, rising health costs and

increasing global economic competition,”

Professor Batterham said.

ATSE has been calling for a greater

recognition for research collaboration

with industry in the allocation of funding

to universities, given that Australia ranks

last in the 26 OECD countries on rates of

collaboration between firms and universities.

The Government has the aim of doubling

the level of collaboration.

Several Budget initiatives were relevant in

supporting collaboration – the Joint Research

Engagement Exercise, Collaborative Research

Networks, new research infrastructure,

the Commonwealth Commercialisation

Institute, the renewal of the CRC program

and the proposed improvement in Enterprise

Connects’ services to firms.

ATSE notes that, while these initiatives

are valuable, there is a need for a more

strategic approach to achieve coordination

of the multiple programs that are currently

supporting collaboration.

It welcomes other Budget initiatives,

including:

¢ �Sustainable Research Excellence – funding

for the indirect costs of research will more

than double over time, with the aim of

raising the average level of support to 50

cents in the dollar of direct competitive

funding by 2014; and

¢ �R&D Taxation – for several years ATSE has

been calling for a revision of the taxation

treatment of R&D. The Government will

replace the tax concession and introduce

a refundable tax credit that is decoupled

The winners of the prestigious 2009 ATSE Clunies Ross Awards are eight leading Australian innova-tors impacting global development in fields such as robotics, remote renewable energy, mobile phone

technology, health and mining.The awards recognise Australia’s pre-eminent scientists

and technologists who have bridged the gap between re-search and the marketplace.

Winners are honoured for having persisted with their ideas, often against the odds, to the point that their inno-vations are making a real difference to the economic, social or environmental benefit of Australia.

The 2009 awardees follow in the footsteps of past luminary winners such as: Dr Fiona Wood, inventor of spray-on skin; Professor Ian Frazer, inventor of the cervi-cal cancer vaccine; Professor Graeme Clark, inventor of the bionic ear; and Nobel laureate Dr Barry Marshall, who discovered the bacteria that cause stomach ulcers.

“It is safe to say that the 2009 ATSE Clunies Ross Award winners have touched all our lives and are playing a significant role in enhancing Australia’s international rep-utation for innovation,” said Mr Bruce Kean AM FTSE, Chairman of the ATSE Clunies Ross Foundation.

Mr Kean was speaking at the ATSE Clunies Ross Award presentation dinner in Sydney attended by more than 350 eminent entrepreneurs, decision makers, govern-ment officials, researchers, academics and business leaders. It was the first timer the awards had been made in Sydney.

Key speakers were Dr Ziggy Switkowski, Chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisa-tion, and Professor Penny Sackett, Australia’s Chief Scien-tist, who also presented the Lifetime Achievement Award.

The 2009 ATSE Clunies Ross Award winners are:

Eight visionary Australian innovators honoured

Robotics systemsProfessor hugh durrant-Whyte fTsE, research director, Australian Centre for field robotics, faculty of Engineering and iT, university of sydneyHugh Durrant-Whyte is a leading national and international

figure in the research, development and commercial

exploitation of robotics systems in applications including cargo-

handling, mining and defence.

He has made substantial contributions in both research and

commercial applications of robotics technologies, especially in

large-scale field applications of key importance to the Australian

economy. His vision of robotics science and application, and

the passion with which he articulates this vision, have played

a critical role in raising the visibility of Australian robotics in

government, industry, academia and the community.

Professor Durrant-Whyte is an Australian Research Council

(ARC) Federation Fellow. He leads the ARC Centre of Excellence

for Autonomous Systems and is also the Research Director of

the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation, the BAE Systems

Strategic Partnership for Autonomous Systems and the DSTO

Centre of Expertise in Unmanned and Autonomous Systems –

all based at the University of Sydney.

His research contributions have focused on two main areas:

autonomous vehicle navigation and multi-sensor data fusion. He

pioneered the field of autonomous navigation, particularly the

development and application of probabilistic methods, critical

for robust commercial application of large outdoor robots. He

was also the originator of Simultaneous Location and Mapping

(SLAM) method. This allows a robot vehicle to be ‘dropped’ into an

unknown environment and to incrementally map the environment

and use that map to navigate the environment – perhaps the

single most important step in achieving robot autonomy.

He pioneered work in Decentralised Data Fusion (DDF)

in which information from a network of sensors is

put together to produce a single coherent picture

of an environment. He built some of the very first

sensor networks, in applications such as surveillance,

demonstrating key DDF features such as modularity,

scaleability and fault-tolerance.

Mobile phone technologydr Chris nicol fTsE, Chief Technology Officer, Embedded systems at niCTA, sydneyChris Nicol is a key figure in how Australians use their

10 million mobile phones, having had a hand in a

number of the key technologies that have led to an

Hugh Durrant-whyte

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Chris Nicol

20JuN/Jul 09


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amazing whole-market penetration of more than 50 per cent.

Dr Nicol’s innovation commitment is demonstrated by

his strong track-record of success in silicon chip research and

development in Australia – both in innovative solutions in the

research phase and in the use of a cross-discipline approach to

technology transfer from research to product.

He is an inventor of low-power integrated circuit design

techniques for broadband communications that have been

widely adopted in xDSL, mobile phones and other systems and

has pioneering inventions in 3G wireless systems.

After distinguished service with Bell Laboratories in the US

he returned to Australia to pursue his vision of building and

sustaining a world-leading integrated circuit research group and

a state-of-the-art chip design team.

His first innovation in Australia created the unified voice

and data channel decoder technology (called Soft Information

Processor or SIP) for processing both voice and data services

in 3G mobile phones simultaneously. The SIP technology was

deployed in some eight million 3G handsets.

His second innovation was co-conceiving an architecture

that enabled a single chip to process the signals of multiple

users simultaneously with different service combinations,

effectively raising the user-per-chip from eight to 64. His team

was involved in the development of this base-station-on-a-chip

technology, known as ‘OneChip’, which

remains as one of the most advanced

application-specific-integrated-circuit

(ASIC) initiatives in the 3G mobile

industry.

His third innovation was the world’s

first silicon chip implementation of

Bell’s very complex MIMO technology

that is transforming global wireless

communications.

Lysosomal disease researchProfessor John hopwood Am fAA, head, lysosomal diseases research unit, sA Pathology, Women’s and Children’s hospital campus, north AdelaideJohn Hopwood is a biochemical geneticist of outstanding

international repute who has led Australia’s research efforts and

achieved world-first treatments for two lysosomal diseases –

Maroteaux-Lamy and Hunter syndromes.

This has improved clinical outcomes for patients worldwide

and generated multi-million-dollar revenue for South Australia –

the largest public sector commercialisation deal in Australia.

Over 30 years Professor Hopwood, arguably the world’s

pre-eminent scientist in the area of lysosomal storage diseases

(LSD), led the Women’s and Children’s Hospital’s Lysosomal

Diseases Research Unit (LRDU) to become world-renowned for

its research capabilities.

His major scientific contribution has focused on the

diagnosis and treatment of the LSD group of more than 50

inherited diseases, which cause progressive destruction of the

brain and other organs. Recent research, population screening

and the detection of later-onset LSD suggests an incidence of

at least one in 1000 births. Further, lysosomal dysfunction is also

implicated in otherwise unexplained stroke and heart disease,

cancers and neuro-degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s,

Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease.

Thirty years ago laboratory diagnosis of LSD was crude and

did not allow effective differentiation of each disorder, a critical

element in providing accurate genetic counselling to parents.

Professor Hopwood’s work revolutionised diagnosis and his

methods are still used in state-of-the-art referral laboratories today.

In developing treatments he came to understand that clinical

symptoms of LSD arise from aberrations in protein structure and

function and he and his team generated several world-firsts, such

as the discovery of the genes responsible for some LSD, taking it

to the forefront of the world scientific stage in LSD research.

Power for remote communitiesmr Alan langworthy, managing director, Powercorp, darwinAlan Langworthy established and currently manages

Powercorp, a world-leading and groundbreaking power systems

engineering company whose technology is enabling remote

communities to have large-city-quality power, almost entirely

from renewable sources.

When Alan established Powercorp in Darwin 22 years ago his

aim was to automate the wide variety of diesel generator power

stations in the Northern Territory for the Power and Water Authority.

Since then Powercorp has become the most advanced

high-penetration renewable energy company in the world, due

to its exceptional application of research and innovation for

tangible social and economic outcomes. Alan’s contribution has

spanned the full spectrum – from innovative ideas in research

and development, to commercial application, operation and

large personal financial investment.

With the initial success in the development of a new power

station automation system in the early 1990s came the possibility

to integrate renewable energy for fuel saving. This work and

the demand side management capability of the control system

John Hopwood

Alan langworthy

led to Powercorp delivering advanced wind diesel systems

in Western Australia for Western Power Corporation. With the

winning of a Showcase grant from the Federal Government,

Powercorp pioneered high-penetration wind diesel systems that

now Power remote communities from Antarctica to the Azores.

The chief problem facing wind diesel systems when

connected to isolated grids is the instability caused on the grid

by wind gusts induced power surging. It is not possible for

conventional generators to cope with these power instability

issues and blackouts usually result wherever the wind power is.

Even when the wind flow is low the fluctuations in wind speed

can cause unacceptable generator response called ‘hunting’,

which uses more fuel and can cause engine damage. This

instability must be managed to achieve high penetration.

Beating internet congestionProfessor Zigmantas Budrikis, Adjunct Professor at the Western Australian Telecommunications research instituteProfessor Antonio Cantoni fTsE, research director at the WA Telecommunications research instituteProfessor John hullett, a consultant in Perth At the heart of solving crucial broadband congestion problems

is the work of three Perth inventors, which has netted massive

revenue from major international communications companies.

The problem of congestion arises because packets of data

over the broadband internet are transmitted in segmented

form by much smaller component cells. One cell lost due to

congestion overload therefore destroys the whole associated

packet, producing a drastic cell loss multiplier effect (‘cell loss

tyranny’), which can reduce network goodput – or throughput

of useable data ‘cells’ – to zero.

The invention by Zigmantas Budrikis, Antonio Cantoni

and John Hullett can maintain goodput at 100 per cent during

overload by ensuring no component cells of destroyed packets

can be transmitted. The solution is known as Early Packet Discard.

Their invention was assigned to Curtin University of Technology in

1997 and subsequently transferred to Australian company QPSX

Communication, in which all three held senior roles. It has been

taken up by most major international communications switch

manufacturers for payments to date topping US$35 million.

The achievement was made against significant odds, in

the face of scepticism in a highly competitive international

telecommunications R&D and standards environment

dominated by well-resourced multinational corporations

and development laboratories.

The QPSX Metropolitan Area Network (MAN),

developed in prototype by a research group led by Professors

Budrikis and Hullett, became an international standard, the first

for an Australian telecommunications technology.

Lifetime achievement awardlaureate Professor John ralston AO fAA fTsE, director, ian Wark institute, university of south AustraliaAs creator and foundation director of the Ian Wark Research

Institute (the Wark) at the University of South Australia,

John Ralston has influenced the mining, materials, specialty

chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sectors – and

become recognised as one of Australia’s influential scientists.

A physical chemist, specialising in colloid and surface

chemistry, with complementary training in metallurgical

engineering and technology, Professor Ralston has established a

very strong international reputation in research, particularly the

physical chemistry of the mineral flotation process.

As DIrector of the Wark, which incorporates the Australian

Research Council Special Research Centre for Particle and Material

Interfaces and the headquarters of the Australian Mineral Science

Research Institute (AMSRI), he has contributed strongly to the

productivity, profitability and sustainability of many industries.

Since 1984 he has attracted more than $150 million in

research funding and has authored more than 300 refereed journal

articles and textbook chapters. His work has been recognised

internationally and in Australia. He was named South Australian of

the Year and South Australian Scientist of the year in 2007.

