Delivering impact June 2014

Australia u China u India u Italy u Malaysia u South Africa CAVE science

Medical science education International law Communications ‘Tamed’ bacteria Universities embrace The continued Knowledge, power may save the day a new world of struggle for war and the reach of for antibiotics teaching and learning crimes justice the mobile phone DELIVERING IMPACT JUNE 2014 2 June 2014 Monash University

AUSTRALIA u CHINA u INDIA u ITALY u MALAYSIA u SOUTH AFRICA cover photo: PAUL JONES CAVE SCIENCE

MEDICAL SCIENCE EDUCATION INTERNATIONAL LAW COMMUNICATIONS ‘Tamed’ bacteria Universities embrace The continued Knowledge, power Teaching and learning may save the day a new world of struggle for war and the reach of for antibiotics teaching and learning crimes justice the mobile phone without boundaries

A digital eruption is hitting higher education. The expectations of learners have been transformed irrevocably. Vast quantities of free educational resources are available online, and learners of all ages are becoming more and more sophisticated at using them. If and when they arrive on campus, they expect an experience that students could never have imagined even 10 years ago – an experience that fully embraces technology and is truly mobile. Whenever a new technology arrives, some people are afraid it will mean the wholesale destruction of all that has gone before. During page 30 merchants the 15 years I worked at the BBC, I saw that of culture fear: that the internet would mean the end of eresearch education traditional radio stations, the end of traditional In the cave of Global television stations. Of course it didn’t. But it 04 high science 24 classroom has fundamentally altered them, and in the Words Melissa Marino 26 International portal same way the internet will transform campus- Medical science 27 Monash Motorsport based education – but it won’t destroy it. Proteins that 28 Pharmatopia Some aspects of university education can 08 tame bacteria 29 STARLab never be delivered purely by online means: Words Dr Gio Braidotti history student life inculcates a whole range of skills of Merchants which the things you learn in class are only a 30 of culture small part. But the internet may well sweep away Words Alexandra Roginski the things that can be better delivered online.

industry engagement If – and it’s a big if – universities are prepared Mathematical minds to make the often difficult and radical changes 32 rally to problem solve the digital age requires, they will be rewarded Words Alexandra Roginski with unparalleled opportunities to transform communications what they have been doing throughout their A bridge across the history. Teaching and learning will become technology divide 34 more effective as teachers adopt new Words Rebecca Jennings health care techniques and technologies, and learners Too young 12 to be forgotten are put more in control of what they learn, Words Melissa Marino and when, how and where they learn it. international law Trials 14 and errors Words Alexandra Roginski engineering Sound bites in the surgery 16 Monash – Delivering Impact Words Catherine Norwood Issue #7, june 2014 Published 3 times a year by Monash University Building H, Level 9, 900 Dandenong Road, Caulfield East, VIC 3145, Australia materials engineering 03News CRICOS Provider Number: 00008C ISSN 2200-386X (Print) ISSN 2200-4459 (Online) Our new Enquiries 20 black gold 18Snapshots managing Editor: Dorothy Albrecht Associate Editor: Stacey Mair Telephone: +61 3 9903 4840 Email: [email protected] Words Brad Collis eSubscribe to the Monash magazine: www.monash.edu/monashmag/subscribe 35In print Website: www.monash.edu/monashmag Written and designed by: Coretext, www.coretext.com.au The information in this publication was correct at the time of going to press. Views expressed within the magazine are not necessarily the views of Monash University. © Copyright Monash University. All rightS reserved. Monash University June 2014 3

It is now possible to reach a An outbreak of excellence vastly greater number of people People with diseases that affect the immune system than would have been able to or brain are among those who stand to benefit in learn at a university in the past. the future from research efforts at three new national One of the things we are most Centres of Excellence. With a total of A$73.9 million excited about at FutureLearn is in funding from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the ability to unlock the talent and the centres – all led by Monash University – will focus on creativity previously held within imaging techniques, computational techniques and bio-nanotechnology. university walls and open it up Of chief interest at the Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular to people all over the world. Imaging, led by Professor James Whisstock, will be the development of We should embrace innovative imaging technologies to explore the immune system. Nanomedicine is at the heart of the Centre of Excellence in Convergent opportunities, not fear change. I Bio-Nano Science and Technology, under the direction of leading polymer would question anyone’s ability to chemist Professor Thomas Davis. Nanomedicine is a rapidly emerging predict exactly where universities field revolutionising treatment for a wide range of diseases. will be in 10 or 20 years’ time, but Professor Gary Egan will lead the Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain I am confident that while a future Function. It will combine techniques for analysing brain anatomy and physiology with university will still be recognisably advanced computational techniques to determine the principles of brain function. a university, it will live and breathe Monash also received more than A$5 million for two research in manifold new ways that stretch hubs, funded through the ARC’s Industrial Transformation Research far beyond its physical limitations. Program. They will focus on additive and advanced manufacturing and Simon Nelson will be led by Professor Xinhua Wu and Professor Gil Garnier. Chief executive officer FutureLearn www.futurelearn.com new Monash Vice-Chancellor Professor Margaret Gardner, AO, has been appointed “Professor Gardner’s extensive as the ninth Vice-Chancellor of Monash University and academic career combined with her the first woman in the role. Professor Gardner takes expertise in economics, industrial up the position on 1 September 2014. She succeeds relations and organisational Professor Edward Byrne, who after more than five management will further advance years of distinguished leadership is leaving to become Monash University’s position as a world- President and Principal at King’s College London. leading research institution, and continue to develop Professor Gardner comes to Monash from RMIT the opportunities offered to our students,” he says. University in Melbourne, where she has been Vice- Professor Gardner says she is honoured to Chancellor and President since 2005. During her become a part of Monash University’s “expansive career, she has held a range of senior academic vision”. “Monash University is one of the positions and served in many advisory and leadership world’s top 100 universities,” she says. “It has roles. Chancellor Dr Alan Finkel says Professor an international presence unique for Australia Gardner will be an outstanding asset for Monash. and rare anywhere in higher education.”

