Engineers Media Online

Brian Anderson, 63
Chief scientist of National ICT Australia; Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University; director of Cochlear
Professor Brian Anderson was the driving force behind the federal government establishing a national facility to research information and communication technologies. He was involved in persuading the government that it was needed, then led the team that wrote the successful bid for the $129.5 million Centre of Excellence called National ICT Australia (NICTA), before being its interim CEO and now chief scientist.
Other achievements in Anderson’s career include serving as president of the Australian Academy of Science (1998-2002), in which he introduced a Sectional Committee for Electrical Engineering and IT; and being a member of the steering committee of the Innovation Summit, out of which came the federal government’s Backing Australia’s Ability Program.

Trevor Bird, 54
Chief research scientist and research leader of Electromagnetic Information and Intelligent Systems, CSIRO ICT Centre
Dr Trevor Bird has over 25 years of research and development experience in electronics engineering. He has published widely on antennas and microwave systems for satellite communications, wireless and radio telescope systems and holds several patents in the area. He is known internationally for his contributions to reflector antennas, multiple beam antennas and arrays.
Bird has also designed innovative multibeam feed arrays for the Parkes, Jodrell Bank (UK) and Arecibo (USA) radio telescopes; instigated development of the novel Kaband transponder for the FedSat microsatellite; and led the development of antennas for millimetre wave indoor wireless local area networks.

David Boger, 64
Laureate professor and director of the Particulate Fluids Processing Centre at Melbourne University
Professor David Boger’s major contribution to the science of engineering has been his research in non-Newtonian fluid mechanics. Such fluids have properties of both viscose liquids and elastic solids. To be able to analyse their behaviour, Boger created “the simplest possible elastic fluids you could conceive of”. Named after him, these Boger fluids are constant viscosity elastic fluids.
Boger sees his work as significant on two fronts. Not only is it a “knowledge-based academic achievement”, but it is also used to address real-life problems.
Applications have included “long-distance transport of waxy crude oils, modifying the behaviour of mineral suspensions in engineering ceramics and, most importantly, in environmental issues related to the minerals industry”, he said.
Currently he is on study leave from Melbourne University working at the University of Florida as a distinguished scholar.
He has produced more than 30 publications including books, conference proceedings and journal articles.

Mark Bush, 56
Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics at the University of Western Australia
Professor Mark Bush has worked in the University of Western Australia’s Faculty of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics for 20 years, earning himself a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1990 and an Excellence in Teaching Award for Postgraduate Research Supervision in 1999. He has also been the head of mechanical engineering and in June 2003 was officially appointed dean, after seven months of being the acting dean.
“My main platform for being appointed dean was to focus on research,” Bush said. “We have significantly changed the structure of the undergraduate program as a result of changes to accreditation in engineering and other types of reviews, so there is not a lot to do in that area in the short term. But what we can do is focus on increasing research activity by increasing postgraduate student numbers.
Bush is also attempting to continue his own research while remaining dean.

Geoff Garret, 56
Chief executive officer of CSIRO
Formerly president of South Africa’s national science agency CSIR, Dr Geoff Garret moved to Australia in 2001 to take up his present role as chief of CSIRO.
An expert in the fracture and fatigue behaviour of engineering materials, Garrett holds a doctorate in metallurgy from Cambridge University. He also picked up a boxing blue while at Cambridge.
He currently serves on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council.
In 1999 he was Engineer of the Year of the South African Society of Professional Engineers.

Graham Goodwin, 59
Federation Fellow; director of the Centre for Integrated Dynamics and Control; professor of electrical engineering at the University of Newcastle
Professor Graham Goodwin is recognised as one of the most influential engineering researchers in the world for his work on control engineering systems and signal processing. He has written over 140 international journal papers, over 30 plenary addresses, over 190 refereed conference papers, over 100 technical reports to industry and seven books, as well as editing three books and writing 20 chapters in books. He also holds five patents and is one of four Australian engineers on the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) Highly Cited list, with between 100 and 150 citations per year over the past 10 years.
Earlier this year Goodwin was elected to the engineering category of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science, the institution that selects Nobel Prize winners. He is one of only 10 foreign members of that category and only the second Australian to be elected to the academy.
In January 2002, Goodwin was a recipient of a federal government Federation Fellowship, which has allowed him to focus full time on his research work.