In the 14 years since its foundation, the Wark has built an

outstanding reputation nationally and internationally, with its

researchers collaborating in Australia and around the world with

more than 30 highly reputed research institutions in Europe,

North America, South America, Asia and Africa.

The considerable and continuing achievements of the Wark

are very much Professor Ralston’s achievements as a research

leader. In little more than 14 years, the Wark has grown from 85

people and an annual budget of $4 million to more than 150

people driving a budget of $25 million. t

21JuN/Jul 09


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(From left) Antonio Cantoni, John Hullett and Zigmantas Budrikis.

John Ralston and

Penny Sackett

JuN/Jul 09FoCuSwww.ATSe.oRg.Au

23eDuCATIoN

The Federal Government has committed to support the STELR program during 2010 with funding of $2 million – its first funding commitment to STELR.

The Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations (DEEWR) has confirmed it will pro-vide funding of $2 million to support the further devel-opment of the STELR program to enable it to extend to more than 150 schools.

The funding – under the Federal Government’s Qual-ity Outcomes Program – followed an approach to Educa-tion Minister Julia Gillard by ATSE President Professor Robin Batterham and ATSE Director and STELR ‘cham-pion’ Dr Alan Finkel.

The funding will enable the STELR project to run in up to 150 secondary schools drawn from each state and territory in its third year. The initial aim is to have the numbers of schools proportional to the relative state or territory populations.

STELR is in its second year in Australian schools, fol-lowing a successful ‘proof-of-concept’ program in four Victorian high schools in 2008. The 2009 pilot program involves 30 metropolitan and regional schools across five states, bringing the relevance concept to some 3000 high school students.

The new funding will enable STELR to build on the work of the pilot project to enhance the teaching of sci-ence in Australian schools in Years 9 and 10. The project will be aligned with the national science curriculum. It will build on contemporary teaching of chemistry, physics, bi-ology and mathematics through the theme of renewable energy, and will demonstrate how theoretical knowledge can lead to practical applications and careers.

STELR will provide extensive teacher support through the development and delivery of curriculum materials that align with the new national science curriculum. The deliv-ery of these materials will be integrated with professional learning that reflects best practice pedagogy and content in junior secondary science education.

Planning provides for two-day professional learning seminars for two teachers from each new school as well as other teachers from schools in the pilot program as neces-sary. STELR will provide teacher-release funding for the teachers as well as support for travel and accommodation. The training will be held in major centres and the seminars will be the basis for local and national professional learn-

STELR boosted by Federal funding

ing communities of teachers. These communities will be supported through the STELR website and by visits from STELR project officers who will run local workshops.

STELR will provide schools with sufficient class sets for experiments in solar electricity, wind turbine electric-ity generation and investigations into the production and properties of biofuels.

A new steering committee for the project will be estab-lished comprising academics, industry experts, representa-tives of professional associations and education authori-ties. This committee will include the project director of the Science by Doing Project of the Australian Academy of Science and a representative of the Department of Edu-cation, Employment and Workplace Relations.

The project will be evaluated to gauge its quality and effectiveness. This evaluation will be ongoing and under-taken by independent professionals. t

The STELR project aims to: ¢ �increase students’ scientific capabilities as they learn

the underlying scientific principles behind renewable

energy resources;

¢ � stimulate students’ interest in science through

inquiry-based learning;

¢ �promote science, engineering and technology careers; and

¢ �support the development of teachers’ understanding

and skills in best practice pedagogy.

Students

get close to

the action

in the STelR

program.

For more information visit:

www.eng.unsw.edu.au www.science.unsw.edu.au

The Faculty of Engineering is ranked 1st in Australia by the Times Higher Education World University Rankings and has the largest cohort of higher degree research students in Australia, addressing complex problems across a range of areas including energy, health, water, infrastructure and ICT.

Researchers in the Faculty of Science were awarded the highest number of ARC Federation Fellowships in 2008 of any Australian university in the disciplines of materials science, biotechnology and biomolecular sciences and physics

Internationally renowned for progressive research with a significant history of commercial innovation.

Strong collaborative partnerships with industry and prestigious institutions worldwide.

Postgraduate students are offered competitive scholarships of over $35k.

Leaders in Engineering and Science

25JuN/Jul 09


eDuCATIoN

tory with teams using test tubes and pipettes to identify ‘unknown’ solutions. Sixty students brought their mobile phones to a fourth workshop to explore how the web functions, and then developed their entrepreneurial skills, ‘selling’ their own inventions to the world market. The last workshop had 60 students controlling 30 robots via lap-tops, doing their best to avoid problem ‘pedestrians’.

The verdict was “a great day at a great venue”, provid-ing some awesome young science talent an opportunity to meet with some of the best scientists and technologists in Australia and to shine in their own right! t

Australia will face a shortage of 20,000 scientists and engineers by 2012 according to a Federal Government Training audit published in 2006. The same report found that the percentage of students choosing to study science in secondary school is declining, with Year 12 science enrolments falling from 19.1 per cent of total enrolments in 1993 to 15.4 per cent of total enrolments in 2003. Extreme Science Experience is designed to help stem that decline by giving keen students a unique opportunity to interact with Australia’s top commercially successful scientists and engineers.

Take a boisterous MC, a committed Chief Scientist and an inspiring young astrophysicist, then mix in seven of Australia’s best technology ‘commercialis-ers’ and combine them thoroughly in a great venue

with 400 secondary students.That’s the recipe for a hugely successful interaction –

which is exactly what the 2009 Extreme Science Experi-ence (ESE) in Sydney turned out to be.

Nearly 400 Year 10 students (and their teachers) from across Sydney and NSW converged on Sydney’s Australian Technology Park in May for this year’s ESE – designed to fire their interest in exploring careers in science and tech-nology.

The program was a huge success by any measure. The opening was ably hosted by Bernie Hobbs, the

effervescent ABC Science presenter, and started with a down-to-earth address by Professor Penny Sackett, Austra-lia’s Chief Scientist. Drawing on her background in science and astronomy, she encouraged students to take up the challenges and rewards that a career in the sciences offers.

Her experience, manner and engagement resonated with the students, especially with the more than 200 Year 10 girls in the audience.

Professor Sackett was followed by an inspiring talk given by one of Australia’s pre-eminent astrophysicists, Dr Bryan Gaensler. The student questions that followed his presentation highlighted how much his topic engaged the audience. Questions such as “We know the speed of light, so what is the speed of dark?” were answered with the same wit and insight with which they were asked.

Suitably revved-up by the opening speakers and nour-ished by morning tea, the students then got their first in-teraction with the 2009 ATS Clunies Ross Awards win-ners, announced the previous evening.

Each of these Australian scientists is a leader in his field, recognised for the quality and benefit of his research and his persistence in its commercialisation, and their pre-sentations drew a host of questions from the students.

After a quick lunch break, it was time for the students to show their talents. They divided into five workshops based on the field of research of each of the Clunies Ross awardees.

While one group used embedded systems to develop their own light shows, others designed their version of a self-sustaining community in a remote location in Australia. Another workshop simulated a biological research labora-

ESE: a great recipe for hands-on science

Chris Nicol

working

with the eSe

participants.

Bernie Hobbs, Penny Sackett and Alan Finkel

ready to launch the Sydney eSe.

Intense focus during the

hands-on phase.

26JuN/Jul 09


eDuCATIoN

system to make us more competitive takes time, planning, teacher training and massive funding.

The Federal Government recognises the need to im-prove our education system across the spectrum of pri-mary, secondary and tertiary education. In the primary and secondary sectors, large amounts of money have been committed recently to rebuilding school infrastructure. Further, the process to develop a national curriculum that will lead to higher and more uniform standards in history, English, science and mathematics is well under way.

As a professional engineer involved in science commu-nication, I have been particularly concerned about science education. For the past 30 years there has been a steady de-cline in the number of secondary school students choosing science and mathematics.

In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, our ability to emerge as a stronger nation, more competitive with our peers, will depend on many factors. In the short term, the stimulatory and regulatory decisions made

by our State and Federal governments will be key.In the long term, our competitive ability will depend

on our productivity, which in turn will depend on the quality of our workforce and the innovation skills of our technologists and business leaders. Workforce quality and innovation skills are not inherited characteristics. They are the product of the education system.

Australia’s secondary educational outcomes are above average among OECD countries, but there are numer-ous countries that do better than us, including some non-OECD developing countries. Improving the education

We need a scientifically literate nation

By Alan finkelbyline email address

27JuN/Jul 09


eDuCATIoN

While optimistic about the improvements that might ensue from the increased funding and the design of the national curricu-lum, it would be inappropriate to wait patiently for these develop-ments. Instead, it is essential to do whatever is possible with the avail-able resources.

ATSE is committed to the education of the next generation of experts. ATSE already has an established its Extreme Science Ex-perience program that introduces Year 10 students to the successfully commercialised technology of the annual winners of the Clunies Ross Foundation Awards.

In an effort to reach more stu-dents, ATSE is testing a program known as STELR that operates within Year 9 and 10 curricula and has the potential to be expanded

tional economic success, to ensure that we make the right decisions about critical issues – such as technological re-sponses to climate change or adoption of new medical technologies based on stem cells – we need a scientifically literate population, one trained to ask questions, evaluate the evidence and form considered opinions.

The new national science and mathematics curricu-lum, coupled with programs such as STELR, will help us to achieve this goal.

In his speech to the US National Academy of Sciences on 27 April this year, US President Obama listed the short-comings in American research and development, then announced a series of challenges and funding initiatives. Three of the key challenges he announced were:¢ �double the capacity to generate renewable energy;¢ �shift the performance of American students in maths

and science from the middle of the comparable-coun-try performance band to the top; and

¢ �ensure that by 2020 America will have the highest pro-portion of college graduates in the world.If funded, the Australian programs I have mentioned

would help Australia respond to similar challenges. t

DR AlAN FINkel Am FTSe is an acclaimed engineer and

neuroscientist and publisher of Cosmos, a popular Australian

science magazine. He is Chancellor of monash university, a Director

of ATSe, executive Publisher of Cosmos magazine and Chair of the

Child Abuse Prevention Research Australia centre.

to reach all secondary students in the country.Our approach with STELR follows the classic innova-

tion approach: take existing technology and knowledge and transform it into a product. The technology in this case is the pedagogy, a teaching approach known as inqui-ry-based learning. A significant component of the STELR program is professional development training provided to participating teachers.

The knowledge in this case is renewable energy. Why renewable energy? Surveys have shown what you probably have observed yourself: young people are concerned about the world in which they will grow up. Will it be physically hospitable, or will it be ravaged by the consequences of global warming? Renewable energies are a toolbox of ap-proaches that can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emis-sions and hence mitigate global warming.

As it happens, renewable energies are also a wonderful context for teaching some of the big ideas in science, such as the transformation and conservation of energy, one of the key concepts highlighted in the draft national science curriculum. Importantly, students enjoy investigating the operating principles underlying wind turbines, solar panels and biofuels.

STELR is in pilot-phase testing in more than 30 schools. Depending on the availability of funding, it may be rolled out over the next several years to all interested secondary schools in the country.

The world is changing rapidly. To maximise our na-

To maximise our national economic success, to ensure that we make the right decisions about critical issues … we need a scientifically literate population, one trained to ask questions, evaluate the evidence and form considered opinions.

28JuN/Jul 09

FoCuS

INNovATIoN

www.ATSe.oRg.Au

Scientists for a new age: Masters of Biotechnology

At just 25, Michael Song is at the forefront of the booming Australian biopharmaceutical market.

The University of Queensland (UQ) Master of Biotechnology graduate is working on the pilot

scale production of therapeutic proteins and bioprocess development for the National Collaborative Research In-frastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Biologics Facility, funded by the Australian Government.

Mr Song says he owes much to the Master of Biotechnol-ogy that he completed at UQ – part of an exciting new area of postgraduate degrees called Professional Science Masters.

“I enjoy being at the interface between research and com-mercial production, and operating both cutting-edge and high-end research instruments,” Mr Song said. “This experience has given me the opportunity to interact with experts from the Australian biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries and also researchers from Australian research institutes.”

