Meet Our New Deans Creative and Innovative Thinking Will Be Their Driving Force
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
UNIKEN WINTER 2016 Meet our new Deans Creative and innovative thinking will be their driving force OUT OF THE SHADOWS Shining a light on refugee life on Nauru and Manus BIRDS OF A FEATHER Tracking waterbirds one plume at a time Winter 2016 Cover story 14 Meet the Deans From the President and Vice-Chancellor Features Welcome to the Winter 7 Trapping the light fantastic issue of UNSW magazine. 8 Building resilience 10 Out of the shadows 12 The rocketeers Our cover story profiles our three account of what is happening inside Seeing red 16 newest faculty leaders in the Built Australia’s offshore detention centres and 18 The machine doctors Environment, Arts & Social Sciences is a must-read for anyone with an interest and Law. You will enjoy reading what in forging a new, and more humane, way The bottom line 19 they have to say about how creativity of treating asylum seekers. 20 A funny thing happened on and innovation will be the driving Our students are also having an the way to the checkout force behind their implementation impact. I am excited to read about the of the University’s 2025 Strategy. work of entrepreneur and aeronautical New ways of thinking will become engineering student Solange Cunin, increasingly important as we seek to who has teamed up with hundreds of Arts fulfill our aim to be among the world’s NSW high school students to make best research and teaching intensive history by sending Australia’s first 21 To Sydney with love universities. One researcher who illustrates scientific payload to the International 22 Birds of a feather this mindset is Mike Manefield, from the Space Station. We will all be watching School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular keenly as the rocket lifts off from Cape 24 Quantum’s artistic spin Sciences. Together with his colleague Canaveral as expected in November. 25 A woman of substance Sabrina Beckmann, Mike has uncovered Elsewhere in the magazine, we talk a remarkable way of extracting more gas to disaster risk expert David Sanderson, from existing coal seams and even from UNSW’s inaugural Judith Neilson Chair food waste. This innovation will help in Architecture, and discover why he Regulars increase the more carbon-friendly methane believes architects have a crucial role to gas as an energy source and bring down play in enabling communities to recover global emissions to help us transition to 3 UpFront from disaster and in making our cities a cleaner future. more resilient. UNSW Books 26 Having influence where it counts is It is exciting to read about the 27 BackStory crucial if we are to help solve some of the important work being conducted by world’s most pressing challenges. When it members of our UNSW community across comes to the vexed issue of international so many areas. I hope you enjoy the issue. Cover image: Nick Cubbin. The UNSW magazine migration, the Andrew and Renata is published by UNSW’s Media Office: +61 (2) 9385 Kaldor Centre for International Refugee 1583 or [email protected]. Issue 81. Co-editors: Steve Offner and Fran Strachan. Editorial Advisers: Law is compiling the evidence we need to Denise Knight and Kathy Bail. Contributors: Ojasvi properly inform public policy. Madeline Chavali, Usman Chohan, Myles Gough, Clare Morgan, Gleeson’s powerful new book Offshore: Leilah Schubert, Wilson da Silva, Louise Williams. Behind the wire on Manus and Nauru Professor Ian Jacobs Photography: Nick Cubbin, Quentin Jones, Lee offers perhaps the most comprehensive Henderson, Kathy Luu, Yavuz Sari, Leilah Shubert, Grant Turner, Paul Thomas, Angela Wylie. The magazine of the University of New South Wales DOWNLOAD THE UNSW magazine is the University’s flagship publication. Published UNIKEN APP quarterly, it reports on issues affecting the tertiary education sector and the latest developments in UNSW’s research and teaching. The magazine is distributed primarily to staff, students and visitors to the University. newsroom.unsw.edu.au Video Audio Slideshow 2 UpFront UNSW, China partner on $100m innovation precinct The UNSW Torch Innovation Precinct, the first outside China, has the potential to put UNSW at the centre of a global innovation drive and help reset Australia’s relationship with its largest trading partner. NSW is joining forces with China’s innovation system to U develop a science and technology precinct in the heart of Sydney in one of the biggest innovation initiatives by Chinese companies outside China. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang unveiled the partnership at a signing ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in April. Backed by leading Chinese companies and the Ministry of Science & Technology’s flagship “Torch” high technology industry development program, the partnership will deliver a major boost in research and development funding for Australian research through a new science and technology precinct at UNSW. An initial $30 million investment has been secured by eight Chinese companies to support Australian research in advanced materials, biotechnology, energy, and environmental engineering. The precinct will give researchers access to new R&D funding to work in Australia to translate local breakthroughs into commercially This is an example of UNSW taking the initiative to viable technologies. Deloitte Access Economics put some real momentum behind Australia’s National has estimated it could boost GDP by $1.1 billion in its first decade alone. Innovation and Science Agenda. “This partnership is a global first and has the potential to reset the Australia-China bilateral relationship and boost the nation’s Initially, the first group of UNSW Torch continue to value us as a quarry and a innovation system,” Professor Jacobs said industry partners will set up incubator spaces food bowl, our once overwhelmingly from Bejing shortly after the signing ceremony. on the Kensington campus in close proximity dominant iron ore exports have fallen in “This is about future proofing our national to researchers and a growing community of value from 62% of our earnings from exports competitiveness by strategically positioning student entrepreneurs. Investment is expected to China in 2010-11, to 23% last year. Australia as China becomes the world’s to build to $100 million, enabling the “As mining investment contracts and largest investor in R&D and the 21st century’s construction of a new purpose-built, globally commodity prices cool, Australia has an science and technology superpower.” connected UNSW innovation precinct by 2025. opportunity to leverage its world-class China’s Torch program has been successfully “The statistics are staggering,” said Laurie universities, the tens of thousands of Chinese co-locating Chinese businesses, universities Pearcey, UNSW’s International Executive students studying here and our strong links and research organisations in science and Director and former Chief Executive of the to Asia to meet the challenges of the ideas technology precincts to drive innovation Australia China Business Council. “In China, boom,” Pearcey said. since 1988. The 150 Torch precincts in China Torch zones are home to over 50,000 tenant “The UNSW Torch Innovation Precinct now generate some 7% of GDP, 10% of companies and invest RMB 347 billion ($A70 is one approach to building partnerships. industrial output and 16% of export value. billion) in R&D. The OECD forecasts China We need as many initiatives and ideas like “The Torch partnership is an important will overtake the US as the world’s largest this on the table as possible if we are to milestone in the further development of investor in R&D by 2019. This is a major redraw the Australia China paradigm.” Sydney as Australia’s global innovation city. shift in the global knowledge economy and – Louise Williams It’s an example of UNSW proactively taking Australia must be strategically positioned.” the initiative to put some real momentum With two-way trade worth $160 billion Malcolm Turnbull and Li Keqiang look on as behind Australia’s National Innovation and annually, China is already our largest trading Ian Jacobs and his Chinese counterpart sign Science Agenda,” Professor Jacobs said. partner, Pearcey said. “Although China will the Torch agreement. PHOTO supplied 3 UpFront New leadership line-up Our Diversity Champions UNSW has announced a major expansion of its senior management board, introducing three new members to ensure the best team is Five Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Champions will help in place to spearhead the implementation of the 2025 Strategy. the University achieve its 2025 Strategy aim to better A new post of Deputy Vice-Chancellor (DVC) Enterprise will reflect the demographics of the communities it serves. be responsible for integrating activity across the innovation and The Champions are Professor Laura Poole-Warren, enterprise portfolio, working closely with the DVC Research who is leading the University’s Athena SWAN pilot and DVC Education. The position is currently being recruited. program and is the Gender Champion; Professor Vanessa Professor Eileen Baldry, Academic Lead for Equity, Diversity Lemm (Culture); Professor Andrew Lynch (Disability); and Inclusion, will join the Management Board to help drive Professor Mark Willcox (LGBTQI); and Mr Warwick this critical aspect of the UNSW 2025 Strategy. Dawson (Flexible Work and Leave Options). The five will advocate for their respective areas and work with Also appointed is Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) Fiona Docherty, staff and students to explain the changes that will take who will join the Board as Vice-President International to lead place at UNSW over the coming decade. the University’s global impact priorities, including international education, partnerships and global development. All will be part of the UNSW Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Board that meets quarterly and will play “These arrangements mean that the Management Board will a key role in raising awareness across the university.