Martin Green, 56
Scientia professor of the University of New South Wales; executive research director of the Centre for Advanced Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics; research director of CSG Solar
Professor Martin Green has been working in photovoltaics since he was an engineering student in 1971. His and his team’s contributions to the area are well known internationally, especially being the holders of the solar cell efficiency world record since 1983, with a brief interruption in the late 1980s.
“Major microelectronic companies and research labs in the US, Japan and Europe were all battling to improve efficiency, but a small team from Australia managed to get very quickly, and definitely, ahead of the rest of the field,” Green said. “However, we are probably further ahead of the field now than we have ever been.”
The improvements in solar cell technology made by Green and his colleagues have been transferred into commercial production through CSG Solar (formerly Pacific Solar). The majority of solar cells fabricated in Europe in the late 1990s were made under licence to the company, with sales over US$200 million to date and likely to exceed $1 billion by 2010.
Green said CSG Solar is now working on thinfilm technology, where solar cell material is deposited on glass sheets, instead of using expensive silicon wafers.

Paul Greenfield, 57
Senior deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland
Chemical engineer Professor Paul Greenfield was appointed senior deputy vice-chancellor of the University of Queensland (UQ) in 2002. He is also the director of UQ’s IMBcom Pty Ltd and UniQuest Pty Ltd.
His chairmanships include the Scientific Advisory Group of the Moreton Bay and Waterways Partnership; the Waste Technical Working Group, Basel Convention; and the Advisory Committee of IP Australia.
He is a director of National ICT Australia and the International Riverfoundation.
He is currently working on a number of new ventures including new approaches to commercialisation at UQ and the development of three key research institutes at the university. The first of these is the already established Institute for Molecular Bioscience. The other two – the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, and the Queensland Brain Institute – are yet to be established.

Gregory Hancock, 56
Dean of engineering at the University of Sydney
Civil and structural engineer Professor Gregory Hancock is the dean of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney. He has been a BHP Steel professor of steel structures at the university since 1990.
He is chairman of SAI Global’s Cold-Formed Steel Structures Committee and is a member of various other committees of the organisation.
He is a board member of the Australian Steel Institute; a member of the Research Management Committee, CRC for Welded Stuctures; and on the editorial board of the Journal of Constructions Steel Research in London, the Journal of Advances in Structural En-gine-ering in Hong Kong, and the International Journal of Steel Structures, Korea, of which he is editor. He is also a member of the American Iron and Steel Institute Specification Committee.
Prior to becoming dean he designed the faculty’s Flexible First Year Program, allowing engineering students to begin their tertiary studies prior to committing to a specific engineering field. As dean he has helped implement the program which continues to expand.

Graeme Jameson, 67
Director of the Centre for Multiphase Processors, University of Newcastle.
Graeme Jameson has been a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Newcastle for more than 25 years. His most spectacular success in research has been a flotation cell that has revolutionised the recovery of fine coal. There are over 300 installations of the Jameson Flotation Cell around world, included around 90 in Australia.
“There is now about $1 billion a year worth of coal that is recovered with this machine in Australia and exported. I don’t know of any invention that adds that much to the economy,” Jameson said.
The flotation cell is one of 26 patents granted to Jameson, and he has 24 more pending.

Archie Johnston, 52
Dean of engineering at the University of Technology Sydney
Civil engineer Professor Archie Johnston is the dean of engineering at the University of Technology Sydney, where approximately 5000 engineering students are enrolled.
He is also the deputy president of the Australian Council of Engineering Deans and is a member of the National Science Week Grants Committee; the National Environmental Engineering Board of Engineers Australia; and the Satellite Systems CRC Board.
He regards scoping out opportunities to link business and engineering companies to higher education both here and overseas as one of the most enjoyable parts of his position.

John Langford, 59
Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne; director of the Melbourne Water Research Centre; chairman of the Cooperative Research Centre for Catchment Hydrology, the Cooperative Research Centre for Freshwater Ecology and the Murray Darling Freshwater Research Centre
In November 2003, Professor John Langford was appointed a Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and director of the newly created Melbourne Water Research Centre.
Longford’s career in the water industry spans three decades. Highlights include building the Water Services Association of Australia from its conception into an industry association with 28 members servicing 14.5 million people in Australia and New Zealand.