Originating in the US about 10 years ago, Professional Sci-ence Masters (PSM) are designed to develop advanced scien-tific knowledge in combination with professional skills such as communication, project management, and commercialisation.

The PSM came about in response to calls from indus-try, government and other parts of the science community for the equivalent of an MBA in science – to educate scien-tists who are as comfortable in the boardroom as they are in the laboratory.

“They’re not intended to displace traditional pro-grams,” said Professor Ross Barnard, Director of the Master of Biotechnology program at UQ. “Instead, PSMs engage students with professional goals and help them become scientists uniquely suited to the 21st century workplace, equipped with a deeper and broader scientific knowledge, and the skills to apply that knowledge in a business context.”

Demand in the US for PSM programs is rapidly in-creasing. In its 2009 stimulus bill, the US Congress allo-cated $15 million specifically for the development of PSM programs. Even before this funding boost, the number of such programs across the US had risen from just one in 1997, to 138 programs at 67 institutions in 2008.

“It strikes me that Australian employers are going to be increasingly looking for graduates with PSM type degrees, and our Master of Biotechnology is the perfect program to

provide that science and business combination,” Professor Barnard said.

The most recent figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that the number of people employed in the Biotechnology sector grew from 5600 in 2003-04 to 14,189 in 2006-07 – more than doubling.

According to the same ABS figures, the Australian Stock Exchange listed 75 biotechnology companies at the end of last year that had a combined market capitalisation of over $22 billion, compared to $10 billion at the end of 2004.

“The Australian Biotechnology sector has matured sig-nificantly in recent years,” Professor Barnard said. “As a re-sult, Biotechnology graduates who have a solid grounding in quality research, as well as in business practices, are best placed to take advantage of this rapidly growing sector.”

“The main appeal to students of our Master of Biotech-nology degree seems to be a fast, portable and specific de-gree that can lead to a job in industry or research that pays more,” Professor Barnard said.

“The program is designed for scientists who want to update their technical skills in core areas such as recom-binant DNA technology, protein technology, biopharma-ceuticals or bioinformatics, and wish to acquire research laboratory experience,” Professor Barnard said. “But it’ll also suit legal or business professionals and teachers with some scientific background who want to learn about the latest technological developments.”

Divya Sarma Kandukuri is another UQ alumnus who credits the innovative Master of Biotechnology degree with launching her career.

Originally from the Indian city of Hyderabad, Ms Kandukuri is now a research assistant at Innovative Puri-fication Technologies Pty Ltd (IPT), a company based at Australian Technology Park in inner city Sydney, where she uses cutting-edge biotechnology techniques to aid IPT to discover and develop novel applications in the ground-breaking field of biopharmaceuticals.

Professor Barnard said the ultimate goal was for gradu-ates with this new kind of degree to earn the respect ac-corded graduates with an MBA, but with much greater scientific credibility, which is essential for work in the modern biotechnology community. t

michael

Song

putting his

skills to use.

29JuN/Jul 09

FoCuS

INNovATIoN

www.ATSe.oRg.Au

Australia’s best for Science Olympiads

Brilliant Australian Year 11 and 12 students are chas-ing Olympic gold when they take on the world’s best in the 2009 International Science Olympiads.

The 13 science stars go head to head with hundreds of students from all over the world in biology, chemistry and physics competitions in Japan, Mexico) and the UK in July, thanks to funding from the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Merck Sharp & Dohme and Monash University.

They were chosen to represent Australia after a gruel-ling series of special classes, exams, study sessions, and an intensive summer scholar school training program run at Monash University by Australian Science Innovations (ASI), the not-for profit organisation that trains and man-ages the team, and is chaired by Dr Mark Toner FTSE.

Mr Toss Gascoigne, Executive Director of ASI, says that competing in the Olympiads is a fantastic stepping stone that can lead students into glittering careers in the field of science.

Professor Ian Frazer FAA FTSE spoke at the National Press Club to promote the Olympiads and said developing emerging young talent was the key to building Australia’s competitive scientific edge.

“It’s essential that we nurture budding scientists and give them all the training and support they need to com-pete on the world stage. One of these students could dis-

cover a major medical breakthrough that has profound benefits for people throughout the world,” he said.

Australian students have donned the green and gold at the Olympiads since 1987. Last year the three teams brought home two gold, six silver and four bronze medals. t

Australian Science Innovations (ASI) organises the Australian Science Olympiads and the Rio Tinto Big Science program in schools, with nearly 50,000 students taking part in ASI activities each year. These programs encourage students to study science at school and university.

Jason kong

from Christ

Church

grammar

School,

Perth.

Australian team members for the International Science OlympiadsBiology – Tsukuba, Japan 12-19 July 2009 – Mel Chen, Brighton Grammar

School, Victoria; Kristijan Jovanoski, Melbourne High School, Victoria; James

Woodmansey, Sydney Grammar School, NSW; Thomas Brereton, North Sydney

Boys High School, NSW.

Chemistry – Cambridge, uK 18-27 July 2009 – Fangzhi Jia, Northern Beaches

Secondary College, NSW; Jason Kong, Christ Church Grammar School, WA; Bill

Huang, Melbourne High School, Victoria; Kelvin Cheung, James Ruse Agricultural

High School, NSW.

Physics – merida, mexico 11-20 July 2009 – Cathryn McDonald, Immanuel

College, SA; Fiona Naughton, North Sydney Girls’ High School, NSW; Christopher

Herron, Gosford High School, NSW; Robert Holt, Christ Church Grammar School,

WA; Thomas Lacy, Sydney Grammar School, NSW.

ATSE maintains a strong interest in science,

technology and engineering education

at all levels and aspires to make positive

contributions at every opportunity. It is often

difficult to know what activities are most

useful, and given the demands and the limited

resources available, ATSE must be selective.

ATSE’s NSW Division is especially interested

in the Science and Technology Key Learning

Area at the primary school level and has

long-standing links to the Curriculum K-12

Directorate of the NSW Department of

Education and Training. Recently these links

enabled ATSE to identify a useful opportunity

in this area, when it was able to provide

financial support for the Department’s initiative

to map the literacy and numeracy demands of

science and technology in primary schools.

ATSE helping develop tomorrow’s scienti sts and engineersareas. This explicit teaching of literacy and

numeracy is integral to the teaching of process

and content in science and technology K–6.

It allows students to communicate their

observations, ideas and solutions. The project

draws heavily on current syllabus documents

such as the English, mathematics and creative

arts to inform the development of the

framework and subsequent teaching resources.

Literacy is the ability to understand and

evaluate meaning through reading, writing,

listening, speaking, viewing and representing.

Numeracy involves using mathematical ideas

efficiently to consider evidence and make

sense of the world. While it necessarily involves

understanding some mathematical ideas,

notations and techniques, it also involves

drawing on knowledge of particular contexts

and circumstances in deciding when to use

mathematics, choosing the mathematics to

use and critically evaluating its use.

Scientific and technological literacy can be

thought of in terms of the circles in the diagram

(left). Science and technology has elements

that are exclusive to the subject, but it also

incorporates significant elements from the

‘circles’ of literacy in English and numeracy.

Currently, there is very little support

for primary school teachers regarding the

alignment of the literacy and numeracy

demands of science and technology to

Literacy in science• Technical words

• Working scientifically• Models, principles,

theories, laws

Literacy inEnglish

• Narrating• Responding

• Graphs• Tables

• Diagrams• Number•Symbols

• Relationships

• Describing• Instructing• Recounting• Explaining• Discussing

• Arguing

• Ethics• applications

• Problem-solving• Designing

• Using equipment Systems

Numeracy

Technologicalliteracy

The project aims to establish a framework

and develop resources to assist teachers to

systematically and explicitly teach science and

technology skills, by building upon literacy

and numeracy foundations at each stage of

primary school learning.

This program involves the Science

and Technology Units of Curriculum K–12

Directorate managing the development of

an analysis of the science and technology

processes of investigating scientifically (for

example, graphing of data) and designing and

producing (for example, technical drawings)

and the specific literacy and numeracy

demands of these requirements.

Teachers need to provide explicit

instructions for students to meet the literacy

and numeracy demands of the various subject

The Academy has welcomed the Australian

Government’s release of the National Energy

Policy Framework 2030 strategic directions

paper and notes there are significant

challenges to accelerate the deployment of

technology to meet climate change targets

that are being set by Government.

In response to the associated Discussion

Paper, Maximising the Value of Technology in the

Energy Sector, ATSE notes that the Government

needs to follow the White Paper with more

detailed strategic technology planning.

The Academy’s submission responded to

key questions in the Discussion Paper, based

on the experience of a range of Academy

Fellows in the energy field. It also built on the

work recently completed and published in the

report Energy Technology for Climate Change:

Accelerating the Technology Response that

quantified the investment needed in research,

development and demonstration if declared

greenhouse gas reduction targets are to be met.

ATSE believes that technology can provide the

answers provided the policy settings are right.

The other main points of the Academy’s

submission were:

EnErgy WhiTE PAPEr: MORE STRATEGIC TECH NOLOGY PLANNING NEEDED1 The Australian community expects the

energy technology mix to deliver energy

security for stationary electricity generation

and an assured supply of transport fuels at

least equivalent to present levels through to

2030 and beyond.

2 Energy technology is capital intensive

and needs investors prepared to accept

risk. While the new suite of Government

programs is generous, most still require the

proponent to provide at least matching funds

for grants.


FoCuS

30 ATSe IN ACTIoN

JuN/Jul 09FoCuS

31

www.ATSe.oRg.Au

ATSe IN ACTIoN

EArly STAgE 1(KIndErgArTEn)

STAgE 1(yEArS 1 And 2)



• Grouping of objects or pictures according to characteristics

• Organising groups of objects for counting and comparing e.g. rows

• Representation of objects with pictures

• Simple interpretation of data e.g. most

• Tally marks or concrete materials to gather and record data e.g. blocks, coloured squares symbols to represent objects/pictures using 1:1 correspondence

• Picture/column graphs

• Graph features: baseline, equal spacing, same size symbol

• Interpretation of graph e.g. compare using words, numbers

• Technology used to construct picture graph

• Vertical and horizontal column and picture graphs, using 1:1 correspondence

• Graph features: title, axes labels, equal spaces on axes

• Technology used to generate graphs

• Questions to obtain information from graphs

• Detailed interpretation making more complex comparisons

• Apply multiple representations of data e.g. table, picture, column graphs. Justify most appropriate

• Devise questions to obtain information from graphs and tables

• Interpret data making more complex comparisons

• Calculate and use ‘mean’ of data

• Question to obtain information from graphs and tables

• Organise information from survey in database

• Use technology to organise and display data e.g. database, tables, graphs, spreadsheet

• Evidence of ability to use a variety of graphs

• Explain rationale for graph choice

• Picture and column graphs: scale and key, construction, interpretation using key/scale, generalising and predicting

• Line graphs: naming and labelling of axes, construction to represent continuous change, vertical axis scale, interpreting using scales on axes, generalising and predicting

• Divided bar graphs: graph name, category name for each section, interpretation of data, generalising and predicting

• Reading and interpretation of sector (pie) graph, stating absolute quantities for ½ or ¼ segments or from relative size of segments

• Graph features: many-to-one correspondence

• Analysis of data to suggest possible trends and explanations

grAphS The purpose of a graph is to organise, display and summarise information so that patterns and relationships can be identified. Features include a title, axes labelled with variables and units of measurement.

ATSE helping develop tomorrow’s scienti sts and engineers

EnErgy WhiTE PAPEr: MORE STRATEGIC TECH NOLOGY PLANNING NEEDED3 Two classes of technology strategically fit

Australia’s interests.

The first includes energy resources which no

other economy will develop. Here Australia

must carry the development task. Examples

include Australia’s brown coal reserves and

geothermal resources.

The second includes technologies in which

Australia has strong inherent advantages.

