Issue 13 - Engineering

ISSUE 13 / JUNE 2006
13
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 Engineering to the rescue:
Our role in humanitarian and
disaster relief
Graduate Profile: Dr Chris Roberts
No 1 ranking for Engineering
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 From the Dean
UNSWENGINEERS
contents
3 News
5 Achievements
Blast from the past
6 Feature story –
Engineering to the rescue:
Our role in humanitarian and
disaster relief
12 School snapshots
18 Where in the world?
19 Graduate profile: Dr Chris Roberts
UNSW Engineers is published by the
Faculty of Engineering, UNSW.
Phone +61 2 9385 4023
Fax + 61 9385 5456
Email unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
Editor
Mary O’Malley
Layout and Production Co-ordinator
Marjorie Fox-Owens
Photography by
The Faculty of Engineering, Schools of the Faculty
of Engineering, Gasbag Studios, and contributors.
Printed by
Rostone Print
ISSN 1442-8849
[cover image]
UNSW’s Dr Ian Turner at Sennen Beach, Cornwall
UK, during the first deployment of new research
instrumentation to measure rapid sand-level
changes on beaches. Photo courtesy of Dr Turner.
Watching the dramatic events of
the Beaconsfield mine disaster, one
could not help but reflect on the role
engineering plays in such rescue
situations. As Professor Hebblewhite
points out on page 11, the rescue
highlighted the ingenuity of mining
engineering, the extraordinary people
skills and the advances in technology
that led to the essential communication link with the two men
and their ultimate safe removal from the collapsed mine.
Humanitarian and disaster-relief engineering is the theme
of our special feature this issue. We explore the invaluable role
played by organisations such as RedR, Engineering Aid and
Engineers without Borders, examine the vital role that engineers
play when chaos reigns and question what more as a profession
we can do to highlight the value of engineering in both the
prevention and alleviation of disasters.
I noted with interest a study at an American University, in
which researchers are looking to nature – specifically, to ants,
bees and viruses – for ways to improve human collaboration
during disaster relief efforts.
The research team, which includes biological, computer and
social scientists and civil engineers, will apply their natural-world
findings to three major areas: collaboration among organisations
involved in disaster-relief efforts; the use of information
technology to support preparedness, response and recovery
tasks; and the emerging role of civil engineers as key first
responders to disasters.
They say the civil engineer’s role – particularly the engineers
and contractors who were involved with the original design and
construction of the critical physical infrastructure – needs to
be extended beyond infrastructure life-cycle management and
sustainability to also involve first response against disasters.
Engineers of all specialisations have much to offer this
valuable work. I hope you find the feature food for thought and
enjoy the reading elsewhere in the issue.
news
Left to right: Dr Alban Lynch AO, AM,
Clifford Johnstone, Ronald McCarthy
and John Coyle.
In their final year, the Electrical
undergrads challenged the academic
staff to a cricket match. Tossing the
coin with the staff captain are (from
left) Kevin Cleary, John Crowe, Ronald
McCarthy and John Coyle.
Photo courtesy of Ronald McCarthy.
Diary note:
Faculty of Engineering
Alumni Anniversary
Dinner
Celebrating the graduation
classes of 1956, 1966, 1976,
1986 and 1996
Friday 15 September 2006,
7.00pm for 7.30pm
The Roundhouse,
UNSW Kensington Campus
$75 per person (includes
pre-dinner drinks, three-course
dinner, and wine/beer/soft
drinks)
Lounge suit / Evening attire
Professor Brendon Parker
Dean, Faculty of Engineering
Partners and guests welcome
Contact Luciano Ferracin,
Development Officer on
tel 02 9385 5364 or
email l.ferracin@unsw.edu.au
Back together on
campus after 50
years
The second group of
engineers to graduate
from UNSW’s Kensington
Campus have reunited at the
University for the first time
since receiving their degrees
in 1956.
Electrical engineer
Clifford Johnstone organised
the group’s first official get
together at Sydney’s League’s
Club in 1981.
Fifty eight people,
including 19 alumni,
congregated in April for a
convivial Golden Jubilee
luncheon at the John Niland
Scientia building.
Touring the modern
campus with its state-ofthe-art labs, the graduates
couldn’t help but reflect on
the campus of their day. In
1956, the campus had one
main building, with huts along
High Street used for student
accommodation. Lectures
were still held in the old
Sydney Institute of Technology
at Ultimo.
Electrical Engineering
graduate Ronald McCarthy
shared many happy memories
of his University years. After
captaining the University
cricket team, Ronald McCarthy
went on to be Chief State
Engineer at Telecom for seven
years, with more than 300
reporting to him. Ron has
since worked in research and
development innovation for
Telecom and on the Visiting
Committee for UNSW. He
credits his knowledge of
creativity and innovation
The class of 1956 at the reunion lunch in April.
to his tertiary engineering
background.
Ron carries a photo of the
1956 Engineering Graduation
and Graduation Ball where he
proposed to his wife, Jann
McCarthy, who also attended
the Golden Jubilee Luncheon.
When chemical engineer
Alban Lynch studied
engineering in the 50s there
were no girls. Two of his
daughters are chemical
engineers but he stresses that
it was entirely their choice.
He has seven children, three
of whom are engineers, and
21 grandchildren.
Alban converted his
diploma to a degree and
also attained his Masters
qualification at the University’s
Broken Hill Campus. He
worked for Zinc Corporation
(now Rio Tinto) for five years,
working in the mine by day
and studying by night.
Alban planned to obtain
his doctorate at the University
of Queensland and move to
Weipa but ended up staying
at UQ for 35 years where
he founded the University’s
Mineral Research Centre. He
won a centenary medal in
2003 for service to Australian
society in mineral science and
engineering.
These days he continues
to develop research groups
as a Visiting Professor in
Malaysia, Brazil, Mexico, and
Turkey. He and wife Barbara
– whose family are long-term
residents of Broken Hill – are
both interested in archaeology
so Turkey suits them well.
Alban reflects that while
it was not a bed of roses, the
1956 graduates received great
training. “ We can each look
back with some considerable
satisfaction that we were
part of a group of people that
each contributed our little bit
to the prosperous country
that we are today. We have
watched with admiration how
the University of New South
Wales has developed”, says
Alban.
“We, the Faculty and the
University are proud of
the achievements of our
graduates especially you
who were among the first to
put UNSW Engineers at the
forefront of the profession and
the general public”, says Tony
Robinson (former Associate
Dean, International.