Stroke hope in gender difference

A significant breakthrough in stroke research Now researchers at the Monash University known about two receptors, but a third has shows that the key to better recovery may be School of Biological Sciences have found that recently been found. His team showed that found in a “his-or-hers” approach that treats if they target a recently discovered activating this “new” receptor with a drug men and women differently. Males and oestrogen receptor they can help would help women who had strokes. females vary in their susceptibility to stroke. alleviate the debilitating effects of But for men, it helped to block it. Up to the age of 75, men are more likely strokes – but opposite approaches The results have been published than women to have strokes; however, are needed for men and women. in the prestigious Stroke journal. It after 75 more women become stroke Oestrogen receptors are is the first time that a drug with the victims. Reasons for this difference have proteins in cells that are activated potential to reduce, and even stop, not been clear, although it has been thought by oestrogen. Associate Professor the effect of a stroke in a gender- to be tied to the hormone oestrogen. Chris Sobey says researchers have long specific manner has been found. eResearch

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In the caveof high science eResearch

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Imagine Words Melissa Marino Professor Paul Bonnington is being able to surrounded by red dust and pebbles, underfoot and ahead, as he walks step inside a through a small valley wending its way through barren, undulating microscope, hills and rocky escarpments. “Welcome to Mars,” he says, as or the lens he guides us through the desertscape of our planetary neighbour. of a robot on It is so real, so enveloping a sensation, that you are tempted Mars, and to try to souvenir a pebble. With a few laptop keystrokes we are back walk through on Earth, although the sensory overload does not diminish; in fact, it intensifies. what they We are now “walking” inside someone’s brain. All around us, like psychedelic see … well, spaghetti, are large colour-coded tubes – the electrical circuitry connecting the welcome to brain’s left and right hemispheres. As Professor Bonnington explores this space, the Cave. bright red, green and purple tubes pass by on a seemingly endless trajectory. As cinematic as they might seem, the brain circuitry and the Mars panorama are real enough: creations of one of the world’s most advanced visualisation facilities, which gives researchers extraordinary new spatial awareness of their subjects – from the microscopic to the galactic.

Time and space This ability to transcend time and space is facilitated by the compilation of 3-D images projected through 80 high-definition LCD screens encircling Professor Bonnington, who during this demonstration has been standing inside Monash University’s virtual reality environment CAVE2TM – the latest version of this new visual representation technology developed by the University of Illinois in Chicago. Mounted around a curved room, the screens produce images which, when viewed through special 3-D glasses, surround and immerse the viewer, providing an extraordinary wealth of detail captured by the imaging technology used to obtain the original pictures. Wearing a pair of control “tracked” glasses, the viewer can not only see the images, but also manipulate them, walking through and around the The technology subject to observe it from all angles. inspires people … This unique “immersed” perspective opens up new possibilities for insight and they can begin to discoveries across a range of sciences, imagine what the says Professor Bonnington, director of future could be like. the Monash eResearch Centre (MeRC), who has overseen the development CAVE2 is a trademark of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees. – Professor Paul Bonnington of CAVE2 at Monash University’s Photo: Paul Jones campus at Clayton in Melbourne. Continued page 6

VIDEO: see more at http://monash.edu/monashmag eResearch

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FrOM page 5 For example, the brain’s white matter Taking the large amount of data He says the human brain is still viewed close up in CAVE2 can provide from the bottom instrument layer of the the best pattern-recognition tool biomedical researchers with new insights “microscope” and placing it into MASSIVE that exists. This is a key reason why into disease – especially when they are able is a software technology called MyTardis. viewing data in high-resolution, virtual- to compare diseased and healthy samples. Developed on-site, MyTardis is a data reality detail in CAVE2 is such an Senior research fellow and CAVE2 transport, management and storage facility. extraordinary opportunity for discovery. platform manager Dr David Barnes explains: Finally, the modern-day viewfinder is a City of Chicago policymakers “If you looked at this on a desktop display powerful viewing lens – CAVE2 itself – which certainly know about the potential of it would basically look like a bundle of can reveal features, details and a perspective CAVE2 through its capacity to give large wool. You don’t appreciate the space and never before possible with the naked eye. datasets a visual representation. gaps between the circuitry and its 3-D In 2013, they loaded crime-rate data structure, but CAVE2 lets researchers Up close and personal from the city into the original CAVE2 in see the actual structural differences.” Professor Bonnington says CAVE2 will help the Electronic Visualization Laboratory Similarly, while the Mars images advance landmark research, including building at the University of Illinois. This map originally taken by the rover Curiosity are further on the Human Genome Project. overlay of crime patterns in a single large readily available on NASA’s website, it Mapping the human genome has been a view guided the development of a new is not until they are screened in CAVE2 great advancement in the study of genetics, and more effective policing strategy. that the planet’s features are seen at but it was, he says, simply stage one. Illinois’s Electronic Visualization scale. “You can deduce a lot more from “It was really just prep for where the Laboratory experts helped install the this perspective,” Dr Barnes says. research is going, and that is to understand CAVE2 technology in Melbourne, where it And this is just the start. Dr Barnes not just the building blocks, but how they has been operating since November 2013. says CAVE2 can benefit research and function,” he says. This understanding will Professor Bonnington says the potential industry across a spread of studies, come through the Human Proteome Project, for application and collaboration including archaeology, engineering, which is mapping proteins expressed by genes with research and industry – and as the biological sciences, history, not only to shed light on protein function, but a teaching tool – is boundless. architecture and construction. also to advance the treatment of disease. “The technology itself inspires people,” he Fragile historical ruins, for example, can The extent to which a protein’s function says. “They see technology used in a way they be studied in detail, without disturbance. In is understood is often determined not by have never seen before, and they can begin to complex engineering projects, design and its chemical make-up, but by its shape imagine what the future could be like.”  infrastructure can be modelled precisely and how this shape can change. There is Photo: Arup and examined in detail, potentially avoiding no better place to analyse protein shape Arup costly revisions later in a project. than in CAVE2 where, for example, electron infrastructure “We have had more than 1500 visitors microscopy data converted and modelled simulation. from research and industry,” Dr Barnes says. through MASSIVE can be studied up close “People walk away feeling inspired to imagine in a super-sized format in three dimensions. new uses for CAVE2 in their own fields.” Similarly, CAVE2 could be used to fast-track drug design. “When you know 21st-century microscope the structure of a target molecule you Professor Bonnington likens CAVE2 to a could come in here with a bunch of drug viewfinder on a 21st-century microscope. candidates and literally carry them over to the The microscope, at the centre of scientific molecule and see if they fit,” Dr Barnes says. discovery for hundreds of years, has three key