Examples include carbon capture and storage

and certain advanced solar thermal and

photovoltaic technologies.

4 International collaboration being fostered by

Australia in carbon capture and storage has

considerable merit. However it is early days and

before embarking on further worldwide initiatives

it might be desirable to learn from this experience.

5 To meet declared emissions targets the

cost of energy will undoubtedly need

to rise substantially. Government programs

should target energy efficiency and energy

conservation behaviours so, while unit costs

(electricity and transport fuels) may even

double, user costs will be minimised.

6 While Governments should not try to

‘pick winners’, they need to ensure that

funds outlaid to support the innovation chain

are well invested, not wasted on duplication,

pipe dreams or projects where a commercial

pathway is unclear.

7 The Government needs to follow the

White Paper with more detailed strategic

technology planning, based on rigorous

numerical analysis rather than unsupported

aspirations, involving energy industry players

and leading researchers. t

specific stages of learning. The table below

shows one example of how the skill of

graphing is developed in each stage of

learning. It was an outcome of the project.

The mapping stage of the project is

nearing completion and will produce teaching

materials that will be trialled at teacher

workshops organised by the Department.

A further stage is planned in which teacher

workshops and teaching materials will be

made available across NSW. The cost of this

stage is significant as it requires relief teacher

funding to allow attendance at workshops

and the production of materials, including

annotated student work samples and advice

on teaching strategies.

ATSE’s NSW Division will be seeking

funding from its supporters later in 2009. t


FoCuS

32 ATSe IN ACTIoN

by Australia’s Chief Scientist, Professor

Penny Sackett, with opening addresses by

Professor Ching-Ray Chang, Director General,

International Cooperation Department,

National Science Council of Taiwan, and

Professor Robin Batterham AO FREng FAA

FTSE, President of the Academy.

The workshop was conducted in two parts

– Sustainable water use and management for

the future and Energy technologies for a low

carbon future, both followed by roundtable

sessions and a plenary session where

workshop convenors reported on technology

transfer opportunities and possible new areas

of research. ATSE workshop convenors were Dr

John Radcliffe AM FTSE (water) and Mr Martin

Thomas AM FTSE (energy).

The water workshop recommended a

series of future actions:

¢ �form a regional consortium for fostering

cooperation of science and engineering in

water environment;

¢ �establish a networking system for

technology and information exchange and

identify a moderator;

¢ �organise specialty conferences, regional

workshops, and roundtable discussions for

mutual commercial project opportunities

and for technology transfer, consulting

services and R&D; and

¢ �encourage institutions, researchers and

The Academy hosted a two-day international

workshop with scientists from Taiwan in

Sydney in May to examine the many common

issues the two countries share in water and

energy related issues.

The workshop was arranged to explore

key issues, develop technology transfer

opportunities and build new networks

while exploring areas for research projects

for mutual scientific, technological and

commercial cooperation between Australia

and Taiwan.

It was designed to help both

countries, each striving to link scientific

and technological knowledge with best

management practices, to ensure water and

energy resources are utilised in a sustainable

manner.

The workshop, attended by 44 people,

was preceded by technical visits organised

for the visiting water and energy groups in

Brisbane, Newcastle and Sydney, which aimed

to identify possible areas of future cooperation

and complement the workshop aims.

The energy group started the week

in Brisbane with a series of technical visits

hosted by Mr Ken Dredge FTSE (formerly

Chair of Tarong Energy) which included the

University of Queensland – where it met

Professor Max Lu FTSE, Deputy Vice Chancellor

Research and Director of the ARC Centre

ATSE hosts Taiwan workshop on water and energy issues

Australia needs to manage potential risks to

ensure the availability of the needed expertise

and infrastructure for effective long-term

weather forecasting as it moves towards a

‘seamless’ system of weather and climate

prediction.

The development, evaluation,

maintenance and application of modern

climate modelling systems require large

and sustained investments in expertise and

infrastructure and Australia has a long record

of achievement in climate modelling.

But Australia’s expertise is spread across

government and university institutes, which

traditionally use different modelling systems

and this is a potential risk to the national

benefit unless a collaborative approach is taken.

These comments are key elements of

ATSE’s recent submission to the House of

Representatives Standing Committee on

Industry, Science and Innovation inquiry, Long-

term meteorological forecasting in Australia.

ATSE noted that many countries,

including Australia, were moving towards

the development of ‘seamless’ weather

and climate prediction systems, where

common infrastructure was used to predict

meteorological variations on time scales from

hours to years.

It had been demonstrated that these

models could be used to assist decision-

making in many sectors, including agriculture,

water management and energy management.

WATER AND CLIMATE COLLABORATION KEY TO NATIONAL BENEFIT

of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials.

After an afternoon visit to CSIRO Energy

Technology at the Queensland Centre for

Advanced Technologies, the group travelled

the following day to Newcastle. Here it visited

CSIRO Energy Technology at Mayfield, where

it was hosted by Dr David Brockway FTSE,

Chief of CSIRO Energy, and the University

of Newcastle, where the group met with

Professor Bogdan Dlugogorski FTSE, Director

of the Priority Research Centre for Energy and

Professor Terry Wall AM FTSE, Professor of Fuel

and Combustion Engineering.

The water group spent two days in

Brisbane on a program of technical visits

organised by Dr Tom Connor AO FTSE, Director

Engineering and Technology at KBR. The

first day included visits to the Yatala Brewery

Wastewater Reuse Plant, the Pimpama

Recycled Water Plant and the Southern

Regional Water Pipeline site. The second

day included visits to the Queensland Water

Commission, the Brisbane City Council, the

University of Queensland and the Luggage

Point advanced recycling plant.

Once they linked up in Sydney, the16-

strong Taiwan delegation visited Sydney

Olympic Park to see a variety of sustainable

energy and water-efficient features followed

by a tour of the Olympic Park site.

The workshop was officially opened


FoCuS

33ATSe IN ACTIoN

students in regional cooperative research

programs.

The energy workshop also proposed

several future actions:

¢ �organise exchange programs of scientists,

involving technical visits to develop and

progress research cooperation;

¢ �provide detailed information of

technologies that can be transferred to

local industries, exploiting the natural

strengths of both Australia and Taiwan; and

¢ �identify lead contact persons from

Australia and Taiwan to progress each area

of proposed research cooperation. t

“Climate prediction is vitally dependent

upon sustained and consistent observations

of the atmosphere, ocean and land surface,”

ATSE said.

“International arrangements, largely

through the World Meteorological

Organization and the Intergovernmental

Oceanographic Commission, provide the basis

for the collection and sharing of the required

observations. Complementary arrangements

ensure the sharing of weather and climate

information to assist countries in their

provision of emergency services to manage

extreme meteorological events.

“Australia has a national strategy for

meteorological modelling to support both

long-term and short-term prediction.

“However, there are some potential risks that

need to be managed to ensure the availability

of the needed expertise and infrastructure.

Overseas priorities for meteorological prediction

include greater emphasis on air chemistry,

including both air pollutants and long-lived

greenhouse gases,” ATSE said. t

WATER AND CLIMATE COLLABORATION KEY TO NATIONAL BENEFIT

workshop participants (from left) Professor Robin Batterham, Professor Penny Sackett and

Professor Ching-Ray Chang.

¢ �explore opportunities for financial

support for visiting scientists to undertake

exploratory visits to further research

projects;

¢ �explore possible financial support for

proposals to progress international

cooperation between Australia and Taiwan;

ATSE acknowledges the contribution of all its participating Fellows, including:

wATeR: Dr Tom Connor and mr Brian

Sadler, Session Co-Chairs;

Dr John Radcliffe and Dr Peter

Crawford, who presented

papers.

eNeRgy: mr ken Dredge and Professor

mark wainwright, Session

Co-Chairs; Dr vaughan Beck

and mr martin Thomas, who

presented papers.

PARTICIPANTS: Dr Sukhvinder Badwal, Dr Bob

Durie, Professor Dongke

Zhang, Professor mike

manton, Dr David Brockway

and Professor max lu.

ATsE’s submission, coordinated by

Professor michael manton fTsE, is available

at www.atse.org.au/?sectionid=1157

34JUN/JUl 09

FocUs www.atse.org.aU

water

Innovation is what we do...www.coalandallied.com.au

090306_Ad_Clunies Ross.indd 1 16/03/2009 12:37:19 PM

csIro scientists inspect one of the floating nodes monitoring lake wivenhoe.

Keeping a clever eye on our water One of the major sources of drinking water for south-east Queensland is

now under the watchful eye of Australia’s largest integrated intelligent

wireless sensor network.

CSIRO and a local water authority in Queensland, SEQWater, have

joined forces to monitor the Lake Wivenhoe catchment, which spans

an area about the size of the city of Brisbane, and supplies water to the

region’s residents.

Approximately 120 nodes, using CSIRO's FLECK™ smart wireless

sensor network technology, are monitoring environmental conditions

on Lake Wivenhoe and in the surrounding catchment. The sensor nodes

operate in a meshed network, which means they record environmental

variables and cooperate with each other to set up an ad hoc network to

wirelessly transfer data.

Of the 120 nodes, 45 are floating and measure water temperature

through the water column, while another 70 are land-based and spread

across the catchment. An autonomous solar-powered catamaran travels

between the floating nodes gathering data. Developed by CSIRO, this is

controlled through a PDA, web interface or web-enabled mobile phones.

CSIRO senior research scientist Dr Matthew Dunbabin said it was

hoped that these sensors could provide the platform for the next

generation of water quality monitoring systems.

“This is about real-time data collection from the storage to the shore

with a level of speed and detail not seen before,” Dr Dunbabin said.

“This gives us the capacity to monitor ‘events’, such as high rainfall,

droughts or contaminants entering the waterway, in real time. If the

network detects an ‘event’, it can advise the boat to sample in more detail.”

PhO

TO: CSIRO

35JUN/JUl 09

FocUswww.atse.org.aU

water

Murdoch Vice-chancellor

Professor John Yovich with

Murdoch desalination scientist

Professor ric Pashley.

Energy-efficient desalination attracts $25 million to MurdochResearch to lower energy use and carbon emissions in desalination

technology by scientists at Murdoch University has been boosted by

Federal and State government funding totalling $25 million.

Australian and international researchers will collaborate at Murdoch's

new National Centre of Excellence in Desalination to safeguard future

water supplies for consumers and industry.

The Federal funding over five years will be topped up by an extra $5

million from the Western Australian government.

Murdoch University’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Yovich, said the

centre, based at Murdoch’s Rockingham campus, would draw together

the nation’s top scientists in desalination to provide solutions to the water

crisis, and build on Murdoch’s historical research strengths in renewable

energy, water and environmental sciences.

“This important new national research hub at Murdoch will offer

energy-saving solutions to safeguard future water supplies for both

consumers and industry, and these new technologies will have widespread

application for the benefit of all Australians,” Professor Yovich said.

Murdoch University will host the centre with strong involvement

from other Australian universities, industry and international partners.

The initial partners are Curtin University of Technology, Edith Cowan

University, Flinders University, the University of New South Wales, the

University of Queensland, the University of South Australia, Victoria

University, the University of WA and WA’s Water Corporation. There will be

opportunities for the centre to work collaboratively with others on joint

research initiatives.

It is anticipated that the centre will commence its activities in the

second half of 2009.

REvolutionaRy dEsalination pRocEss cREatEdA Murdoch University scientist has created a process to extract drinking

water from seawater that could revolutionise desalination and reduce

energy costs.

Chemistry Professor Ric Pashley has patented a process that separates

salt and water by exploiting their molecular properties and, for the first

time, can do this without boiling the water – which dramatically reduces

the costs and carbon emissions.

This process has many advantages over the two conventional

methods of desalination, which need large amounts of energy:

distillation, where saltwater is boiled to produce vapour that is collected

as fresh water; and reverse osmosis, which pushes water at high pressure

through filtering membranes.