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
news
The late John Lions: Honored by his
former students.
We’re Number 1
Those who visit our website
may have noticed this
distinctive red logo appearing
of late. It proclaims our great
international standing.
The Faculty of Engineering
has been named the best
engineering school in Australia
and ranked the 16th best in the
world in the UK’s 2005 Times
Higher Education Supplement
World University Rankings.
In the first of a series
of faculty-level analyses,
the UK’s most authoritative
higher education publication
examined the top 100
institutions for engineering and
technology.
UNSW Engineering rose
from 29th to 16th place,
ahead of Melbourne (18);
Monash (24); Australian
National University (29) and
Queensland (40).
Alumni honour a mentor
A seven-year campaign by
UNSW alumni to establish
a chair in the name of their
former mentor finally has
paid off. With the help of a
generous $500,000 donation
from U.S.-based QUALCOMM
Incorporated, former students
have succeeded in establishing
the John Lions Chair in
Operating Systems 2006.
Former students John
O’Brien, Greg Rose, Steve
Jenkin, Chris Maltby and
others have worked over the
years to raise the money in
honour of the former professor
and author of a controversial
book on UNIX systems.
Greg Rose, vice president
of technology for QUALCOMM
and John O’Brien, managing
director of Whitesmiths Ltd,
donated substantial sums of
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 their own money in a bid to
raise the funds for the Chair.
“This is the first time that
a group of alumni have
established a Chair through
their own efforts and I applaud
their dedication and tenacity,”
said UNSW’s Vice-Chancellor
Professor Mark Wainwright.
Tyree Scholarship
Electrical engineering students
now have access to an $8500
scholarship sponsored by the
A.W. Tyree Foundation.
The A. W. Tyree Foundation
Undergraduate Engineering
Linkage Scholarship, offered
every four years, is designed
to assist high-achieving
students undertake the
Bachelor of Engineering
program at
UNSW’s Kensington Campus.
The scholarship recipient will
also be invited to undertake
industrial training with Tyree
Holdings over the summer
break of each year of study.
Ms Robbie Fennell,
daughter of Sir William Tyree
and
sister of Peter Tyree, chair
of the Dean’s Advisory
Committee, announced
the scholarship at a signing
ceremony attended by senior
university staff.
Sir William Tyree has close
links with the University,
with one of the most popular
venues in the Scientia building
named after him.
Robbie Fennell with Vice-Chancellor
Professor Mark Wainwright.
achievements
Governor-General Michael Jeffery on a
site visit with Indigenous students.
Boost for indigenous
engineers
The University of New South
Wales has gained a new
scholarship to help boost
the numbers of indigenous
students studying engineering.
At a graduation dinner
for January’s 9th Indigenous
Australian Engineering
Summer School, Senator
Concetta Fierravanti-Wells
announced the establishment
of a new $30,000 IAESS/
Engineering Aid scholarship
which UNSW will boost with
additional funds.
Twenty students attended
this year’s summer school,
an annual event sponsored
by non-profit organisation
Engineering Aid with the
support of industry.
World ranking for
photovoltaics inventors
Professors Martin Green and
Stuart Wenham have been
ranked among the world’s
best inventors in the European
Inventor of the Year awards.
The UNSW developers
of the world’s most efficient
solar cells were among the top
three contenders for a prize in
the non-European inventors
category.
“There were 200,000
patents ... in our category,
so being ranked in the top
three is rather amazing,” says
Professor Wenham.
Edgeworth-David medal
Christopher Barner-Kowollik
based in the Centre for
Advanced Macromolecular
Design (CAMD) in the School
of Chemical Engineeering
and Industrial Chemistry, has
been awarded the EdgeworthDavid Medal by the Royal
Society of NSW. This award
is for distinguished research
contributions by a scientist
under the age of 35 years.
Interestingly, the winner of
this award, exactly 20 years
ago, is our current Deputy
Vice Chancellor (Research),
Professor Les Field.
blast from the past
low-cost silicon solar cells
that can be expected to
significantly reduce the costs
of generating electricity from
sunlight, help to create new
opportunities for Australian
industry and contribute to a
cleaner environment.
Snapped up by Google
Google, one of the world’s
biggest players in the internet
business, has bought the
rights to a search engine tool
developed by PhD student
Ori Allon from the School
of Computer Science and
Engineering.
The California-based
Solar leader repeats
company has also hired
Fellowship success
Allon, the creator of the
Professor Martin Green has
advanced search engine set to
been awarded one of this year’s revolutionise the way we can
prestigious ARC Federation
efficiently acquire information
Fellowships, making him one of from the internet.
the first researchers to receive
The technology allows the
this honour for the second time. display of information from
The Federal Government’s
web sites directly, without
ARC Federation Fellowships
users having to click through
are the most esteemed,
to separate pages. It also
publicly funded fellowships
displays search results for
offered in Australia. They are
topics related to the user’s
designed to attract world-class query.
research talent to Australia,
Though working in
and provide opportunities for
Mountain View, California, Ori
leading Australian researchers
Allon is still a full-time student
to continue their work in this
at UNSW and will continue
country.
working on the invention with
Scientia Professor
supervisor Dr Eric Martin for
Green, Executive Research
his PhD.
Director of the ARC Centre of
Excellence for Advanced Silicon
Photovoltaics and Photonics at
UNSW, will lead research into
nanostructured silicon-based
tandem solar cells.
Professor Green aims to
develop a new generation of
Ori Allon: Snapped up by Google.
Spark a thought?
Era? Definitely seventies. But not much else is known about
this treasure from the Archives. Who can explain what this
group is doing and who they are? We’d love to know where
they are now.
Email us at unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
The late John Lions (left,
standing) was a pioneer of
computing and was one of
the key people responsible
for the growth of expertise
in operating systems
design across the world.
He was a member of the
UNSW academic staff for
almost 25 years. Anyone
know who else is in the
photo?
email us: unswengineers@eng.unsw.edu.au
Photos courtesy of UNSW Archives.
FEATURE
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 Engineering to the rescue
Our role in Humanitarian
and disaster relief >
Grandfather and child at Bakalot Pakistan after the earthquake. Photo courtesy of RedR.
Engineers providing humanitarian and
disaster relief are finding they have
as much to learn from local people
as they do from them. Humanitarian
engineering is fast becoming an exercise
in productive partnerships.