components: at the bottom, a light source to Photo: Paul J ones illuminate a sample; in the middle, the focusing dials; and at the top, an eyepiece for viewing. “Five years ago we set out saying, ‘scientific discovery is still going to depend on this concept, but we need a modern equivalent’,” he says. So in Professor Bonnington’s 21st-century incarnation of the microscope, the light source or imaging technology providing the sample includes instruments such as the Australian Synchrotron, a magnetic resonance imaging scanner or datasets such as a DNA sequence. The ‘middle’ focusing and filtering components of the traditional microscope are replaced by computational tools through which the data sample is focused, transformed and filtered to extract features. Professor Paul Bonnington using These are packaged as a purpose-built “tracked” 3-D glasses and control interactive supercomputer installed in a that help to surround and immerse the national facility called MASSIVE, which has viewer in CAVE2TM. been developed by the eResearch Centre. Monash University June 2014

Photo: Arup Say hello, bonjour, 안녕하세요 , ciao, apa kabar, 你好, xin chào, ,े Arup walk-through building schematic. to your Monash Ground zero for “cutting-edge” engineering Global engineering and design firm Arup has played a leading role in redeveloping the Second Avenue Subway precinct at Fulton Street, the site of the former World Trade Center towers in New York. Alumni global Using a gaming engine, Arup engineers modelled people moving through the space to identify bottlenecks and optimise crowd flows. But recently, bringing that information into CAVE2TM gave the project a whole new dimension, says Arup Australia’s buildings practice leader, Peter Bowtell. network. “You can actually understand how people move through space – you see them moving around you in their avatar form, and you get a greater understanding of ‘what is the constraint; what is driving the particular behaviour?’ and how you can improve the physical The Monash Alumni community is a network of more than 290,000 operations of a building when people are there,” he says. “It is all graduates across 145 countries. It provides you with opportunities about being able to visualise big datasets in a meaningful way.” to connect with graduates for either professional or social The modelling was done as part of a Monash University/ reasons. It also gives you access to a wide range of benefits Arup Industry Team Initiative, combining the talent of a team including: career development, networking events, and exclusive of university students with Arup projects to demonstrate the alumni discounts. potential of CAVE2 in large-scale development projects. Mr Bowtell, whose company is at the forefront of global innovation, Make the most of these brilliant opportunities by updating says it has proved its worth. “You often are concerned with being at the your details at monash.edu/alumni/update ‘bleeding edge’ [new unproven technologies] rather than at the ‘cutting edge’ [proven state-of-the-art]. The work we have done with Monash is showing how we can apply or implement new technologies,” he says. Most notably, he says, the 3-D format of CAVE2 immerses clients and practitioners within a space, allowing people not only to see features from within a 320-degree view, but also to walk through and around a virtual finished building and inside its internal structures. This offers clients and stakeholders a clear understanding of the design concept by showing what the finished product will look like, feel like and even sound like. It is possible, say Arup engineers, to apply a variety of flooring, finishes or other design elements to a virtual building in the cave, and hear how different choices affect noise levels in the building. But more than just a “wow factor”, CAVE2 offers practical benefits to the architectural, design, engineering and construction industries by identifying any potential “construction conflicts” in, for example, internal plumbing or electricity conduits. This could eliminate costly revisions later. Mr Bowtell says it is a trend catching on, with “virtual construction” driving anticipated savings of 15 to 20 per cent in the US and the UK. “You can see new ways in which CAVE2 could really be

incredibly valuable for proving building and project concepts Monash University 00008C CRICOS Provider: before and during their production cycle,” he says. “There is always a bridge needed between academia and the application of research into real projects, and we can say that we now have the knowledge and understanding to be confident in using this technology,” Mr Bowtell says. “We see this very much as the start of a journey rather than an end point.” medical science

8 June 2014 Monash University medical science

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proteins that tame bacteria The terrible consequences for patients of antibiotic- resistant bacteria have caused worldwide alarm and inspired scientists to try a radical new strategy – letting the bacteria live but switching off their ability to cause disease.