“If you can run a process at low temperatures to produce drinking

water, then you can use ‘low quality’ industrial waste heat to produce the

water, almost for free,” Professor Pashley said.

“All you do is build the desalination plant next to a suitable industrial

plant and use the heat that the industry wastes every day to run the

process.”

Professor Pashley and two PhD students have been drinking the

water from their laboratory model of the invention for some time –

successfully producing drinking water at temperatures of 45˚C and below.

Professor Pashley also has a patent pending which he says could

solve the problem of high-salt water being returned to the sea, as is the

case with WA’s desalination plant at Kwinana.

It’s no surprise then that Professor Pashley hopes to play a vital role in

the establishment of Perth’s new National Centre of Excellence in Water

Desalination.

“Even in the best desal plants in the world – and the Kwinana plant

is at the cutting-edge – we are still some way from what’s possible.

There really are new technologies that can reduce the energy costs of

producing water by a factor of two to three,” he said.

Professor Pashley has already formed a company called Desal

(Australia) Pty Ltd to commercialise the technology which has received

venture capital investment and interest from several companies.

36JUN/JUl 09


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NICTA_IEEE_advert_A5hrzntl finalPage 1 3/2/09 12:05:54 PM

research & techNologY

carr lauds academies The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim

Carr, has praised Australia’s four Learned Academies for their research.

"The Learned Academies provide a unique perspective on research

addressing our national priorities,” Senator Carr said.

"This unique perspective helps to advance our knowledge and

produce results that have a broad benefit in the natural and applied

sciences, technological development and applied technology, social

sciences and humanities.”

Senator Carr was announcing funding of $465,000 over two years for

the Learned Academies under the Linkage Learned Academies Special

Projects scheme.

“The four Learned Academies receiving funding are the Academy of

the Social Sciences in Australia, the Australian Academy of Science, the

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, and the

Australian Academy of the humanities,” he said.

“Through their funding proposals, these four academies have shown

individual and innovative thinking to solve Australia’s unique problems.

“This is why the Australian Government is awarding them with

funding of $465,000 over two years.

“The outcomes of this funding will: assist leaders and the public to

understanding more accurately the role of the humanities in Australia;

allow reflection on the changing nature of security threats; help

understand the role of physics to our economy; and identify new low-

emission technologies where large-scale investment is justified.”

The last of these is a project grant is $120,000 to ATSE for 2009

and 2010 for a project entitled ‘Analysis of Strategies to Accelerate the

Deployment of Low Emissions Technologies for Electric Power Generation

in Response to Climate Change’.

This new project follows the earlier ATSE project Accelerating the

Technology Response to Climate Change. Funding is also being sought

from other sources to enable the project to be completed expeditiously

so that the results can be considered in the development of the

Government’s Energy White paper due at the end of this year.

The Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects scheme supports

programs of research, or programs that support the conduct of programs

of research, undertaken by one or more of Australia’s Learned Academies.

More information about the Linkage Learned Academies Special Projects scheme and the programs supported in this round of funding is available at: www.arc.gov.au/ncgp/lasp/lasp_default.htm

37JUN/JUl 09

FocUswww.atse.org.aU

research & techNologY

a quantum leap in computingFrom simple solutions, like slash marks in the mud and the abacus, to very

high-tech supercomputers, thousands of methods have been developed

throughout history to help perform calculations. None, however, have

had the same impact as the computer.

Since their emergence in the 1940s, computers have changed

dramatically. The earliest computers used gears and vacuum tubes, while

today’s computers run on miniscule logic gates, transistors and silicon

chips that perform calculations with mind-bending speed and accuracy.

And they’ve changed the way we live almost every facet of our lives –

there’s little left out there without a computer chip in it. Yet despite this,

and the massive impact computers have had, there’s a new technology

lurking that could have just as significant an impact.

Although it’s a technology still in its infancy, the idea of encoding

and processing information in quantum systems – and using quantum

computers – is being hailed as a technology that could spark a new

technological age.

Dr Benjamin Lanyon, a quantum physicist in the School of

Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland (UQ), is at

the forefront of this exciting new area of research, “the aim of which is

to investigate the capabilities of encoding and processing information

in physical systems that are so small, they must be described using the

bizarre laws of quantum physics,” he said.

Dr Lanyon said the research at the UQ node of the ARC Centre of

Excellence for Quantum Computer Technology was based on the principles

of quantum mechanics, an area of physics concerned with the subatomic.

he said particles of a subatomic size, such as electrons and photons,

behaved very strangely. “The idea is that you can exploit their strange

behaviour to do very powerful information-processing tasks.”

Traditional digital computers are built on the power of processing

bits (0’s and 1’s) encoded into physical systems that follow the laws of

everyday `classical’ physics. In a traditional computer, a set of two bits

gives four unique configurations (00, 01, 10, and 11), but the two bits can

only be in one configuration at a time.

Quantum computers use quantum bits – qubits – encoded in

physical systems that follow the laws of quantum mechanics. In a

quantum computer, a set of two qubits can, in some sense, be in all four

unique configurations at the same time – a state known to physicists as a

`quantum superposition’.

“A qubit is like a coin that can be heads (on), tails (off ) or

simultaneously heads and tails (on and off ) or any possible combination

in-between,” Dr Lanyon said. “This is impossible with normal bits, but a

qubit can be in two possible states, two qubits can be in four, three qubits

in eight, and so on – so quantum memory sizes grow exponentially with

the number of qubits.”

Dr Lanyon’s research focuses on using light from lasers as a base for

these qubits, and hence, quantum computing.

“If you turn light down to a very low intensity and have a sensitive

enough detector, you’ll find that it has a particulate nature to it – it

comes in discrete bits called photons,” he said. “We’re trying to use these

quantum particles, the quantum particles of light, as the carriers of

quantum information.”

To do this, Dr Lanyon said he and his colleagues had to construct a

number of quantum logic gates to process the photons (qubits).

“Your everyday computer, mobile phone or mp3 player has

logic gates in it and you can do any kind of operation you want by

just rearranging your logic gates; they’re the building blocks of your

computer. In a normal computer nowadays you might have hundreds of

millions of logic gates. We have a couple – a handful – of quantum logic

gates and that’s where we’re at.

“Although we’ve built a very small quantum computer we’re not

ready to just go and make it bigger and bigger,” he said. “I think there are

still some physical obstacles that we need to overcome in the path to

scaleability, but there’s none that we know of that are just ‘no goers’, that

we’ll never be able to overcome.

“We’re almost at a stage where we need massive investment in order

to get the technology that we need.”

Dr Lanyon said that, along with the fragility of the logic gates holding

back the development of a quantum iMac, there was also the issue of size.

“These things are massive in comparison to the single transistor chips

that are inside your computer, which are on the microscopic scale. We’re

building single logic gates that are one foot across.” But Dr Lanyon said going

much smaller is certainly feasible, and that this is an active research area.

While Dr Lanyon acknowledges the quantum computer built at UQ is

a long way off a full-scale device, he’s convinced quantum computing will

be hugely important in the future.

“Physicists and computer scientists have some ideas about quantum

computing that could revolutionise what we could do in terms of new

physics and new technology, but I think it’s fair to say that while we

haven’t got a clue as to the full extent of what these things can do, we’re

pretty confident that it’s going to be fairly significant.”

Dr Benjamin lanyon

getting ‘hands-on’ at UQ.

38JUN/JUl 09


clIMate / Book reVIew

Major Ian Toohill, an enthusi-astic Antarctic one-tripper, interviewed Phillip Law AC CBE FAA FTSE and

his wife Nel on several occasions be-tween 1984 and 1987.

Transcribed, the interviews allow us to hear Law’s voice again as we have heard it in his own books and in Ralston’s two-volume biog-raphy. Nel, an accomplished artist, gets a word in from time to time.

Toohill takes him through his early childhood, his teaching ca-reer, university studies and research, before getting to the Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE) and Law’s last paid job as founder of the Victoria Institute of Colleges. A personal foreword by Professor Geoff Vaughan AO FTSE sets the scene.

The book contains the sort of stunning photographs you would expect of Law and ‘down south’, together with a detailed chronology of Law’s life – ‘life so far’, I should say – and I’ll expand on that, later.

Law describes himself in an earlier book as a man gifted with luck, which he defines as the ‘tiny margin between success and di-saster’. There’s more to it than that, as we all know: intelligence,

prescience, planning, and physical endurance have made big con-tributions to ‘Law Luck’.

If you have never read of Law’s struggles with the bureaucracy and heard his stirring tales of Antarctic exploration and Antarctic science, then here is a chance to acquaint yourself with a great Australian.

If you thought you had heard it all before, look here and you will find that Toohill’s questions have produced the frank expressions that hitherto have been edited out. However, some mysteries remain.

You won’t find just when Phil grew his beard (I reckon it was on the first voyage in that ‘terrible tub’ the Wyatt Earp, 1947-48) or how expeditioners tolerated the fug of tobacco smoke that seemed to characterise the living quarters aboard and ashore in Law’s time (1947–66).

Phil has passed his 97th birthday. If his luck holds out, his 100th birthday party will eclipse those of his 90th and 95th – which will then be seen as having been held ‘just in case’.

Toohill’s book is right up the minute in every respect.

ProFessor IaN rae Ftse is a former technical Director of atse and honorary

Professorial Fellow, history and Philosophy of science, University of Melbourne.

law's loreBy Ian [email protected]

Green jobs reportThe Victorian Government has released the first report from the Allen

Consulting Group, which it commissioned to assess future commercial

opportunities arising from climate change and the ability of Victorian

industry to capitalise on them.

Victoria's greenhouse opportunity set: new growth prospects in a

carbon constrained world revealed economic potential over the next two

decades worth up to a maximum net present value of $10 million:

¢ �$4.6 billion in water infrastructure and technology;

¢ �$2.25 billion in green building and construction services; and

¢ �$3.3 billion in energy storage and technology.

The report reflects on an assessment of possible climate futures

and the ability of Victorian industry to gain climate-driven competitive

advantage from activities that are instrumental in delivering lower

emission dependency.

The Government says Victorian sectors are well placed to harness

the significant forces for economic adjustment brought about by climate

change and international abatement efforts.

Phase two of the Allen Group's research will be to develop five

case studies in close collaboration with industry. Studies into green

construction and water infrastructure and technologies will consider

export and domestic markets, identify the opportunities for jobs growth

Dr Phillip Garth Law: His Extraordinary Life & Times, by Ian Toohill , The Royal Societies of Australia, Melbourne, 2009. Printed in Australia by On-Demand, Southbank, Melbourne.

and identify strategies to position Victorian industry as national and

regional leaders in these areas. The report will provide input into the

Government's Green Economy and Jobs Action Plan announced in its

Annual Statement of Government Intentions in February 2009.

MajoR biochaR boostThe Federal Government has announced $1.4 million for the biggest

biochar research project in Australia – and one of the biggest in the

world – under its Climate Change Research Program.

CSIRO will coordinate the three-year project on biochar’s potential

to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GhG) and boost farm productivity.

Experts in biochar, soil science and emissions management from across

Australia will join the project.

Biochar is a fine charcoal, produced when organic matter such as

wood or crop waste is burnt without oxygen. It has potential to store

carbon from the atmosphere in soil and could be used to help offset GhG

emissions. Other potential benefits include storing more nutrients and

water in soil and reducing acidity.

“This project builds significantly on current research within CSIRO

and our research partners,” said Dr Brian Keating, CSIRO Director of

the Agricultural Sustainability Initiative. ”It will define the potential

contribution that biochar production and application can make to

productivity and carbon management in Australian agriculture.”

More information at www.daff.gov.au/emissions-reduction.

INAustrAliAn AcAdemy of technologicAl sciences And engineering

number 156June / July 2009

Ms Davidson is one of Australia’s leading

viticulturists and has a strong background in

natural resource management, particularly

water and irrigated agriculture. She is a member

of the SA Premier's Climate Change Council and

previously served on the SA Murray–Darling

Basin Natural Resource Management Board.