Earlier this year, a catastrophic landslide buried the village
of Guinsaugon, near the town of St Bernard in the Southern
Leyte province of the Philippines. Spreading for more than
three kilometres, the landslide killed an estimated 1000
people in a village of 1400, including 250 children and
teachers in the local school. Tragically, many people from
as far away as Manila were in Guinsaugon at the time to
celebrate the anniversary of a local livelihood project.
UNSW alumna, environmental engineer Kathryn Harries,
was quickly on the scene. A plant manager at Sydney Water’s
Warriewood Sewage Treatment Plant, Kathryn is on the
RedR (Register of Engineers for Disaster Relief) register.
Run by Engineers Australia, RedR is a non-government
humanitarian agency whose mandate is to select and train
technical specialists to be available at short notice to work
with the UN or non-government agencies.
In this case, AusAID immediately responded to
the disaster, pledging $1 million and sending a team of
engineers with expertise in geotechnical engineering, water
and sanitation. With Kathryn’s previous experience in the
Philippines through Red Cross and her role as national
convenor of the Australian Water Association’s Water and
Sanitation in Developing Communities Special Interest
Group, she was selected as a water and sanitation (WatSan)
expert.
“I was the only WatSan technical expert in the
field at the time, so I was able to assist local nongovernment organisations develop water and sanitation
recommendations.” says Kathryn. “This included developing
a spreadsheet that could be used as an ongoing tool to
provide fair distribution of additional latrines as evacuee
numbers and the need for latrines changed. My highlight was
consulting with the local rural sanitation inspectors while
developing emergency latrine design.”
The whole field of humanitarian and disaster relief
engineering has come a long way since the days when
engineers flew in with the attitude of “we’re the white people,
we see the problem, here’s the solution, see you later,” says
Dr Alistair Sproul, a senior lecturer in UNSW’s School of
Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering and the
leader on many student projects in developing and disasterridden countries.
“We tend to now ask, ‘How can we be of service to you?
What needs solving?’” says Alistair, who with students has
brought solar lighting to a remote medical outpost in Nepal,
solar-powered water pumps to tsunami-affected Sri Lanka,
and solar cooking facilities in Nicaragua. “People without
a lot of money can have a huge impact and whether it’s a
positive or negative experience depends on consultation.
Working with the local community is crucial.”
It is an approach endorsed wholeheartedly by Jeff
Dobell, founder of RedR Australia, Engineering Aid and
RedR International in cooperation with RedR UK. He has
dedicated much of his career to providing engineers and
related services to assist disadvantaged communities both in
Australia and overseas. Jeff believes not just in consulting
local communities but in training local people as well.
“People with a lot of money can have a
huge impact and whether it’s a positive
or negative experience depends on
consultation. Working with the local
community is crucial.”
“If you transfer skills, including management skills, to
people who have not had the opportunity to obtain them,
you leave a lasting legacy,” says Jeff, who has provided
disaster-relief and humanitarian engineering solutions in
Rwanda, Mauritania, East Timor, Eritrea, Eastern Europe,
Nepal, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and Aboriginal
communities across Australia. “I’ve seen situations where
engineers have installed sophisticated equipment but no-one
thought to train the locals so ultimately it fell into disrepair.”
Kathryn Harries concurs. “The most satisfying thing
about being a RedR volunteer is working with local
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 UNICEF School reconstruction, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Photo courtesy of RedR.
Engineering to the rescue
representatives, sharing their local and my technical
knowledge to find the best solution for people in need,” she
says.
Jeff believes the importance of engineers in developing
and disaster regions can’t be underestimated. Doctors are
sent to fix health problems. Engineers go to design ways to
improve the quality of life and avoid the health problems in
the first place.
“This was brought home to me when I provided
engineers to work with Rwandan refugees,” says Jeff. “The
situation was the equivalent of the population of Brisbane
moving overnight to Albury. The infrastructure of the area
was completely overwhelmed. The Rwandan crisis to me
was depicted in a television picture of a small girl sitting
beside a pool of black water and drinking from it with a
tin can. If the cameraman had gone back the next day the
small girl would likely have been dead. It portrayed to me
the need for engineers in emergency situations providing
clean water, sanitation and shelter, the very essentials for our
survival. Engineers are needed for every aspect of any society,
including refugees.”
“If you transfer skills, including
management skills, to people who
have not had the opportunity to obtain
them, you leave a lasting legacy.”
Dr Rodney Care, RedR director, CEO and chairman of
ARUP Australasia and adjunct professor at UNSW, says it is
the project management skills of engineers that make them
invaluable in problematic circumstances where one has to
improvise
“The supply of food, water and sanitation doesn’t fit
with the normal skills set of some engineers but engineers
are practical and can do things pretty quickly and easily
with guidance,” he says. “An acoustic engineer wanting
to volunteer for RedR would not be greatly useful as an
acoustician. But his skills to manage projects would be.”
Nonetheless, it requires special people and specific
interpersonal skills to succeed in difficult circumstances. No
RedR volunteer is sent into the field without appropriate
training, particularly in cross-cultural differences and stress
management.
Engineers without Borders, a group of young
professionals involved in development projects, run socially
responsible engineers programs through universities, and
individuals involved in projects bone up on the language and
culture before even booking an airline ticket.
“Good interpersonal skills are essential,” says Kathryn
Harries. “You are working with others, who are very
committed but with a different range of skills, abilities,
backgrounds and countries of origin, in a highly charged, and
often sleep-deprived environment, with limited equipment
and time, and uncertainty as to the cultural needs of the
affected community.”
Dr Philip Crisp, a senior lecturer at UNSW, is leader of
the Safe Water Implementation Group (SWIG), a coalition
of interdisciplinary scientists, engineers and social analysts
concerned with the lack of safe drinking water in developing
countries. He has worked for years in Bangladesh on solving
the problem of arsenic in the water supply and is currently
finishing a safe water book to be translated in the Bangla
language and distributed to villagers. Dr Crisp firmly believes
success lies in holistic and self-propagating solutions as well
as respect for local cultures.
“Our approach is to solve water problems while
addressing social, economic and technical factors in an
integrated manner…solutions to safe water problems should
be socially accepted and locally organised. Our projects are
designed to use minimal capital and to work within village
economies, without distorting the social structure by adding
to the problems of graft and corruption that have often been
associated with foreign aid.”
Dr Care says the most practical answer may not always
be the right one because of cultural considerations. “In the
tsunami, for example, it made sense to just move people to
higher ground. But you have a lot of fisherman and with that
comes a whole cultural structure. You have to work in ways
that can lessen the impact of future disaster while still letting
people live the way they want.”