Words Dr Gio Braidotti

Drugs that kill cells as a way to heal people have an insidious side. Illustrat i on: J ust n G arns w orthy They inadvertently allow rare and unusual individual cells – mutants – to survive the drug treatment. The result of this “selective pressure” is the evolution of drug resistance that can render useless many important drugs. But it is the resistance to antibiotics – the pharmaceuticals used to kill disease- causing bacteria – that is the most alarming threat to public health. Continued page 10 medical science

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FrOM page 9 The Centers for Disease Control and the bacteria continue to live but lose Prevention in the US recently reported much of their ability to cause disease. that at least two million Americans each Consequently, TamA makes a near-ideal year are affected by serious antibiotic- target for developers of a new class of drugs resistant infections. About 23,000 die that avoid killing bacteria indiscriminately and many more deaths occur later from and instead diminish the ability of the complications caused by infections. dangerous ones to make people sick. The number of antibiotics now available TamA was discovered in the laboratory for use by doctors has been reduced of Professor Trevor Lithgow at the Monash by nearly 25 per cent. And because University School of Biomedical Sciences in bacteria can become resistant to multiple Melbourne, a direct consequence of research antibiotics, doctors around the world have targeted at the worsening antibiotic crisis. been forced to fall back on old or toxic “There really is a major global antibiotics in a desperate bid to save lives. disaster in the offing,” Professor Lithgow It leaves people with harrowing choices. says. “If we are to overcome the loss For example, a leg wound that subsequently of antibiotics and deal with resistant becomes infected can force a patient to bacteria then we need new strategies. decide between amputating the leg or “However, the first hurdle in trying to taking an antibiotic so toxic that it will put develop small molecules to act as drugs them on dialysis for the rest of their life. is to get those drugs into the inside of the Antibiotic resistance also undermines bacterium. So we decided to start with important medical advances that require targets on the surface of bacteria.” When TamA was deactivated the control of bacterial infections. These Over a seven-year period he and his we found the bacteria could include cancer chemotherapy, complex team focused on learning more about surgery, organ and bone marrow bacteria’s outermost “surface”. The team keep growing just fine, but transplants, dialysis and treatment for comprised 13 researchers at Monash and disease-causing bacteria lost diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. collaborators including protein-structure their ability to cause sickness. specialist Dr Susan Buchanan from Live and let live the National Institutes of Health (NIH) – Professor Trevor Lithgow Compounding this increasingly dire situation in Bethesda, Maryland, in the US. is the fact that pharmaceutical companies “My interests lie in acquiring a better have essentially abandoned antibiotic understanding of bacteria and how their outer research and development because the cell surface works,” Professor Lithgow says. to be destroyed and the bacteria rapidly drugs are compromised before the cost “That is what will allow people to try new, died. This finding had set off a worldwide of development has been recouped. left-field ideas to develop new therapies.” hunt for clues as to what BamA does All this has led researchers to reconsider that is so vital to bacterial survival. the approach. If killing the bacteria is at the Secret tunnels In 2013, Dr Buchanan and her team root of the resistance problem, the question This outer surface has two main forms found the most important clue. They becomes: “Why not let the bacteria live and across bacterial species – as a cell deciphered BamA’s 3-D structure, a major find a way instead to make them harmless?” membrane or a cell wall. The differences achievement given that currently only Scientists in Australia and the US have affect the uptake of a dye in what is called one per cent of proteins that associate with discovered something about bacteria that the Gram staining procedure, which a cell membrane have had their 3-D makes such a radical strategy a real possibility. leads to bacteria being categorised as structures mapped. Dr Buchanan’s Central to the discovery is the structure either Gram-negative or positive. 3-D structure of BamA was published in of two bacterial proteins – BamA and TamA. Bacteria with an outer cell membrane are Nature magazine in September 2013. BamA is present on bacteria’s outer denoted Gram-negative. They are much more Dr Buchanan specialises in imaging the cell membrane and is essential for resistant to antibiotics and include many structure of “membrane-bound” proteins. their survival. This is important for the disease-causing species. It is this class that She trained with Nobel Prize-winning chemist “good” microbes that humans need for Professor Lithgow focused on, although his Professor Johann Deisenhofer, recognised for digestion and healthy immune systems. findings are broadly applicable to all bacteria. determining the first such protein structure. TamA is like BamA’s evil twin, found When Professor Lithgow started, it Dr Buchanan explains that in structural only in bacteria that tend to cause was generally known that deactivating biology, the protein of interest must first disease. When TamA is deactivated, BamA caused the outer cell membrane be purified and then induced to form medical science

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A leg wound that subsequently becomes infected can force a patient to decide between amputating the leg or taking an antibiotic so toxic that it will put them on dialysis.