Peter Lee, 49
Executive dean of the Division of Engineering, Science and Computing at Curtin University of Technology
Professor Peter Lee has been the executive dean of Engineering, Science and Computing at Curtin University of Technology for two and a half years.
“In this time we have introduced substantial curriculum reform, including revamping first year teaching, and improving our research performance,” he said.
Before joining Curtin, Lee was the principal of the Rockingham campus and foundation professor of engineering at Murdoch University. Prior to this he was the dean of engineering at Murdoch University, where he established new engineering programs in instrumentation and control engineering, engineering chemistry, renewable energy engineering and software engineering.

Max Lu, 41
Professor of chemical engineering in nanotechnology at the University of Queensland; director of the ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials; Federation Fellow
At the age of 36, Professor Max Lu was one of the youngest professors of chemical engineering in Australia, and in 2002 he was the youngest fellow elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.
He is one of the country’s leaders in nanotechnology.
Lu has coauthored over 230 scientific papers published in international refereed journals and conference proceedings, and has five patents in nanotech-nology.
Last year he helped establish the ARC Centre for Functional Nanomaterials, which aims to become a world class centre of excellence with leading Australian researchers in nanomaterials.
“Nanotechnology is such a wide and multidisciplinary field, but Australia is at the forefront of many niche areas,” Lu said. “These include clean energy production, environmental technologies, biomaterials for implants and tissue replacement, and agriculture applications.”

Dale Murphy, 49
Deputy vice-chancellor responsible for the Higher Education Division at Swinburne University of Technology
Professor Dale Murphy is most proud of professionally mastering microprocessor system design and programming in the 1970s . He aspires to make Swinburne a leading university, respected for its research, teaching and industry relevance.
Prior to his current position, his roles at Swinburne included head of department, head of school and dean of engineering.
From 1977 to 1979 he lectured at Prince of Songkla University in Haadyai, Thailand. He then departed academia for 10 years to work for electronics firms Marconi Communications and Texas Instruments in the UK, before working for five years as the principal hospital scientist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. He then spent another two years as a software engineer at Expert Systems International, before returning to university life at Swinburne.

Peter North, 70
Chairman of the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering
20 years ago Peter North was one of the founders of one of Australia’s most influential engineering think tanks, the Warren Centre for Advanced Engineering, established to foster excellence and innovation in advanced engineering technologies.
North is now chairman of that body.
His proudest achievement in his career was being on the team which developed the Fairmont and Fairlane up-market versions of the popular Ford Falcon motor car 40 years ago.
North is a director of bionic ear developer Cochlear Ltd, chairman of Cochlear’s Technology and Innovation Committee, chairman of Streeton Consulting, director of Bishop Austrans and a member of the Faculty of Engineering Dean’s External Advisory Committee at Sydney University.
He is a mechanical engineer from Sydney University and has an MBA from Harvard.

Brendon Parker, 60
Dean of engineering at the University of New South Wales; president of the Australian Council of Engineering Deans
Professor Brendon Parker is the dean of the largest faculty of engineering in Australia, with around 7500 students. He has been at the University of New South Wales since January 2002, after six years as dean of engineering at the University of Wollon-gong. He cites as one of his greatest achievements implementing a more problemsolvingbased curriculum at Wollongong. He is working on replicating it at UNSW.
Parker’s other goals for UNSW include creating a better program of Masters degrees for practising engineers, increasing interdisciplinary research, and encouraging research in the newer areas of renewable energy and biomedical engineering, as well as the traditional areas of petroleum and mining.
He believes that “in due course, engineering will become a five-year program”.

Beverley Ronalds, 46
Chief of CSIRO Petroleum
Civil engineer Professor Beverley Ronalds is the chief of the CSIRO’s Petroleum Resources Division. She is also on the Western Australian Premier’s Science Council.
Ronalds is the former Woodside chair with the University of Western Australia’s School of Oil and Gas Engineering. In 1995 established the Centre for Oil & Gas at the university and in 1999 helped found the WA Petroleum Research Centre of Excellence.
She describes her career path as quite fortuitous. After graduating, she worked for a consulting company, then attained a scholarship and went to Imperial College in London, worked part time while studying for a PhD, stayed on as a lecturer and then joined industry.