In his book Shelter After Disaster, Ian Davis of Oxford’s
Disaster Management Centre points out that following
disasters around the world, local people using their own
ingenuity and initiative have accomplished more than 80
percent of the reconstruction themselves, even in this age
of rapid transport and communications. He believes the
challenge to national and international agencies is to make a
genuine contribution by doing something that strengthens and
extends what the people are going to do anyway on their own.
The same principle applies in development work. Jeff
Dobell recalls working in the Kowanyama Aboriginal
community of North Queensland one year when contractors
were brought in to renovate local housing. “They’re dirty
buggers here,” a carpenter remarked to Jeff after finding a
dead wallaby in a kitchen cupboard. Six months later when
a grant came through to build a number of houses in the
community, Jeff suggested that the Engineering Aid engineer
arrange for the community to engage an architect with
As an industry we are one of the last to
project ourselves as people who care.
House design in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Photo courtesy of RedR.
FEATURE
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
FEATURE
10 UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 11
Engineering to the rescue
experience in Indigenous housing. The houses, subsequently
built by members of the community, included a room in the
undercroft area where wallabies could be cleaned, washed
down and stored.
While low-tech responses often serve developing and
disaster-struck communities best, high-tech engineering
solutions certainly also play an important role.
You have to work in ways that can lessen
the impact of future disaster while still
letting people live the way they want.”
If Australia had a rapid deployment system with remote
sensing similar to China’s, for example, vital information on
the recent Innisfail cyclone would have been to hand within
a few hours, says Visiting Professor Bruce Forster of UNSW’s
School of Surveying and Spatial Information and co-author
of the new edition of Remote Sensing of Human Settlements,
published by the US Society of Photogrammetry.
“For bushfires, floods and cyclones such a system
would be invaluable,” says Professor Forster. “You could
immediately link to GIS to rapidly assess damage and have
information in hours instead of days. In Innisfail, data could
have been digitally transmitted to a control centre and by late
afternoon they would have known the damage.”
Another high-tech engineering solution is to have
monitoring systems already in place, that can provide vital
information if and when major ‘events’ occur. Dr Ian Turner
and his research team at the Water Research Laboratory,
a facility of UNSW’s School of Civil and Environmental
Engineering, maintain a network of coastal imaging
stations at a number of coastal erosion ‘hot spots’ located
along the NSW and QLD coastline. He recently received
Australian Academy of Science funding to develop a new
field instrument with a UK collaborator. “When large coastal
storms occur, coastal managers and engineers have immediate
access to information that enables them to best manage their
immediate resources. And after the storm, the recovery of the
coast can also be effectively monitored and managed”.
Talk to any engineer who has worked in humanitarian
relief and invariably they will report a sense of great
privilege in having shared momentous times with people
of different cultures. In the final year of her undergraduate
degree at UNSW, PhD student Rebecca Barnes volunteered
for development work in India with Engineering Ministries
International. She was one of two engineers designing the
water supply, distribution and disposal system for the Shanti
Bhavan Hospital, the first permanent medical facility in
an area of more than one million people. The work won
her accolades from Engineers Australia, which named her
2004 Engineering Student of the Year. But for Rebecca, the
personal reward was the experience itself.
“I’ll never forget my time with the Indian pastors,
designing the hospital. One family gave up their beds to host
30 people for a week. I’ve never met a group of people so full
of joy and generosity. It was an honour to work for them and
I suspect I benefited more than they did.”
Says Kathryn Harries: “The most amazing thing about
my experience was the opportunity to join both key national
coordination meetings as well as work directly in the field
– seeing it at both levels exposed what naturally works and
what inherent challenges occur.”
Stuart Davies, director of programs with Engineers
without Borders, believes the industry as a whole has much
to benefit by becoming more active in humanitarian work.
“As an industry we are one of the last to project ourselves
as people who care,” he says. “In the legal profession, for
example, the whole concept of pro bono is well established
but we have been slower to respond. We have so much power
in our hands to make a different world. In 20 years, Australia
could lead the world in making a difference, in sustainability
and in every other respect.”
One tangible way to achieve that goal, suggests Jeff
Dobell, is to establish closer links between engineers and
politicians. He advocates a model similar to that in the US
where engineers are co-opted to work with various politicians
so they can advise on the ramifications of decisions.
This would involve engineers prior to any planning of
infrastructure and how that should be established.
“The Prime Minister’s Science and Engineering Council
partly fills that role but it’s very limited. Engineers should be
more closely linked to the three levels of government.”
After all, he says, human beings can never be totally
protected from disasters, natural or man made. What we can
change is how we respond to them.
Photo courtesy of Kathryn Harries.
Engineering Aid
Contact: Jeff Dobell
Tel: (02) 9449 4353
Email: JDobell@BigPond.net.au
RedR
Tel: +61 2 6273 6544
Fax: +61 2 6273 6546
Email: info@redr.org.au
www.redr.org/australia
Engineers without
Borders
Tel: 03-9696 9040
Fax: 03-9696 9034
Email: info@ewb.org.au
www.ewb.org.au
Engineering in
Emergencies
Armed conflict, drought, famine
and other serious disasters create
emergencies in which large
numbers of people require urgent
help. Engineering in Emergencies
is a practical handbook for all
relief workers involved in giving
humanitarian assistance at such
times.
Engineering in Emergencies: A
Practical Guide for Relief Workers
By Jan Davis and Robert Lambert.
ITDG Publishing in association with
RedR. To obtain copies contact your
local RedR office.
The events of Beaconsfield were
an extraordinary display of mining
technology, people skills and mining
engineering ingenuity. Professor Bruce
Hebblewhite, Head of the School of
Mining Engineering, reflects on the
advances in mining that helped to make
this rescue operation possible.
“Many of the things they did in Beaconsfield would have
required one-off engineering. A lot of the technology employed
has been around for years but not necessarily in the way it was
applied in this situation.
We saw various forms of drilling technologies, from welltargeted directionally controlled pilot bore holes, through to
the large raise-bored holes which provided the eventual escape
route. Raise-bored holes have been used in the mining industry
for quite some time, but mainly for generating large diameter
holes for ventilation and access, usually vertically, during routine
mine development.
In mining technology, we saw the use of infrared cameras
that could be put down bore holes as heat-sensing devices. We
also saw a focus on the importance of mining communications
systems. In the broader field of mining communications
technologies, Australia really leads the world. Huge strides
are being made in novel communication systems, with ultralow frequency electromagnetic signals that use the rock as
a transmission medium so that with large antennae on the
surface or another appropriate location you can provide a
communications network to all parts of a mine.