well-ordered crystals. These are then enough evidence that in TamA we have bombarded with high-energy X-rays at a protein that associates with disease- The re-emergence of a synchrotron causing them to scatter causing functions in bacteria.” infectious diseases (or “diffract”) in ways that reveal the As such, TamA makes an ideal target for Bacterial resistance to antibiotics has meant the arrangement of atoms in the crystal. drug development because the drugs would return of deadly diseases that for the best part of a Viewed on a computer screen, BamA be able to weaken disease-causing bacteria century have been rare or a minor inconvenience. appears to form a dome within the outer – including antibiotic-resistant bacteria – surface of the cell membrane. Under the without also affecting “good” bacteria and Sepsis dome is an aqueous cavern with a side also without selecting for drug resistance as Klebsiella pneumoniae has started causing infections inside aperture that leads into the membrane dramatically as antibiotics that kill bacteria. the healthcare system (for example, hospitals) since acquiring and an appendage resembling a crane antibiotic resistance. This includes bloodstream infections, that reaches inside the bacteria. TamA tamed wound or surgical-site infections and meningitis, particularly “Our structure suggests that other Dr Buchanan describes Professor Lithgow’s among extremely sick patients who require devices such as proteins can use BamA to pass from characterisation of TamA as simply beautiful. ventilators and catheters. The bacteria are found normally inside the bacteria to the outer cell The opportunities it and BamA provide to in the human intestine where they do not cause disease. membrane,” Dr Buchanan says. develop drugs and vaccines are especially Pneumonia “Besides providing physical passage welcome at the NIH, which recently set Streptococcus pneumoniae is a leading cause of illness into the membrane, BamA assists that up a consortium to accelerate progress to among young children worldwide and is the most frequent insertion by biochemically altering the deal with the antibiotic-resistance crisis. cause of pneumonia, bacteremia, sinusitis and middle-ear membrane, compressing it so that it However, Professor Lithgow warns infections – and has become worse with antibiotic resistance. destabilises and allows new molecules in.” that drug development is neither Tuberculosis straightforward nor quick, and requires Mycobacterium tuberculosis has become resistant to multiple Protein gateway substantial investment in research. drugs. The bacteria usually attack the lungs, but infections Back in Melbourne, Professor Lithgow He is working on interim measures can also attack any part of the body including the kidneys, now had an explanation for why bacteria with the Commonwealth Scientific and spine and brain. If not treated properly, tuberculosis can be cannot survive without BamA: it is a gateway Industrial Research Organisation and fatal and it was once the leading cause of death in the US. through which all other proteins take up Monash biomedical engineers. Campylobacteriosis their positions in the outer membrane. These include searching for Campylobacter infections are a notifiable disease in However, there was a complication. compounds that target TamA for use Australia. Food Standards Australia New Zealand reports When he compared BamA from different in medical devices such as catheters, a rate of 102.3 cases per 100,000 people. In the US, where bacterial species, he found some also wound dressings or implants to dissuade Campylobacter is not notifiable, the infection rate is put at contained a truncated BamA-like protein – dangerous bacteria from getting a foothold 13.6 cases per 100,000 people. Many of these infections are TamA – that initially confused his analysis. in wounded or critically ill patients. food-borne and result in diarrhoea, cramping, abdominal When the structure of BamA was At all times, efforts continue towards pain and fever. Campylobacter infections can result in solved, however, this annoying complication filling knowledge gaps. Professor long-term consequences, such as arthritis or a type of resolved into a golden opportunity. Lithgow is keen to use a new, advanced temporary paralysis called Guillain-Barré syndrome. Professor Lithgow realised that like imaging technology – super-resolution Golden staph BamA, TamA too is structured to allow microscopy – to visualise the outer Staphylococcus aureus mostly causes skin infections, other proteins to move from inside the membrane of bacteria along with the but in medical facilities, antibiotic-resistant S. aureus bacteria into the outer cell membrane. BamA, TamA and adhesins proteins. causes life-threatening bloodstream infections, But TamA goes a step further. It “Currently we have good reagents pneumonia and surgical-site infections. processes molecules needed to infect to see BamA and they are not randomly Gonorrhoea and cause disease – molecules such distributed on the surface of bacteria,” he Neisseria gonorrhoeae is a sexually transmitted as adhesins. These are long, sticky says. “They are sitting together in precincts disease that can cause pelvic inflammatory disease molecules that help bacteria to lock that are sites for the assembly of important and infertility in women if left untreated. down, avoid the host’s immune system, molecular structures on the cell’s surface. and infect and damage tissue. “What we want to know is what TamA is Recently, resistance was also detected against antibacterial “When TamA was deactivated we found doing and what happens at these assembly agent triclosan, which is widely used in soap, cleaning the bacteria could keep growing just fine, but sites when adhesins are expressed by supplies and mouth washes. A study on bacteria in streams disease-causing bacteria lost their ability to disease-causing bacteria. We can then and river sediments in the Chicago metropolitan region, in cause sickness,” Professor Lithgow says. look for other non-essential factors that are the US, found an increased presence of triclosan resistance “At first, the results seemed too specific to disease-causing bacteria to also and a change in the composition of bacterial communities. good to be true. But we now have target for drug development.”  health care

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Too young to be forgotten

Words Melissa Marino with whom she has little in common. Thousands of young “I don’t want to play bingo or do craft,” people with disabilities find Vicki Wilkinson never expected to she says. “Sometimes I stay up late just live in a nursing home. At least, not so I can turn the music up and be me.” themselves languishing yet. The mother of two enjoyed an Her emotional state is also affected in nursing homes for the active life until medical complications by rigid institutional routine and the passive elderly. Researchers hope from an accident left her confined to compliance expected of residents. to change this tragic a wheelchair without torso control or Ms Wilkinson relies on staff for even the the ability even to hold up her head. most basic tasks – dressing, reaching for a oversight in health care. With the complex care required, a book or turning on the light. Independence nursing home was the only option. is discouraged. Bath and meal times are At 48, Ms Wilkinson is decades inflexible. “It dehumanises us,” she says. younger than the other 62 residents, “Nursing homes are not for the faint-hearted.”

More appropriate housing could improve life for people such as Vicki Wilkinson, for whom a nursing home is often the only option. Photo: F red Kroh health care