John Simmons, 63
Dean of engineering at the University of Queensland
Mechanical engineer Professor John Simmons is the longest serving dean of engineering in the country. He chaired the Australian Council of Engineering Deans in the mid 1990s. A national review of engineering education came out of these meetings which significantly changed the culture of engineering education “from an emphasis on input to one on output”.
Simmons also played a leading role in the mid-1980s in establishing within Engineers Australia the National Committee on Space Engineering.
From the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s he played a major research role, working with the now retired professor Ray Stalker, analysing thrust in Stalker’s scramjet space vehicle. The scramjet research has matured and in recent years this technology has been adopted by NASA and other international space agencies.

Robert Snow, 59
Dean international at RMIT and vice-president at RMIT Vietnam
Chemical engineer Professor Bob Snow, an expert in environmental engineering and waste management, is currently working as vice-president of RMIT’s Vietnam campus in Ho Chi Minh City. He took up this posting at the beginning of this year, following seven years as dean of engineering at RMIT in Melbourne. Snow’s work in Vietnam includes ensuring that the programs offered there are of the same quality as in Melbourne and liaising on these and other educational matters with the pro-vice-chancellors in Melbourne.
His most lasting influence in engineering education is probably his development of the groundbreaking Master of Cleaner Production and Graduate Certificate of Cleaner Production courses at RMIT.

Tamarapu Sridhar, 55
Dean of engineering and Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor at Monash University
Chemical engineer and polymers expert Professor Tamarapu Sridhar is the dean of one of Australia’s largest engineering faculties. He is chair of the Institution of Chemical Engineers in Australia. Last year he won an Esso Award for his contribution to chemical engineering.
His overseas honours include being appointed the Shell senior distinguished professor of chemical engineering at Cambridge University and being awarded the G P Kane Award by the Indian Institute of Chemical Engineers. Although he is modest about acknowledging his titles and achievements, he is proud of his work. “Being able to make an original contribution to my discipline has been enormously satisfying to me,” he said.

Elizabeth Taylor, 49
Dean of the James Goldston Faculty of Engineering & Physical Systems at Central Queensland University in Rockhampton; chair of the Board of Professional Engineers in Queensland
This year Professor Elizabeth Taylor was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia. She was honoured for her “service to engineering education through the design and implementation of innovative academic programs, to professional associations, and to enhancing the status of women in the profession and promoting it as a career option”.
This citation sums up her influential role in the profession. She was an advocate for women in engineering ever since she studied civil engineering at Sydney University and was instrumental in setting up Engineers Australia’s National Women in Engineering Committee in 1991, giving women an official representation within the Institution.
Taylor is the first woman to chair the Queensland Board of Professional Engineers.

Rodney Tucker, 56
Laureate professor of electrical engineering and director of photonics at the University of Melbourne
Professor Rodney Tucker was the founding director of the University of Melbourne’s Photonics Research Laboratory and is the research director of the ARC Special Research Centre for Ultra-Broadband Information Networks (CUBIN). He has held positions at the University of Queensland, the University of California, Cornell University, Plessey Research, AT&T Bell Laboratories, Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies. He joined the University of Melbourne in 1990, where he is currently laureate professor of electrical engineering.
He has published more than 200 research papers and book chapters in the areas of microwave circuits, optoelectronic devices, optical communications, and photonics. He also holds several patents.

Jannie van Deventer, 49
Dean of engineering at the University of Melbourne
Chemical and minerals engineer Professor Jannie van Deventer has been the dean of engineering at the University of Melbourne since the start of 2003. Approximately 4500 engineering students are enrolled at the university.
He is also on the boards of the CRC for Sensor Signal and Information Processing and the CRC for Spatial Information.
He believes that if engineering education does not integrate technical skills, business and communication with society, it risks becoming a commodity. Also, biology will increasingly become part of the language of engineers, he said.

Mark Wainwright, 60
Acting vice-chancellor at the University of New South Wales
Chemical engineer Professor Mark Wainwright joined the University of New South Wales in 1974 as a lecturer. He was the dean of engineering from 1991-2000.
He is a director of Australian Technology Park Innovations Pty Ltd and Unisearch Limited. He is also on several ARC advisory boards.
He said the immediate challenges as acting vice-chancellor relate to the development of a proposal for the recently announced UNSW Singapore, which will be a private university.