“The independent MDBA will play a crucial

role in helping Basin communities, irrigators and

our rivers prepare for a future with less water,”

Senator Wong said. “MDBA members will draw

on their expertise and experience to prepare a

Basin Plan that will, for the first time, set a long-

term sustainable limit on the use of both surface

and groundwater in the Murray–Darling Basin.“

michael tobar measures up on World metrology day WA scientist Professor Michael Tobar FTSE

has been awarded the Barry Inglis Medal for

Excellence in Practical Measurements by an

Individual in Australia. The announcement

coincided with World Metrology Day which

commemorates the anniversary of the signing

of the Metre Convention on 20 May 1875.

Metrology is the science of measurement.

The Barry Inglis Medal was created to

honour the first Chief Metrologist and CEO of

the National Measurement Institute, Dr Barry

Inglis FTSE, who became an ATSE Fellow in 2004.

It acknowledges and celebrates outstanding

achievement in measurement research and/or

ATSE Fellow and former senior public servant

Mike Taylor AO FTSE is chair of the Murray–

Darling Basin Authority (MDBA). Fellow

Dianne Davidson will serve as a part-time

Member of the MDBA.

Mr Taylor, appointed for four years, held

senior positions in the Commonwealth

and Victorian public services for 17 years.

He recently retired as Secretary of

the Commonwealth Department of

Infrastructure, Transport, Regional

Development and Local Government.

”Mr Taylor's leadership qualities and

breadth of experience and expertise in

water, the environment, natural resource

management and agriculture make him an

ideal choice for this important new role,“ said

the Minister for Climate Change and Water,

Senator Penny Wong.

excellence in practical measurements by an

individual or group in the fields of academia,

research or industry in Australia.

Making the announcement, the

Minister responsible for Australia‘s National

Measurement Institute, Dr Craig Emerson,

said: “Professor Tobar, of the University of

WA, has worked at the leading edge of

sophisticated frequency control systems for

many years leading to patents of inventions

with commercial applications.

“In particular, his work with oscillators

forms the basis for the next generation of

radar, telecommunications and precision

measurement applications.”

Professor Tobar became an ATSE Fellow

last year.

Alan robson named WA citizen of the yearProfessor Alan Robson AM FTSE was recently

awarded the status of WA Citizen of the Year

in the Professions category.

Professor Robson was appointed

Vice-Chancellor of UWA in 2004, following

10 years’ service as Deputy Vice-Chancellor.

His citation noted that: “He has worked

tirelessly to implement new strategic

directions and build a global reputation

for UWA as one of Australia’s leading

research institutes and best comprehensive

universities. He achieved high standing in

teaching, research and administration within

Australia and brought an increased emphasis

on the leadership of a Vice-Chancellor

in the development of international and

domestic strategic alliances with State and

Federal Governments. Professor Robson is a

supportive mentor to UWA students, staff-

members and academics. He is an energetic

advocate on behalf of the university system,

which has carved him an international

standing in this field, as well as being a

passionate supporter for research in WA,

especially in the field of medicine.’”

Mike Taylor to head Murray–Darling Basin Authority

michael tobar

(left to right) david green, Professor barry hart,

dr diana day, chief executive rob freeman,

chair mike taylor and dianne davidson.

40Jun/Jul 09

focus

Atse in focus

Eight Fellows in Queen’s Birthday HonoursThe Academy extends its congratulations to

Fellows who were recognised in the Queen’s

Birthday Honours:

¢�Malcolm Alexander Kinnaird AC FTSE,

prominent South Australian businessman,

for service through the development of

public policy in the defence procurement,

infrastructure and energy sectors, and to

business – a Fellow since1990;

¢�Dr Bruce Edward Hobbs AO FAA FTSE,

former Chief Scientist of WA and Deputy

Chief Executive of CSIRO Strategic, for

services to science, particularly in the

field of structural geology as a leader

in the development of innovative

research centres and mineral exploration

techniques – a Fellow since 2006;

¢�Professor Peter Numa Joubert AM FTSE,

Professorial Fellow, University of Melbourne,

for service to engineering through research

in the field of fluid dynamics, particularly

in relation to submarine design and

education – a Fellow since 1979;

¢�Dr Roger Malcolm Lough AM FTSE,

former Chief Defence Scientist, for

service to national security and defence

capability through leadership roles with

the Defence Science and Technology

Organisation – a Fellow since 2005;

¢�Professor John Alan Richards AM FTSE,

former Deputy Vice-Chancellor and

Vice-President, ANU, and ACT Division

President and ATSE Councillor, for service

to electrical engineering as an academic,

through professional associations, and a

contributor to the development of space

science – a Fellow since 1996;

¢�Emeritus Professor Calvin Wyatt Rose

AM FTSE, Emeritus Professor, Griffith

University, for service to education in

the areas of soil and water conservation,

and to the promotion of environmental

science – a Fellow since 1993;

¢�Professor James Stanislaus Williams AM

FTSE, Director and Professor, Research

School of Physical Sciences, ANU, for

service to the physical sciences and

engineering through education, research

and administrative roles, particularly in the

area of semiconductor physics – a Fellow

since 1992; and

¢�Dr Graeme Leslie Blackman OAM FTSE,

Chairman and Managing Director, Institute

of Drug Technology Australia Ltd, for

service to the pharmaceutical industry,

and to the community through a range of

church, heritage and welfare organisations

– a Fellow since 2004.

tom fisher joins Atse in canberraTom Fisher, a former senior public servant

has joined the ATSE team in Canberra as

Government Liaison Consultant.

His appointment recognises the need to

enhance ATSE’s engagement with government

and industry organisations. His primary role

is to assist the ATSE Executive and Board in

enhancing relationships with Government

Departments and Ministerial staff.

Mr Fisher’s role will also include assisting

the ATSE Office with building stronger

relationships with the broader Australian

business community/industry.

His appointment begins the building of

a stronger Canberra presence and a more

effective representation base for the Academy.

Mr Fisher is a very experienced former

senior Commonwealth public servant,

who has worked in small agencies, large

departments and in both national and state

offices and has held statutory appointments.

His most recent appointments in

the Australian Public Service were in the

Education, Employment and Workplace

Relations portfolio. He was appointed

Australia’s first Federal Safety Commissioner

in June 2005 and held that position until

July 2008 – concurrently serving as Group

Manager, Office of the Australian Safety and

Compensation Council.

He was also the Head of the Office

of Small Business for several years and

both Deputy Chief Executive Officer and

Chief Executive Officer of the National

Occupational Health and Safety Commission.

He has represented the Australian

Government internationally at APEC and

International Labor Organisation forums

and at a number of domestic forums,

including the Australian Industrial Relations

Commission.

In these roles he worked closely with the

relevant ministers and ministers’ senior staff

in the Deputy Prime Ministers’ office, as well

as the Departments of Prime Minister and

Cabinet and Innovation, Industry, Science

and Research.

More recently, Mr Fisher has been

working with a number of private and

public sector organisations, assisting in

reviews, strategic OHS issues and corporate

governance arrangements.

Wendy craik joins Productivity commissionDr Wendy Craik AM FTSE has been appointed

a full-time Commissioner of the Productivity

Commission.

Until recently Dr Craik was Chief

Executive Officer of the Murray–Darling Basin

Commission, with extensive prior experience

in very senior positions associated with

natural resource management and rural

policy. She is widely recognised for her long-

standing contribution in this area.

Dr Craik, who joined the Academy in

1996, has extensive experience in the area of

ecologically sustainable development and

environmental conservation.

tom fisher

41Jun/Jul 09

focus

Atse in focus

Dr Gill was the Water Corporation’s

inaugural CEO from 1996 to December 2008. A

major focus during his tenure was a program to

greatly increase the WA's water source capacity

and promote efficient water usage to adapt to

significantly drying climate. He also introduced

seawater desalination to Australia and this has

now been adopted by four other states.

Most recently he received the

International Water Association's Grand Award

in Vienna last September in recognition of

WA's leadership in adapting to drying climate.

Dr Gill graduated with a Bachelor of

Engineering (Civil) from the University of WA

in 1968 and obtained a PhD (in the field of

computer-aided design) from Cambridge

University in 1972. Dr Gill also attained a

Masters Degree in Public Administration from

Harvard University in 1983.

He started with the WA Main Roads

Department in 1972. From 1988–95 Dr Gill was

WA’s Commissioner of Railways.

Curtin’s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Jeanette

Hacket, welcomed Dr Gill’s appointment.

“Dr Gill will bring enormous knowledge

and experience to our Council and we look

forward to working with him,” she said.

Atse gets the nod in nsW ParliamentIn May, the Academy received a glowing

mention in the Legislative Assembly of the

NSW Parliament from Craig Baumann MP,

Liberal Member for Port Stephens.

Mr Bauman, one of only three engineers

in the Parliament, in the words of NSW

Division Chair Richard Kell AM FTSE, placed

“our potential contribution to science and

engineering strongly on the public record”.

The Hansard record of the Parliament

noted Mr Baumann’s remarks, which praised

ATSE’s Fellows and activities.

“ATSE Fellows are Australia's leading

technological scientists and engineers,

eminent in their fields, who work together

through the Academy to help design a

better, more prosperous future. Combining

their skills, these ATSE Fellows provide

expert advice to governments, professions,

industries and the Australian community.

They raise issues of concern and search for

creative solutions. They debate the hard

questions and look for practical answers,”

Mr Baumann told the Parliament

“ATSE is an independent, non-

government organisation, promoting the

development and adoption of existing and

new technologies that will improve and

sustain our society and economy.

“ATSE tackles many of the most difficult

issues governing our future by offering fresh

ideas, practical solutions and sound policy

advice, and putting them on the public

record,” he said.

ian frazer wins AmA gold medalImmunologist Professor Ian Frazer has been

named the winner of the prestigious AMA Gold

Medal for his work in developing the human

papillomavirus cervical cancer vaccines.

“The Gold Medal is the highest award

the AMA can bestow,” the Association’s

retiring President Dr Rosanna Capolingua

said. “Through the development of vaccines,

Ian has helped protect the lives of countless

women and he is truly deserving of this

honour.”

Professor Frazer won the 2005 CSIRO

Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science, was

named Australian of the Year in 2006 and

won both the Howard Florey Medal for

Medical Research and an ATSE Clunies Ross

Award in 2007.

ATSE Fellow and Director – and Monash

University Chancellor – Dr Alan Finkel AM FTSE

reached a new career high in April when he

trekked to Mehra Peak, 28 kilometres south of

Mt Everest and just over 6400 metres in height.

He described the climb as “relentless,

gruelling and exhausting”.

“But at the end of the day, the sense

of achievement getting to the summit

was fantastic,” Alan said on his return to

Melbourne, when the “relentless, gruelling

and exhausting” memories were fading.

As a publisher of Cosmos, Australia’s

acclaimed science magazine, Alan couldn’t

resist the obligatory ‘Cosmos on top of the

world’ picture shown here.

He discovered new pain and made new

friends – including a “crazy but gorgeous”

dog that “trekked with us for over two

weeks and came all the way to the summit:

no jacket, no mittens, no crampons.

Extraordinary physiology.”

Alan has apologised to the Editor of Focus for

taking the wrong magazine to Mehra Peak.

Jim gill is curtin’s new chancellorCurtin University of Technology has

appointed former WA Water Corporation

Chief Executive Officer Dr Jim Gill AO FTSE

as Chancellor, effective from early next year,

succeeding Mr Gordon Martin, Executive

Chairman of Coogee Chemicals.

Alan Finkel achieves new heights

Alan finkel on mehra Peak,

with mt everest in the background.

Kim carr congratulates scott sloan on his laureate fellowship.

Three Fellows win Laureate FellowshipsThree ATSE Fellows were among the recipients

of 15 Australian Laureate Fellowships worth

about $2.7 million each. They are:

¢�Professor Chennupati Jagadish FAA

FTSE, Australian National University –

project: Nanowire Quantum Structures for

Next Generation Optoelectronics.