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Ms Wilkinson lives in Victoria, Australia, this to happen, she says. Staff ratios are 53% of He says a significant step towards but her story would be all too familiar across not high enough to provide, for example, young this was the introduction in Australia in most of the developed world where care is opportunities for young people to venture people in 2013 of the National Disability Insurance institutionalised and where, simultaneously, out. A lack of privacy discourages aged care Scheme (NDIS), which will provide funding there is insufficient housing for young people visitors, causing further isolation. receive a for equipment and support to help people requiring daily care after brain or spinal cord Ms Callaway says 53 per cent of young visit from a with disabilities to live in the community. injury, or because of degenerative neurological people in aged care receive a visit from a friend less Research by Ms Callaway, Dr Winkler and conditions such as multiple sclerosis. friend less than once a year and one-third than once a PricewaterhouseCoopers was used to “Not enough accessible and affordable never have the opportunity to participate in year. inform the NDIS. The researchers set out housing and support for people with community-based activities. She advocates in stark terms the resources required for disability is a worldwide issue,” says Monash a new integrated housing model. – Libby young people to be able to leave nursing University’s Libby Callaway, who is building a In October 2013, the Summer Foundation Callaway homes and enter the community. research-backed case for more housing and launched its example of next-generation They found the average cost of support to meet the needs of young people. housing for people with disability. The support services for one person would be In the US, government health program demonstration project has six apartments for A$145,000 per year. When combined with data shows that one in seven residents in people with high support needs peppered the capital costs of housing, the estimated nursing homes is under 65, and therefore throughout a larger housing development close extra cost to the system of relocating up of working age. Research also shows that to a train station and shops. The objective to 310 young people across the three one-third of longer-stay residents with is to maximise social inclusion. Residents NDIS launch sites was A$35 million. multiple sclerosis are 50 years or younger on can use an iPad or smartphone to control This demonstrates the enormous admission – and the situation appears to be lighting, heating, cooling, blinds and doors scale of the issue on both a social getting worse. Global data is scarce, but US or to contact support staff. This provides and an economic level. figures show that since 2003 the population greater independence and privacy while still of younger residents in nursing homes there connecting to 24-hour on-call support. Building independence has increased by 22 per cent. As in the Outcomes for residents will be evaluated In working on improved, long-term housing US and Australia, Canadian research has over two years and compared with traditional Young models, Ms Callaway, Dr Winkler and identified nursing homes as an “inappropriate group homes. The project is funded through people in Summer Foundation colleagues have living environment” for people with acquired the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Australian been able to draw on the outcomes of a brain injury, but the research on which to Recovery Research, a joint venture between nursing previous scheme in Australia, a five-year model alternative arrangements is lacking. Monash, the state of Victoria’s Transport homes have Younger People in Residential Aged Care In the UK, recent research by the spinal Accident Commission and WorkSafe Victoria. a range of program, which ended in 2011. It allowed injury charity Aspire says that one in five A similar housing model is in development disability about 250 people to be moved from nursing people with spinal injuries will end up in through another project secured by Ms types homes and a further 244 to be diverted nursing homes for older people because Callaway and her colleagues. This will be in Acquired from entering them in the first place. there is nowhere else for them to go. partnership with community housing providers brain injury The researchers assessed outcomes Mission Australia Housing and Yooralla and for people supported through the initiative. Friendless lives will use an Australian Government grant from 58% They found moving from nursing homes The Australian Institute of Health and its three-year Supported Accommodation Multiple into smaller-scale, home-like settings with sclerosis Welfare figures show that every year in Innovation Fund, established in 2011. more individualised support and staff Australia more than 200 people younger Built adjacent to a Monash campus 13% substantially improved quality of life. than 50 face admission to nursing homes in south-east Melbourne, the project Huntington’s “We found people had more for care, because there are no alternatives. will house six people in individual units, disease opportunity to get out of bed, get out of Ms Callaway and her colleagues have providing privacy, autonomy, community the house, and they had more choice been working for several years towards connection and optional support from the 9% around decisions such as when to go determining more clearly the needs of university’s allied health undergraduates. to bed, what to wear or what to eat.” young people with acquired and late-onset In Australia, Ms Callaway says that along with neurological disabilities. This is through her Human rights most young policy and institutional barriers, community role as research manager at the Summer The ideal housing model, Ms Callaway says, people in attitudes also need to change. “We need to Foundation, which specifically addresses varies for different circumstances. Indeed, nursing help the broader community understand that the issue of young people in nursing some residents of aged-care facilities report homes a person with a disability is just like anyone homes, and through Monash University’s being satisfied, as do many in traditional acquired their else and has dreams and hopes for their Department of Occupational Therapy. shared arrangements. But she says the range disability future. To achieve those things they need Ms Callaway’s rehabilitation work with is limited and choice – if the family home as adults. an age-appropriate model of housing and collaborator Dr Di Winkler, the Summer is not an option – is almost non-existent. Almost half support so they can live in the community Foundation CEO, shows that people with She regards this lack of choice as (48%) have and pursue their goals,” she says. acquired brain injury can improve in the a human rights issue, particularly given partners. Ms Wilkinson’s hopes and dreams are long term with the right models of support that Australia is a signatory to the United More than a both grand and simple. “I’d like to travel, and housing. Therefore, she says, there Nations Convention on Rights for People quarter (27%) get married again and walk around the lake needs to be a range of age-appropriate, with Disabilities. Australian Disability have school- with somebody and enjoy the sunshine,” she affordable options that allow people to Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes aged children. says. “I don’t belong in a nursing home.”  develop community links and independence says the convention sets out the rights as part of a more fulfilling post-injury life. of people with a disability to live in the Source: At time of going to print, Vicki Wilkinson had moved Summer A nursing home, where the average community with choices equal to others. “We Foundation Ltd out of the nursing home and was re-establishing her age of residents is 84, is not the place for need to turn that right into a reality,” he says. and PWC place in the community. international law