Underground mining, particularly metalliferous mining, is a
three-dimensional operation – very complex, as seen in some
of the graphics and animations produced. Mine excavations
exist as multiple openings in a range of different directions, on
different vertical levels of the mine. These require a high-level
surveying capability and complex computer modelling of the ore
body and mining geometries. In this technology field, again,
Australia leads the world with mining-related software products
used for planning, design and operations reconciliation.
Blasting is the other area of technology that was at the
forefront at Beaconsfield. Blasting has come a long way in
the past couple of hundred years. There are a whole range of
technologies that now exist to be able to vary the energy used
in order to achieve the desired level of rock fragmentation, while
minimising the impact of the blasts in terms of vibration. We
also saw consideration of the much more recent developments
in non-explosive fragmentation – using expanding grouts or
gases to expand and fracture rock.
Mining engineering ingenuity was able to bring all
these elements together to direct an appropriate rescue
strategy while dealing with different rock types and mining
environments.
The events were also a tremendous testimony to the
‘people’ aspects and skills within the mining industry. Apart
from the amazing resilience of the two miners rescued, we
saw demonstrated the camaraderie there is in the mining
industry at all levels of a mining operation, and the ability of
a team of people to work together to achieve a remarkable
result – from the level-headed and focused mine management
through to the determination and patient persistence of the
rescue teams which in this country are made up of a mixture
of normal mineworkers, engineers, or managers, who are all
volunteers trained especially for a wide range of different rescue
scenarios.”
12 UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June
13/June 2006
2006
.ENGINEERS
.ENGINEERS
UNSW
IssueNo.7/Dec
13/June 2006
UNSW
2003 13
schoolsnapshots
School of Chemical Sciences and
Engineering
Treating wastewater with
top technology
Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering
Honouring a visionary
The man credited with founding the
Australian biomedical industry has been
honoured in a fitting way. UNSW has
established the Paul M Trainor Chair, a
memorial Professorship in the Graduate
School of Biomedical Engineering.
The Chair was announced at a
moving memorial service for the late
industrialist, who passed away in
January.
The service, held at UNSW, was
attended by more than 200 people with
speakers including Cochlear CEO, Dr
Christopher Roberts (see Graduate
Profile), Professor Graeme Clark, the
inventor of the bionic ear and Matthew
Trainor, Paul’s son.
Paul Trainor founded the Nucleus
Group of companies which played such
an important role in the development
and commercialisation of firms such as
Cochlear, Telectronics and Medtel and
indirectly, Resmed and Ventracor.
“You only have to see the eyes of
a child light up when they first hear
sound with a Cochlear device to know
that Paul truly made a difference,”
says new head of the Graduate School
of Biomedical Engineering, Professor
Anne Simmons, who worked with the
Nucleus Group for almost 20 years.
“Few groups have ever done as
much to bring health and hope to others
around the world. Paul’s contribution
to this nation was immense.”
Initial funding of $1.5million
for the Chair has come from UNSW
commercialisation activities related
to the CRC for Cardiac Technology
of which Telectronics was the major
industry partner. Further funds are
Paul Trainor will now have a Chair in his
name.
being sought to ensure longevity of the
Chair.
“The University will place strong
emphasis in the selection of an
inaugural Paul M Trainor Professor to
ensure that the incumbent combines
outstanding academic qualifications
with the experience and temperament
to liaise closely with the biomedical
engineering and research industry in
exactly the way that Paul pioneered
with universities and research
institutions around the world,” says
Professor Simmons.
“More than 50 students graduate
from UNSW each year with a
concurrent BE and Masters Degree
in Biomedical Engineering. With
the establishment of the Paul M
Trainor Chair, this new generation of
biomedical engineers will understand
that there is an Australian biomedical
industry because of this man’s energy,
vision and determination.
“Paul Trainor was a great
Australian who built a forwardthinking enterprise to create medical
good, help people and to lead the way
to a new industry in Australia and the
University is excited.”
The UNESCO Centre for Membrane
Science is participating in a €six million
European Union research project
to accelerate the use of membrane
bioreactors for urban sewage treatment.
Membrane bioreactor (MBR)
systems are considered state-of-theart technology for treating municipal
wastewater. MBRs treat the wastewater
to a very high quality that surpasses the
stringent EU requirements for discharge
or water reuse. The technology is suited
to either highly urbanised centres with
ageing infrastructure as well as parts of
the EU that require new infrastructure.
The Berlin Water Authority is the
lead European agency on this project,
titled “AMEDEUS” – Accelerated
development of membrane bioreactors
for urban sewage treatment. It is
coordinating research and development
activities in seven EU member countries.
The Commonwealth Department of
Education, Science and Training funds
the UNESCO Centre’s involvement in
the project through an International
Science Linkage grant.
The Australian node of the project
is led by Greg Leslie, an Associate
Professor in Chemical Engineering and
Industrial Chemistry and the deputy
director of the UNESCO Centre. The
UNESCO Centre is coordinating
input from Australian Universities,
including the University of Technology,
Sydney and major water uilities such
as Sydney Water, the South Australian
Water Corporation and United Utilities
Australia.
The role of the Australian team is
to develop a computer model for the
design of large scale MBR plants. The
innovative software will account for
both kinetic parameters as well as the
complex hydraulic conditions that exist
in MBRs.
By developing software to model
residence time distributions in these
reactors it will be possible to optimise
the size of civil structures and mixing
systems and identify which types of
membranes promote uniform mixing
and flow distribution.
To achieve this the centre will use
computation fluid dynamics (CFD)
techniques to construct a combined
hydraulic-kinetic model for MBR
design. The software will be developed
and calibrated on recently installed
MBR plants in Sydney (North Head),
South Australia (Victor Harbor) as well
as facilities in France and Belgium.
The outcome of the research will be
a technique that will reduce the capital
cost of MBR tankage and energy cost
associated with mixing. This will allow
communities to reduce the cost of
producing high-quality reclaimed water
that can be reused and recycled – an
important factor for urban, rural and
regional Australia.
MBR systems surpass stringent requirements for
wastewater.
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Managing our coastal zones
Land development in
Queensland has had a
dramatic impact on the
growth of a potentially toxic
organism that threatens
coastal waters, according to
a team from the Centre for
Water and Waste Treatment.