¢�Professor Scott Sloan FAA FTSE,

University of Newcastle – project: Failure

Analysis of Geotechnical Infrastructure.

¢�Professor Michael Tobar FTSE, University

of Western Australia – project: Frontiers of

Precision Time and Frequency.

Announcing the Australian Laureate

Fellowships in a ceremony at Parliament

House, the Minister for Innovation, Industry,

Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr,

said the inaugural round of fellowships

would also support the work of up to 60

postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers,

who would work with the Laureates in high-

powered teams.

“I created the Australian Laureate

Fellowships to give researchers at the peak of

their careers the opportunity to develop and

mentor strong teams of emerging talent,”

Senator Carr said. “Through the Australian

Laureate Fellowships the Australian

Government is creating viable career paths

for Australian researchers to build the

necessary skills and capacity for a strong

national innovation system.

“The scheme takes the best elements of

the previous Federation Fellowships scheme

and adds a focus on team work, career paths

and leadership.”

Professor Jagadish is a current Australian

Research Council (ARC) Federation Fellow and

Head of the Semiconductor Optoelectronics

Group in the Research School of Physics and

Engineering at ANU. He has an extremely high

international profile and is widely recognised

as a pre-eminent Australian researcher in the

fields of optoelectronics and nanotechnology.

Nanowire research is a new and emerging

field growing at an incredibly fast pace.

Professor Jagadish aims to build a world-class

research program on quantum nanowire

optoelectronics leading to next-generation

nanowire lasers, optical switches and optical

interconnects. The project has the potential

to lead to fundamental discoveries and

technologies of immense industrial interest.

Professor Jagadish is President of the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Nanotechnology Council, Convenor of the

ARC Nanotechnology Network and Director

of the Australian National Fabrication Facility.

He has won a number of awards including the

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Millennium Medal and the Peter Baume Award

from ANU.

Professor Sloan is a current ARC Federation

Fellow and Deputy Head of the School of

Engineering at the University of Newcastle.

Professor Sloan’s research interests include

computational limit and shakedown analysis,

nonlinear finite element algorithms, modelling

unsaturated soil behaviour, nonlinear

optimisation methods and georemediation.

Professor Sloan’s project will develop

new methods for estimating the static and

cyclic load capacity, and hence safety, of

geostructures in two and three dimensions.

The result of the project will strengthen

Australia’s leadership in computational

methods for designing cheaper and safer

infrastructure, supported by scientific

publications and software.

Professor Sloan is Director of the Priority

Research Centre for Geotechnical and

Materials Modelling and is the recipient of

a number of distinguished awards such as

the Telford Medal, a Centenary Medal, the

Desai Medal and the Booker Medal from

the International Association for Computer

Methods and Advances in Geomechanics

and the Thomas A. Middlebrooks Award from

the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Professor Tobar is an ARC Australian

Professorial Fellow in the School of Physics

at the University of WA. Professor Tobar's

expertise encompasses the broad discipline

of microwave and optical technology and

applications to fundamental and industrial

physics.

The project will develop new techniques

in time and frequency metrology to test

fundamental physics and create essential

technology for commercial, space and

astronomical applications. It will strengthen

Australian knowledge and expertise, and

place us in a position to participate in current

and future space missions.

Professor Tobar has received the Walter

Boas Medal from the Australian Institute of

Physics.

WA fellows go to waterTwenty WA Fellows and their partners

visited the Water Corporation’s seawater

desalination plant at Naval Base, south of

Perth recently. Guided by Water Corporation

CEO Ms Sue Murphy, they were able to

see models of the facility and the filter

mechanisms, and walk around the seawater

pump station, pre-treatment facilities, reverse

osmosis building, potabilisation facilities and

drinking water pump station.

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Atse in focus

Vale Sir John HollandSir John Holland AC FTSE, an ATSE Foundation

Fellow and Honorary Fellow and a stalwart of

the Academy for more than 40 years, died on

31 May, just short of his 95th birthday.

He was a former company director and

Chairman of John Holland Holdings Ltd

1949–86 and was renowned in Australian

engineering circles.

He served ATSE as Honorary Treasurer

1975–80; Councillor 1975–80; Chairman,

Appeal Executive 1987–90; and Chairman,

Symposium Organising Committee 1977–80.

ATSE notes Sir John’s passing with regret.

Sir John grew up on a small family farm at

Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula, went

to Frankston High School and graduated

as a civil engineer from the University of

Melbourne. He joined Commonwealth Oil

Refineries in 1936 before enlisting in the

Australian Army engineers, serving in the

Middle East, Europe and the Pacific and

attaining the rank of lieutenant colonel.

After working for BP Australia post-war, he

established John Holland engineering in 1949.

Sir John was acknowledged in a

generous obituary in The Age, which noted

his first contract was to build a shed on (later

Prime Minister) Malcolm Fraser's Western

Districts family farm.

“Over the years his company grew into the

John Holland Group, which is best-known as

the co-builder of the ‘new’ Parliament House

in Canberra, while its most visible project in

Melbourne is the West Gate Bridge,” The Age said.

“The company also built another

Melbourne landmark, the Myer Music Bowl, as

well as Sydney’s Entertainment Centre and the

Australian Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

“Its legion of other projects includes the

Adelaide to Darwin railway, the Captain Cook

and Silverwater bridges in Sydney, the Sorell

causeway in Tasmania, docking facilities

in Townsville and Bunbury, a desalination

plant on the Gold Coast, power stations, as

well as the Jindabyne pumping station and

the Talbingo diversion tunnel as part of the

Snowy hydro-electric scheme.”

More recently, the company built the

Eastlink freeway linking Melbourne to Frankston.

Sir John retired as Chairman of John

Holland in 1972. By 2007 the company was

100 per cent owned by Leighton Group.

“His work for the wider community

involved a range of causes, from the Board of

the Royal Melbourne Hospital, to the Bone

Marrow Foundation, the National Stroke

Foundation, the Voluntary Euthanasia Society,

as Chairman of the Sir Edward Dunlop Memorial

Committee and, from 2000, as patron of the

Children First Foundation,” said The Age obituary

“His tireless spirit in helping children was

evident when he agreed to become patron of

the Children First Foundation at the age of 85.”

three fellows on research infrastructure committeeThree ATSE Fellows have been appointed

to the new National Research Infrastructure

Committee (NRIC), which will provide strategic

advice on future research infrastructure

investments, including those to be funded

through the Super Science Initiative.

Dr Megan Clark, Professor Edwina Cornish

and Professor Peter Høj will join the NRIC.

Innovation Minister Kim Carr said the NRIC

would drive and undertake strategic planning

and mapping across all categories of research

infrastructure and contribute policy advice to

Government and to the Education Investment

Fund Advisory Board.

“To date, landmark facilities such as the

Australian Nuclear Science and Technology

Organisation research reactor, the Australian

Synchrotron, and the Australian Square

Kilometre Array Pathfinder radio-telescope

have been funded on an individual basis.

The NRIC will oversee a process to identify

and prioritise Australia’s landmark research

infrastructure needs,” Senator Carr said.

The NRIC, chaired by Mr John Ryan,

former Deputy Secretary of the Department

of Resources, Energy and Tourism, will include:

¢�Professor Warwick Anderson, Chief

Executive Officer, National Health and

Medical Research Council;

¢�Dr Megan Clark FTSE, Chief Executive

Officer, CSIRO;

¢�Professor Thomas Cochrane, Deputy Vice-

Chancellor (Technology, Information and

Learning Support), Queensland University

of Technology;

¢�Professor Edwina Cornish FTSE, Deputy

Vice-Chancellor (Research), Monash

University;

¢�Professor Peter Høj FTSE, Vice-Chancellor,

University of South Australia;

¢�Ms Patricia Kelly, Deputy Secretary,

Department of Innovation, Industry,

Science and Research;

¢�Dr Suzanne Miller, Director of the South

Australian Museum;

¢�Professor Penny Sackett, Chief Scientist of

Australia;

¢�Professor Margaret Seares, Former Senior

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of WA;

¢�Professor Margaret Sheil, Chief Executive

Officer of the Australian Research Council.

meeting WA’s new fellows mark cassidy ftse, Professor of civil

engineering at the uWA centre for offshore

foundation systems, explains his work at a

WA division ‘new fellows’ evening in June.

Professor cassidy received his fellowship

certificate from WA division chair dr ian

duncan ftse, along with Professor at

uWA's school of Physics mike tobar ftse,

commissioner of main roads mr menno

henneveld ftse, and managing director and

ceo Woodside mr don Voelte ftse. more than

50 fellows and their partners attended.

Simon Bartlett FTSE, Chief Operating Officer

of Powerlink Queensland, has been named

National Professional Electrical Engineer of

the Year 2009 in recognition of his excellent

technical, managerial and leadership skills.

The Chair of Engineers Australia's

Electrical College Board, Albert Koenig,

highlighted Mr Bartlett's electrical

experience, vision and leadership skills.

”For over 35 years, Simon Bartlett has

been the initiator and driving force behind

a range of new technologies and innovative

design, maintenance and work practices in

the Queensland electricity supply industry,”

he said. ”His outstanding engineering

skills, strategic thinking and leadership of

significant engineering workforces has

drawn the highest respect across Australia

and internationally, and his advice is highly

regarded by government, universities and key

stakeholders across the electricity industry.

”Simon is a passionate promoter of the

engineering profession and engineering

education and consistently makes the time

to mentor engineering graduates and to

reinforce the critical value of continuing

professional development throughout a

career,“ Mr Koenig said.

As Powerlink‘s COO, Mr Bartlett is

responsible for managing and coordinating

all aspects of high voltage electricity

transmission, which includes 12,000 kilometres

of transmission lines and more than 100 major

substations throughout Queensland. Powerlink

provides, operates and maintains the essential

‘backbone’ of Queensland‘s electricity grid.

As Chairman of the recently formed

Power Engineering Alliance and Director of

the Australian Power Institute, he has also

been the driving force behind achieving

the reinvigoration of power engineering

education across Australia.

Simon attained a Bachelor of Electrical

Engineering at the University of Queensland in

1973 and a BSc (Mathematics and Computing)

in 1976. He held senior executive positions

across government and also the corporate

sector. He received the Certificate of Special

Commendation for Outstanding Leadership

in Cyclone Larry Relief Effort, awarded by the

Prime Minister and Queensland Premier in 2006.

The National Professional Electrical

Engineer of the Year award was instigated to

recognise the professional excellence, highlight

the contribution the engineering profession

makes across the community, and encourage

young women and men to consider electrical

engineering a desirable career.

Vale Jan KolmThe Academy notes with regret the passing in

Melbourne of Dr Jan Kolm AO FTSE, aged 90.

After migrating to Australia in 1950,

Dr Kolm joined ICI Australia and spent his entire

professional career in Australian with that

company. He joined as a research chemist, was

later appointed Corporate Research Manager, in

1973 joined the ICI Australia Board as Technical

and Research Director and stayed with the

company until his retirement as a Board

Director. He was also an adviser to various other

chemical and industrial companies and became

a respected voice in the scientific community.

Dr Kolm was a Member of the National

Energy Advisory committee, the CSIRO Advisory

Committee and the Monash University

Council. He Chaired the CSIRO Manufacturing

Committee, the Victorian Committee of CSIRO

and the National Energy Research Development

and Demonstration Council.

In retirement, and after receiving an

honorary doctorate from Monash University,

Dr Kolm continued consulting and also helped

Czech citizens seeking to migrate to Australia.

Dr Kolm was an ATSE Fellow for more than

30 years. He served on Council 1980–94 and

was Vice-President 1987–90. He Chaired the

Symposium Organising Committee 1988–91.

President leads cAets teamATSE President Professor Robin Batterham

AO FREng FAA FTSE led a strong team of

ATSE Fellows to the 18th CAETS Convocation

in Calgary, Canada, in July.