14 June 2014 Monash University

Words Alexandra Roginski It was quite disturbing being in his presence and cultural perspectives. I’m interested because one could forget momentarily what in what we prosecute and why, and how The first time Gideon Boas met he was alleged to have done,” says Boas, that is influenced by a variety of factors.” Slobodan Milosevic was in the dictator’s now an associate professor at Australia’s His work encapsulates not only holding cell in The Hague. As a senior Monash University, reflecting on how major international forums, such as the legal officer for the United Nations’ horrific crimes can be instigated through International Criminal Court (ICC) and UN International Criminal Tribunal for the the power of personal persuasion. criminal tribunals, but also the prosecution former Yugoslavia, the young Australian Associate Professor Boas’s nine years of atrocities in an alleged war criminal’s lawyer had a message to deliver from the in The Hague, many of them spent working new country of residence. This challenges court to the former Serbian head of state. on the Milosevic trial, today inform his that country’s willingness and capacity to “I went into the room and there was broader research into international criminal confront these otherwise remote crimes, a desk and a chair. He offered me the justice. “I’m interested in these things opening up a range of complex moral and chair, sat on the desk and was polite and from a legal angle, which is my baseline legal issues that are the focus of some of charming, an enormously charismatic man. training, but also from political, social Associate Professor Boas’s current research. Trials Photo: www.123RF.COM errorsand Prosecuting war criminals raises complex legal and moral issues that must run the political gauntlet. international law

Monash University June 2014 15

For example, he argues that discussions A national choice International justice by numbers need to be revived as to how Australia should The Australian position on war crimes was To forensically trace a war crime up the chain of command address the presence of war criminals – not always so timid. to the head of state is a herculean task, requiring years of said to be as many as 2000, from various Between 1945 and 1951, more than hearings and examinations. That challenge becomes even conflicts – living in the community. He 800 Japanese were tried in Darwin and more daunting when there are multiple charges or, in the says failed attempts to prosecute former other locations in the Pacific region for war case of Slobodan Milosevic’s trial in the International Criminal Nazi war criminals in the 1980s and crimes, a history that Associate Professor Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, about 7500 of them. 1990s, and the low political capital that Boas has been exploring as part of an “One of the things I learnt about how you run massive this generated, mean governments have Australian Research Council Linkage war crimes trials like this is that the prosecution has to become reluctant to engage in debate Project with the University of Melbourne exercise discretion,” says Associate Professor Gideon Boas, about how these matters could be tackled. and the Australian War Memorial. who was senior legal officer to the trial chamber for the The issue has also been overshadowed These trials have subsequently been Milosevic trial. He explains that the Milosevic indictment by the focus on counterterrorism efforts criticised, with claims that the defendants for alleged crimes in Kosovo was joined with indictments since the 9/11 attacks in the US. were not given adequate time to prepare and relating to Croatia and Bosnia to encapsulate eight years that some prosecutorial and judicial staff were across all three conflicts in the former Yugoslavia. not lawyers. But Associate Professor Boas “Decisions over the number of charges happen in all points out that these prosecutions preceded jurisdictions. But obviously there’s a vastness of criminality the modern human rights regime, and that not when you’re prosecuting presidents and generals.” International Criminal all resulted in conviction or long sentences, Selecting one event over another is an emotionally Tribunal for the Former indicating some level of impartiality. difficult thing to do, Associate Professor Boas says, Yugoslavia (ICTY) There were no further prosecutions but prosecutors need to show courage if the trial is to • 161 people indicted by the tribunal (23 in until the 1980s, when three trials of avoid being derailed by the sheer volume of charges. custody at the UN ICTY Detention Centre) alleged Nazi collaborators from the “The trial felt endless. We were struggling to • 20 proceedings ongoing (16 before Ukrainian community in South Australia even deliberate a format by which the judges could the appeals chamber, 4 at trial) failed to secure convictions. determine, point by point, element by element, crimes The protracted nature of the trials, their and facts. I was up even the night before Milosevic expense and the fact that they did not result died thinking this was impossible.” (These challenges in convictions all affected public opinion were further complicated because Milosevic chose to 13 on the importance and even relevance self-represent and also manipulated his cardiovascular referred to a of prosecuting war crimes in Australia, medication to become ill at crucial points in the trial.) 141 national jurisdiction particularly for events that occurred in The international criminal justice system appears to proceedings concluded other countries and a long time ago. have taken note of these issues since then. The International Since then, although the Australian Criminal Court’s first conviction, of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo Government has been proactive in from the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2012, hinged on assisting with extraditions and cooperates charges limited to conscripting and enlisting child soldiers. 74 with the UN’s international criminal Although a prosecutor’s selectiveness of charges sentenced tribunals and the ICC, there have been stirs criticism about what this means for victim’s rights, no further national prosecutions. Associate Professor Boas says the focus needs to 36 Associate Professor Boas says be on the bigger picture of what war crimes trials had their indictments that, by comparison, countries such as are seeking to achieve. withdrawn or Canada and the UK have continued to “Are we really there to prosecute for every single have died spend money on developing special war victim, or are we doing something more broadly political 18 crimes units. In 2009, the UK passed in nature?” Securing conviction as quickly as possible Source: www.icty.org acquittals retrospective legislation allowing war crimes results in a much broader message about reconciliation, committed before 2001 to be prosecuted. he says. “It’s about more than the individual victim and But the Australian Government has so accused. It’s also about removing dangerous people Decisions over far refused to close similar loopholes and enabling states to rebuild; it’s about rebuilding the number of in its own legislative framework. shattered communities; it’s about what contributions In particular immigrant communities can be made to peace and reconciliation.” charges happen in where many people are victims of war all jurisdictions. But crimes, there are varying perspectives on Where some war crimes are tried obviously there’s a whether sleeping dogs should be allowed • International Criminal Court: based in The Hague, vastness of criminality to lie, Associate Professor Boas says. the Netherlands, and operational since 2002, Such debates are valid in a national the court is a permanent tribunal for war crimes, when you’re discussion about how a country should deal crimes against humanity and genocide. There prosecuting presidents with war criminals. are currently 122 states party to the court. and generals. “But at the moment, the government’s • International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia: position is that we don’t even want to established by the United Nations Security Council, – Associate Professor Gideon Boas have that debate because it’s complex the tribunal has indicted 161 persons since 1993. and expensive and there’s no political Along with the International Criminal Tribunal for capital in such a conversation,” he says. Rwanda, it is to be wound up at the end of 2014. The International Criminal Court in The Hague, the “My research is trying to uncover why this • National level: many countries, including the UK, the US and Netherlands, where war crimes are sent to trial. is the case and to make suggestions about Australia, have domestic legislation that enshrines jurisdiction what can be done.”  for prosecuting war crimes committed on foreign soil. engineering