Centre director, Professor
David Waite, ARC postdoctoral fellow Andrew
Rose and PhD student
Aurelie Godrant spent
part of summer “cruising” Left to right: Andrew Rose, David Waite and Aurelie Godrant.
on the Great Barrier Reef
UNSW and the Universite de Bretagne
with colleagues from the
Occidentale (UBO) in Brest on the west
Australian Institute of Marine Science
coat of France. Andrew is spending part
in Townsville.
of his time working with collaborators
The ARC Discovery-funded project
at the Woods Hole Oceanographic
in which they were involved is focussed
Institution (WHOI) on Cape Cod in
on investigation of development
Massachusetts.
on growth of the cyanobacterium
Field work on the Great Barrier Reef
Trichodesmium that grows in coastal
is
being
complemented by laboratory
waters and is critical to the nitrogen
investigations
at UNSW, at UBO and
balance in these waters.
at WHOI of factors controlling iron
Of particular interest is the manner
supply to Trichodesmium and other
in which this organism acquires the
organisms of interest such as the fishkey trace nutrient, iron, an element
killing organism, Chattonella.
fundamental to both photosynthesis
New insights into how these
and to the ability of this organism to
organisms
acquire vital nutrients will
obtain nitrogen from the atmosphere.
assist
in
understanding
how changes to
It is now recognised that land
the
environment
influence
their growth.
management practices can modify the
This knowledge will, in turn, help
supply of iron to coastal waters and, in
develop better approaches to managing
so doing, dramatically alter the ecology
our coastal zone so that we neither
of these highly sensitive regions.
induce unwanted blooms of dangerous
The project possesses an
organisms nor limit growth of those
international flavour as Aurelie is
critical to a healthy environment.
undertaking her doctoral studies
through a cotutelle programme at both
14 UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 15
schoolsnapshots
School of Electrical Engineering
and Telecommunications
School of Computer Science and Engineering
Putting the fun back in programming
A 22-year-old computer engineering
student from the University of New
South Wales has devised a simple iconic
language that will help teach children
the basics of programming.
Thomas Legowo is the brains behind
fUNSoftWare, an iconic programming
language which he plans to release as a
free open source product.
Robolab, an iconic language
which is widely used in schools and
international competitions to program
Lego robots, was the starting point for
the project.
Thomas and his supervisor Eric
Martin established a list of all the
features that could be improved, and
spent a few months coming up with
a new design that would provide
kids with an easier tool to learn
programming.
“Thomas did a fantastic job,” says
Eric Martin.” fUNSoftWare allows a
first approach to programming that is
fun, effective and rigorous,” he says.
“Based on the reaction of potential
users, it promises to become popular
worldwide.”
Thomas believes it is the only
graphic programming language to help
children learn how to write correct
programs and then lead them into
standard text-based programming.
“You can use my program to learn
Not Quite C, used to program Lego,
and then C,” Thomas says. “You can
use the icons to program originally.
“Then you can look at the Not Quite
C code automatically produced from
your iconic program to see what is
happening.
“Another important feature is that
the program doesn’t allow its users
to commit illegal steps along the way.
This results in a program that is free of
syntax errors. fUNSoftWare also has
a layout manager that automatically
comes up with a great layout of the
program at all times. This efficiently
teaches kids the importance of good
layout, especially for debugging
purposes.”
Professor Paul Compton, head of
UNSW’s school of Computer Science
and Engineering, believes fUNSoftWare
will help teachers as well as students.
“Learning programming in
school can be a big turn-off as it is
very difficult to find programming
tasks that are easy enough for school
students to manage yet interesting and
challenging,” he says. “Lego robots and
fUNSoftWare are one way around this.”
The University of New South Wales
this year hosted the national finals of
Robocup Junior and will do so again
in September 2006. The software is
currently being trialled in a NSW high
school.
School students have taken to fUNSoftWare.
Fast forward to virtual
classrooms
Pre-recorded CD lectures could see
an end to the days of frantically
scribbling notes in the classroom.
The School of
Electrical Engineering and
Telecommunications has
successfully trialled CD lectures that
feature an electronic whiteboard
with the lecturer’s handwritten
notes and a video of the lecturer
explaining each point as it appears
on the screen.
The novel teaching method
was introduced to third-year
undergraduate students in Signal
Processing and Transform Methods
and to postgraduate students in
Speech and Audio Processing last
year.
Associate Professor E.
Ambikairajah, who developed the
teaching tools and ran the trial and
subsequent student survey, said 75
percent of students found the prerecorded CDs provided a more efficient
way of learning in comparison to live
lectures.
“Ninety-six percent of the students
liked the fact that they could review the
CD-based lectures at their own pace to
improve their understanding,”
“And eighty percent of the students
felt they learnt more through the use of
CD-based lectures.
The CD lectures are designed to
be followed up with a face-to-face
classroom discussion period in which
any questions can be raised.
Seventy five percent of
undergraduate students and 50 percent
School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering
A screen grab from the electronic whiteboard.
of graduate students agreed that they
had more opportunities to ask questions
in classes having watched the prerecorded lectures than in live lectures
without the CD.
“Overall, students found the prerecorded lectures to be very helpful
towards their learning experience,” says
A/Professor Ambikairajah.
“Lectures were considered worth
attending , although students wanted
class discussions (as opposed to
lectures) to complement the use of the
CD.
Students recommended the use of
pre-recorded lectures for other courses
within the school. There was no
great difference between graduate and
undergraduate students. Both groups
have found the CD lectures equally
helpful.”
Designing a fresh approach to engineering
More than 900 engineering students
filled the Clancy Auditorium at the
beginning of Session 1. They were the
first class in a new Faculty-wide Design
and Innovation course – a cornerstone
of the new flexible first-year program
introduced in 2006.
ENGG1000 Design and Innovation
introduces the principles and methods
of engineering design, with an emphasis
on creativity and innovation, through
hands-on activities and engineering
projects. It also helps students gain
skills in written expression, introduces
the way a professional engineer
works and helps students learn to use
information resources effectively. And
it provides a team-based environment
in which students experience and learn
about collaboration. This studentcentred learning is valuable in itself and
a fine platform for later studies.
“On that first Tuesday it was
exciting to see so many of the new
engineering students in one place. But
even more exciting was the Impromptu
Design activity, also for 900 students,
that ran the following Thursday,” says
course coordinator Robin Ford.
“Working in teams of eight, the
whole class confronted a design task
in the very first week of their studies.
The task was to produce a device to
deliver 50ml of water in an open plastic
champagne glass from a height of 2.5m,
using a kit of common items such as
balloons, plastic bin-liner, paper, sticky
tape and string.