The Convocation’s theme is ‘Our Heritage

of Natural Resources – Management and

Sustainability’. The ATSE team included

Dr John Burgess, Professor Michael Manton,

Chair of the ATSE International Strategy

Group, (former President) Dr John Zillman

and Technical Director Dr Vaughan Beck.

Professor Batterham addressed CAETS

on ‘Sustainability in the minerals industry – a

global perspective’, and his paper posed

some challenges to speed up the changes

already under way in minerals processing.

“If we take sustainable development to

mean development that meets the needs

of the people without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their

own needs, there is much happening within

the mining, minerals and metals business

that makes an important contribution to

the ongoing, global transition to sustainable

development,” Professor Batterham says.

He notes the long-term commitments

of most leading companies provide

opportunities to plan, implement and deliver

sustainable contributions to social wellbeing,

environmental stewardship and economic

prosperity.

“A recent focus of many of the

Academies has been on energy and water,

particularly as they are impacted by climate

change. Within this context, the targets

for sustainable development in mineral

processing are changing quite markedly.

“This pressing need for new technology

is made difficult by the capital-intense nature

of the industry, the long-term investments

that are made and the poor track record

of breakthroughs succeeding in the

marketplace,” he adds.

Simon Bartlett top engineer

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Basil Hetzel wins Pollin PrizeThe first Chief of CSIRO

Human Nutrition, Dr Basil

Hetzel AC FTSE, has

received the prestigious

2009 Pollin Prize for his

research into the effects

of iodine deficiency on

brain developments in

newborns.

Dr Hetzel is a renowned

medical pioneer and ranks as one of

Australia’s National Trust’s Living Treasures.

He was Chief of CSIRO Human Nutrition from

1975 until 1985. Dr Hetzel’s work led to the

implementation of a worldwide campaign

supporting salt iodisation programs aimed at

eradicating iodine deficiency disorders.

The Pollin Prize – the largest international

award for paediatric research – was recently

awarded to Dr Hetzel at the NewYork-

Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's

Hospital in the US. Dr Hetzel will share half of

the US$200,000 prize with a PhD candidate at

the University of Adelaide, Paul Fogarty.

The Director of CSIRO’s Preventative Health

Flagship, Professor Richard Head, says Dr Hetzel’s

work has been the epitome of research

excellence in his delivery of translational science

to the world community. “He is one of our

cherished medical scientists and, in addition

to his outstanding achievements, has inspired

a generation of Australia’s leading researchers,”

Professor Head says.

It has been estimated that his work on

identifying iodine deficiency as the most

common preventable cause of brain damage,

and his tireless championing of salt iodisation

programs, has benefited 80 million newborns.

This is comparable to the public health

campaigns to eliminate smallpox and polio.

Dr Hetzel’s interest in the effects of

iodine deficiency and their eradication

began in 1964. Iodine deficiency can lead

to goitre and if more severe, to retarded

growth and development, particularly brain

development. During 1964-72 his group

developed – in conjunction with the Papua

New Guinea Health Department – the use

of iodised oil injections for the correction of

severe iodine deficiency.

It was the first to show

that the effects on the brain

could be prevented by

correction before pregnancy.

This method has now been

applied on a massive scale in

Asia, Africa and Latin America.

While Chief of CSIRO

Human Nutrition, Dr Hetzel

led a team of scientists that

established, for the first time, the effect of

iodine deficiency on brain development in

animal models.

Dr Hetzel is Professor Emeritus of Medicine

at the University of Adelaide and Chairman

Emeritus of the International Council for the

Control of Iodine Deficiency Disorders. He

is a former Lieutenant Governor of SA and a

former Chancellor of the University of SA.

He was elected to the Academy in 1981.

malcolm chaikin honoured by university of leeds Emeritus Professor Malcolm Chaikin is among

11 people – five of them University of Leeds

graduates – to be honoured by the university

in July. Professor Chaikin receives an Honorary

Doctorate of Science.

Philanthropist, inventor and academic,

Malcolm Chaikin graduated from the

University of Leeds in textile industries in

1950 and was awarded a PhD in textiles three

years later. He emigrated to Australia in 1955,

to take up the Chair of Textile Technology

at the University of NSW, becoming the

youngest ever professor at an Australian

university.

He spent his entire

career there, becoming

one of Australia’s

foremost authorities

on textiles and

registering a number

of patents for his innovations in the field.

In 1988, Professor Chaikin set up his own

foundation, which awards scholarships and

prizes to science and engineering students,

and has been a strong supporter of ATSE

activities, including sponsorship of Symposia

and Clunies Ross and ESE events.

• Scientist, academic and industrialist Lord

Oxburgh of Liverpool also received an

Honorary Doctorate of Science. Lord Oxburgh,

an internationally renowned geologist and

geophysicist, has made a telling impact in the

academic world, industry and government,

particularly in fields related to energy and the

environment. He is a former rector of Imperial

College, chair of Shell and chief scientific adviser

to the Ministry of Defence, was knighted in

1992 and made a Life Peer as Baron Oxburgh of

Liverpool in 1999. He was a keynote speaker at

the ATSE National Symposium in 2006.

Assessing the water sceneDr John Radcliffe AM FTSE

represented ATSE at the

recent National Water

Commission Stakeholder

Forum in Canberra, following

an invitation from the NWC

Chair Ken Matthews for ATSE to participate.

The invitation reflected the Academy’s

growing status in the water sector through

the activities of the Water Forum and recent

projects. The subject of the one-day forum

was the National Water Commission’s

2009 Biennial Assessment of Progress in

Implementation of the National Water

Initiative.

ATSE was fortunate to have Dr Radcliffe's

experience and overview (particularly as a

former NWC Commissioner) at this event to

ensure that ATSE was well represented and

able to contribute. His attendance

and participation was another step

in enhancing ATSE’s visibility and

positioning in the water space.

Forum details and communiqué

are available on the NWC

website (www.nwc.gov.au/www/

html/2369-2009-stakeholder-forum-

communique.asp?intSiteID=1).

basil hetzel

malcolm chaikin

John radcliffe

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oVerline in here PleAseWWW.Atse.org.Au

Solar cell inventor Professor Stuart Wenham

FTSE has won the 2009 University of NSW

Inventor of the Year award. Professor

Wenham, 51, has invented several products

that have sold worldwide.

One of his earliest, which he invented

with colleague Professor Martin Green FAA

FTSE at the university, was a buried-contact

solar cell. It first converted sunlight into

electricity in 1991and was named by the

Academy as one of the top 100 Australian

inventions of the 20th century. He also won

an ATSE Clunies Ross Award in 2008 for his

work in developing silicon cell technology.

But technology has moved on, and

Professor Wenham is now more excited

about his most recent invention, called

Pluto technology, which lowers the cost

of electricity by converting solar energy to

electricity efficiently and effectively.

“The Pluto technology will represent sales

of more than $1 billion each year because it is

technology that is more efficient and cheaper

to produce than anything that has ever been

invented,” Professor Wenham said.

He explained that companies that have

licensed the product include Suntech-Power

(a Chinese company started by one of his

former students), BP Solar and Samsung.

Professor Wenham said he couldn't

take all the credit. “I’m not a genius,” he said.

“I couldn’t have done it without the help of

my fantastic students who help me with a

lot of my research. I’ve been an academic for

more than 20 years and they are the highest-

quality students I’ve been able to work with.”

He has also received the US Institute of

Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ William

Cherry Award for outstanding contributions to

the advancement of photovoltaic science and

technology.

Autocrc wins stAr AwardThe CRC for Advanced Automotive Technology

(AutoCRC) won a 2009 CRC Program STAR

Award, which was presented in Canberra by

the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science

and Research, Senator Kim Carr, during the

CRC Association conference.

The award to the AutoCRC, headed by

CEO Dr Matthew Cuthbertson FTSE, was

in recognition of the Automotive Supplier

Excellence Australia program (ASEA). The aim

of ASEA is to support Australian component

suppliers in competing internationally, and

accessing global automotive supply chains. The

three stages of the program were: identifying the

key success factors for global competitiveness,

benchmarking the performance of 63

companies against those factors, and

developing action plans to bring key areas of

stuart Wenham

Kim carr congratulates matthew cuthbertson.

Stuart Wenham wins major award for efficiency gain

those businesses up to global standard.

ASEA received strong unified support

from the Australian automotive industry,

including funding from Ford, GM Holden,

Toyota, Mitsubishi, the Federation of

Automotive Products Manufacturers and the

Australian, Victorian and SA governments.

The particular focus for the CRC STAR

award was the high level engagement of the

ASEA program with SMEs. A good example

is Geelong-based components supplier

Backwell IXL, which participated strongly in

the ASEA program and achieved excellent

gains in productivity, as well as identifying

new opportunities for growth.

Dr Cuthbertson, who accepted the award,

says that the pilot of ASEA stage three (with

27 companies participating) is still in progress

and hopes ASEA can expand to support all the

companies involved in stages one and two.

“Our mission is to ensure the automotive

industry in Australia is vital and strong so that

when there is an upturn in the economy,

they will be ready,” Dr Cuthbertson said.

sydney university has 14 fellows in engineeringSydney University’s Faculty of Engineering

and Information Technologies enjoys a

distinct place within ATSE – the number of

Fellows it boasts. Professor Greg Hancock,

Bluescope Steel Professor of Steel Structures

and Dean of Engineering and Information

Technologies, told the ATSE Clunies Ross

Awards dinner in Sydney recently about

the ATSE impact in the Faculty. Professor

Hancock, on behalf of Sydney University

– a platinum sponsor of the awards – was

presenting an ATSE Clunies Ross Award to his

colleague Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte.

The details are:

¢�Emeritus Professors: Robert Bilger

FAA FTSE, Graeme Bird FTSE, Trevor

Cole FTSE, Rolf Prince FREng FTSE and

Grant Steven FTSE.

¢�Professors: Hans Coster FTSE, Hugh

Durrant-Whyte FAA FTSE, David Feng

FTSE, Gregory Hancock AM FTSE, Brian

Haynes FTSE, Yiu-Wing Mai FRS FAA FTSE,

Roger Tanner FRS FAA FTSE, Lin Ye FTSE

and Liangchi Zhang FTSE.

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Proudly sPonsored by:PrinciPal sPonsor

Gold sPonsors

Platinum sPonsors

silver sPonsor

Malcolm Chaikin Foundation

2010 NOMINATIONS CLOSE 31 JULy 2009The ATSE Clunies Ross Awards are awarded to people who have persisted with their ideas, often against the odds, to the point that their innovations are making a real difference economically, environmentally and socially. If you can identify a worthy candidate you should make your nomination now.

For information on the ATSE Clunies Ross Foundation and past Award winners – and the 2010 nomination forms – go to www.cluniesross.org.au or call (03) 9864 0908.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE

2009 ATSE CLUNIES ROSS AwARd wINNERSThe winners of Australia’s most prestigious awards for commercialisation of innovation in 2009 are:Professor Zigmantas Budrikis, Adjunct Professor at Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute; Professor Antonio Cantoni FTSE, Research Director at Western Australian Telecommunications Research Institute, and Professor John Hullett, a Consultant in Perth – for their work on overcoming internet congestion.

Professor Hugh durrant-whyte FTSE, Director, Australian Centre for Field Robotics, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Sydney – for his ground-breaking work in field robotics.

Professor John Hopwood AM FAA, Head of Lysosomal Diseases Research Unit at the Children, Youth and Women’s Health Service, Adelaide – for his distinguished medical research in lysosomal diseases.

Mr Alan Langworthy, Managing Director of Powercorp, Darwin – for his pioneering work in remote renewable energy technology.

dr Chris Nicol FTSE, Chief Technology Officer, Embedded Systems, NICTA, Sydney – for his contribution to key mobile phone technologies.

A lifetime achievement award was awarded to:Laureate Professor John Ralston AO FAA FTSE, Founder and Director of the Ian Wark Institute, University of South Australia.

innovation: are we getting it right? · sation itself and programs on collaboration promise new...

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