In just two hours, each team worked
through the classical stages of design,
identifying the problem, creating
ideas, selecting a design, building their
inventions and seeing them tested on
the Physics Lawn. It was a carnival day
that showcased the creativity, teamwork
and skills of our first-year students for
2006.
“Not everything in ENGG1000
will happen in such a large class. To
provide diversity, students will do most
of their work in classes run by nine of
the Schools of the Faculty,” says Robin.
“In each class the work will be
project-based, centred on a task
relevant to that particular engineering
stream. There are 13 projects that
range from a solar-powered device to
climb a vertical rope, a sustainable
dwelling, and computer code to
optimise the movements of trains on a
model train-set. Despite their variety
they all share the essential features of
the design process.”
Design challenges are now part of first year.
16 UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 17
schoolsnapshots
School of Petroleum Engineering
Simulating Underground
Disposal of CO2
School of Mining Engineering
School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering
Simulating flow with greater accuracy
New software that will model particle
flow in block caves and sub-level caving
is being developed by a former alumnus
of UNSW, now a senior lecturer in the
School of Mining Engineering.
Dr Glenn Sharrock, a former Coop
scholar, has joined the school after years
in industry to develop Cave-Sim™, a
new particle flow code to help analyse
the performance of different cave layout
operations.
“Block caves and sub-level caving
mines are now operating at more
extreme depths and in stronger rocks
than ever before,” says Dr Sharrock.
“The rules of thumb and tools for
design and layout of these mines were
not developed for these environments,
and the resulting cave designs are often
in conflict with the operational and
geotechnical requirements for large
caving operations in moderately to
highly stressed environments.”
The Cave-Sim™ modelling package
enables full integration of economic
parameters and geological models into
a three-dimensional flow model of an
operating cave.
The change in technology has been
made possible by the use of the CellularAutomata (CA) mathematical
technique, instead of the
traditional Discrete Element
Method (DEM) or Finite
Element Method (FEM).
Cave-Sim™ builds on the
principles of CA while newly
introducing particle friction,
particle size distributions and
stress into three-dimensional
cellular automata.
“I’m playing around with coupling
this software with FEM and DEM so
you can model rock breakage and flow
in a full working model of the actual
mining operation,” says Dr Sharrock.
“The advantage of Cave-Sim™
over other techniques is its ability to
efficiently simulate the dynamics of
large numbers of particles, for long
simulation times, in a matter of hours.
“Apart from advantages of
simulation size, complexity and
duration, the method is readily
calibrated against observed site or
problem-specific behaviours, which are
represented as fundamental rules in the
simulations.
“The development of these rules and
further application of Cave-Sim™ are
presently underway.”
Dr Sharrock has established the
UNSW Advances Numerical Modelling
in Mining Geomechanics group which
is comprised of academics and industry
members with an interest in this area. It
is expected to spearhead a dynamic new
direction for research within the School
of Mining Engineering.
Cave-Sim software models particle flow.
It’s estimated that 7 billion
tonnes a year of carbon
dioxide emissions come from
human activity – the main
contributor to greenhouse
effect on global climate
change.
Australia’s coal-fired
power stations produce about
70 percent of the nation’s
total installed electricity
generation capacity and emit
about 190 million tonnes of CO2/year.
One proposed method for reducing
how much of the greenhouse gas ends
up in the atmosphere is to store CO2
in geological formations. There are
currently three options for geological
disposal of CO2: depleted oil and gas
reservoirs, unmineable coal seams, and
saline formations.
In the design of an underground
CO2 disposal site, one must assess the
capacity and ability of the proposed
geological formation for the injection
and storage of CO2. Typical concerns
that arise in a CO2 disposal project
are whether the proposed geological
structure has favourable properties that
allow the injection of the proposed
volume of CO2 for a certain period and
whether the injected CO2 will stay in
there without any leakage. Answers to
such questions can be sought by means
of numerical simulation of simultaneous
flow of CO2 with the existing fluids in
deep geological formations.
A part of the collaborative research
at the School of Petroleum Engineering
China’s star lights way for solar
Tracking carbon output.
with the Cooperative Research Centre
for Greenhouse Gas Technologies
(CO2CRC) aims to focus on numerical
simulation of CO2 disposal in potential
Australian sites.
Simulations are run for short-term
and long-term movement of CO2 in
underground structures. The short-term
simulations analyze the injectivity of
CO2 into the potential formation, the
migration of CO2 towards the trapping
structure which is governed by viscous,
gravity and capillary forces, and also
some technical issues such as how many
injection wells and well spacing.
The long-term simulations
investigate the post-injection movement
and stability of CO2 plume created in
the formation and effects of different
mechanisms on entrapment of CO2,
such as capillarity, dissolution of CO2
in local fluids, and chemical interaction
with rock matrix.
Day one of Suntech Power’s float on
the New York Stock Exchange and the
excitement is palpable. By day’s end,
the share price has risen 41 percent,
raising US$396 million for the fledgling
Chinese player in the booming solar
industry.
This is good news for the ARC
Centre of Excellence in Advanced
Silicon Photovoltaics and Photonics.
It is closely associated with the Wuxibased operator, one of the world’s
most successful and fastest-growing
photovoltaics companies.
Suntech and UNSW are about to
launch a new solar cell technology that
will overcome a fundamental weakness
of cells that have been on the market
for the past 20 years. Much light is
wasted from the top surface of most
commercial solar cells because of their
grid formation.
“The new technology provides a
way to eliminate the dead layer through
the use of semiconductor fingers
which make good contact to the metal
grid and carry the generated current
to where the metal is located,” says
award-winning researcher Professor
Stuart Wenham, a Scientia professor
who consults at Suntech.
The Centre’s international
reputation grows stronger all the time.
In February, two high-profile leaders
took time out from their tight schedules
during the Climate Change conference
to learn more about UNSW’s work.
Chinese Secretary General of
the State Council Hua Jianmin and
US Secretary for Energy Samuel W.
Bodman made separate visits to meet
senior UNSW staff and explore the
photovoltaics laboratories.
The centre’s growing reputation
in China also prompted visits from a
World Bank Global Environment Fund
delegation who are working on a China
Renewable Energy Development Project
and a separate delegation from Shaanxi
Province.
Head of the School of Photovoltaics
and Renewable Energy Engineering,
Dr Richard Corkish, also met up with
Science and Technology Minister Xu
Guanhua, during his stay in Sydney.
“We’re delighted that leaders of
the two of the world’s most powerful
nations recognise the leading position
of the Centre – and the role that solar
energy is playing in the world today,”
says Dr Corkish.
“The solar energy market is
booming in places like Germany and
Japan and China is about to become a
powerhouse for the production and use
of solar cells – due in part to UNSW
technology.”
Hua Jianmin (left) on a visit to the Photovoltaics lab.
18 UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006
schoolsnapshots
UNSW.ENGINEERS Issue 13/June 2006 19
Where in the world?
Eva Hanly
Graduated: BE (Hons)/ BA (International
Relations), 2001.
Namuru: the first open-source reconfigurable GPS receiver.
School of Surveying & Spatial Information Systems
Open source GPS receiver makes design flexible
A team from the School of Surveying
and Spatial Information has developed
the first open-source reconfigurable GPS
receiver.
Based on Altera’s Cyclone FPGA,
the Namuru receiver allows for more
flexible design. Users can download the
UNSW design and build their own GPS
system for specialist use. Alternatively,
they can purchase the UNSW system
and adapt it accordingly.
“We believe it will be a very good
platform for research development and
specialist applications,” says Associate
Professor Andrew Dempster.
“You can change the nature of
the digital circuitry, making it easier
to design your own specialised GPS
receiver. One UK company is interested
in using it for automotive design,” he
says.
“We believe the Namuru will also
be of great interest to hobbyists. People
want to position all sorts of things from
pets to model aircraft.”
Namura means “to see the path”
in the language of the Eora people,
indigenous to the Sydney region. It
can also mean Navigational Apparatus
Made at UNSW for Reconfigurable Use.
Peter Mumford, who spent a year
designing the receiver, said the team
took the two digital elements of a GPS
receiver – the baseband chip and the
processor, and ported them into the
FPGA.
Because of its reconfigurable nature,
the Namuru can easily be adapted to
suit both standard GPS and Galileo
systems. The board can also be readily
adapted to accept the new signals from
GPS.
Downloads and further information
are available from
www.dynamics.co.nz/gpsreceiver
Career Highlights: While I was still
studying engineering, I worked at
Thiess Pty Ltd part-time and during
my holidays. I joined Thiess when I
graduated and was promptly relocated
from a comfortable office in Sydney to
an underground coal mine. This was
something I thought may be challenging
but definitely not where I had seen
myself working! However, after I
settled in, I found it to be one of my
most memorable times in my career
to date and I met some wonderful
people. The camaraderie and teamwork
when everyone is living away from
home is extraordinary and I got my
“site experience” which is something I
recommend to all engineers, even those
like me who are more interested in
business operations and management.
I have also worked on major projects in
civil engineering, telecommunications
and building, with Thiess and later
Multiplex.
Current Role: I am currently the
National Operations and Systems
Manager at Bilfinger Berger Services
(BBS), the services arm of the Bilfinger
Berger group of companies.
Interests: I maintain a strong interest in
supporting the engineering profession.
I was the former Chair of Young
Engineers Sydney and am currently a
Director on the Centre for Engineering
Leadership and Management’s national
board. I am also a Director on the board
of Engineers Without Borders.
Photo courtesy of Eva Hanly.
Graduate profile >
Dr Chris Roberts
The Australian biomedical
industry is unusual on a
few counts. It is blessed
with the ability to
manufacture in Australia
yet compete admirably
on the world stage. And
it boasts a tight-knit
group of professionals,
many of whom trace
their connections back to
UNSW.
The career of Dr
Christopher Roberts,
Cochlear’s chief executive officer, is a case in point.
Chris completed an undergraduate degree in Chemical
Engineering in 1975. It so happened that Professor Peter
Farrell, the founding director of the Graduate School of
Biomedical Engineering, was then lecturing in Chemical
Engineering on artificial kidneys.
Chris wrote his final-year thesis on artificial kidneys.
Rather than finding work as a chemical engineer, he opted
for a position with Domedica, a company importing artificial
kidneys and part of the Nucleus Group of companies
established by industrialist Paul Trainor, the so-called
“father” of the biomedical industry.
“The concept that you could keep someone alive using
fundamental chemical engineering principles was just
so exciting to me,” says Chris, who soon found that he
thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the biomedical industry.
Having completed an MBA to boost his business skills,
Chris returned to study at UNSW, this time doing a PhD
with Professor Farrell and his successor Professor Klaus
Schindhelm.
Armed and ready, Chris took off in 1984 to the US to run
another Paul Trainor company, BGS Medical, which offered
implantable electrical devices to stimulate bone growth.
He stayed in the US until 1989. He had a brief stint
with the Nucleus Group back in Sydney, before spending
time with Telectronics company in Paris (By that stage
Paul Trainor had sold his Nucleus Group and Telectronics
companies to Pacific Dunlop – and Dr Colin Sutton another
UNSW alumnus was running Telectronics in Europe).
He left in 1992 to join Peter Farrell at ResMed, which
provides breathing apparatus for sleep disorders. Chris had
been one of the founding directors but had never worked
fulltime in the company until then.
He had come full circle, working with the man who
inspired his career and through whom he met so many other
alumni also associated with the inspiring Paul Trainor.
“I’ve certainly had a close association with UNSW
throughout my career – as has Professor Anne Simmons [now
head of the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering] who
worked at Domedica.
“My connections go way back. My wife has two degrees
from UNSW (BA LLB) – she was known as Maxine Wills
then. And my daughter Charmaine is completing her final
year Commerce/Law degree there.”
At Cochlear, which Chris joined in 2004, he has turned
the business around. “The business fundamentals are great,”
he says. “There is a large unmet clinical need, the technology
works brilliantly and Cochlear is the undisputed global
leader in the cochlear implant field.” In addition there are
many opportunities to add other implantable devices for the
hearing impaired.
My connections go way back. My wife has
two degrees from UNSW and my daughter
is completing her final year there.
Between work, his wife and four daughters and travelling
up to 40 percent of the year, there is little time for leisurely
pursuits. Not that Chris minds. He feels there is much more
work to be done in creating greater awareness of the marvels
of implantable devices, and specifically of the opportunity
to provide hearing to tens of thousands of new patients each
year.
“And it’s exciting dealing with the leaders in the field
globally,” he says. Not bad for a lad from UNSW.
Photos courtesy of Dr Roberts and Cochlear.com.
Post Approved
PP2006
255003-04647
20 UNSW.Print
ENGINEERS
Issue 13/June
ISSN 1442-8849
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