16 June 2014 Monash University

If there is one part of the body most in need of the precision of a robotic approach it is the critical brain systems. – Professor Sunita Chauhan

From knife, Sound to needle, to nothing at all, bites ultrasound offers the potential for in the completely bloodless surgery surgery. engineering

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Words Catherine Norwood demonstrate the technology works and is Sound But one of the challenges in operating in the a serious advance in surgical practices. potential trans-abdominal region has been addressing The patient, ready to have a HIFU continues the momentum As director the involuntary movement of these organs malignant breast tumour removed, lies of minimally invasive surgery that has of Monash in response to respiration and heartbeat. face down on a special operating table significantly improved patient outcomes in University’s “Although we have very high-accuracy, with a controlled integrated container of recent decades. Laparoscopic, or keyhole, mechatronics high-precision systems delivering the water. The water is the medium through surgery uses smaller incisions than traditional program, ultrasound, it is difficult to maintain that which the surgery will be conducted. surgery and remotely guided equipment. Professor level of precision when you are targeting Through an opening in the operating There is reduced blood loss, less pain, fewer Sunita something that moves inside,” she says. “And table, the affected breast, inside a latex complications, a shorter hospital stay and Chauhan this movement can be very unpredictable. shield, is suspended in the water. An faster recovery than with traditional surgery. is actively In the same person the two kidneys will instrument array comprising multiple The benefits of robotic systems investigating have completely different patterns of robotically operated ultrasound transducers that provide even greater precision and other movement, particularly if one is diseased.” fires up under the guidance of the surgeon. instrument control have already been potential uses Professor Chauhan led a clinical study Using previously determined demonstrated. One study in Cambridge, for ultrasound at the Singapore General Hospital to help coordinates, the array precisely targets UK, showed hospital stays for radical and remotely understand and quantify the 3-D movement the cancer deep within the breast tissue. prostatectomies were reduced from an operated of the kidneys. The trials involved 100 Within seconds the soundwaves travel average of 4.9 days for traditional open robotic participants – both renal patients and healthy through the water, unimpaired by air surgery to 2.8 days following laparoscopic systems in volunteers. The results have helped to (which disperses sound) and converge, procedures. This was further reduced to a range of identify the ways in which the organs move converting their energy to heat that sears 1.3 days with a combination of robotically medical and under both healthy and diseased conditions. away the cancerous tissue. The ultrasound assisted surgery and post-operative care. industrial transducers repeatedly refocus and applications. Mannequin patient refire, as directed, until all of the identified No scalpels These In modelling organ movement, cancer tissue has been burned away. HIFU techniques create the possibility of include: Professor Chauhan has been inspired by These ultrasound waves are surgery without a scalpel, reducing the • as a “Harvey” – the cardiopulmonary mannequin tightly focused so that no surrounding potential for complications inherent in supplement that has become the worldwide medical tissue is damaged. There are no cuts, any procedure that cuts into the body. to radio- student training model – to develop her no wounds to heal, no blood loss However, most HIFU treatments frequency own robotic, smart mannequin patient and no extended hospital stay. are still considered experimental. stimulation able to simulate organ movements. This scenario, while not yet an “It is usually offered to patients who in the It will help non-invasive robotic systems actual clinical practice, is a realistic glimpse have no alternatives,” Professor Chauhan treatment for such as ultrasound, radiosurgery and into the future of surgery being designed says. “Some people do not want to have neurological laser surgery to “learn” about the potential by Monash University systems engineer surgery and others are poor candidates conditions movements of different organs and factor Professor Sunita Chauhan, a specialist for various reasons – their health, or their such as this into their operating systems. Models of in medical robotics. age. Some people might require multiple epilepsy; the lungs, liver, brain and heart have already surgeries and you can’t operate on the • as a been completed; kidneys are next on the list. Brain surgery same place over and over again because treatment for “Our smart mannequin project will help The type of high-intensity focused ultrasound of the scar tissue. Or they might be offered osteoporosis to train the surgeons and robotic systems (HIFU) unit described is still experimental, this technique when other treatments, and arthritis, for better treatment outcomes, and will although a prototype has been developed such as radiotherapy, have failed.” nerve also save the lives of thousands of animals and patents filed. As spectacular as it She says that, while ultrasound is already stimulation that would otherwise be used for testing.” already sounds, it is only part of a suite used for diagnostic imaging and therapeutic and bone For Professor Chauhan, much of this of robotic surgery technologies being purposes, the potential of HIFU in clinical healing work leads back to her initial priority of researched to finesse procedures and medicine as a surgical technique is only around treating brain tumours. The most common alleviate the trauma of conventional surgery. just beginning to be realised. In procedures joints; and sufferers of brain tumours are children and the Professor Chauhan has a particular such as lithotripsy, ultrasound is used as an • to remotely elderly – two groups who are also high-risk interest in developing neurosurgery alternative to laser or electromagnetic waves test the candidates for conventional neurosurgery. that does not involve cutting into the to break up gallstones or kidney stones. soundness of Parts of the brain are also extremely high brain, or even opening the skull. The fragments are subsequently excreted mechanical risk for surgery in terms of the potential for “If there is one part of the body most in naturally, avoiding the need for open surgery. parts, damage to cognitive and motor functions; need of the precision of a robotic approach HIFU, which uses precisely targeted particularly these areas can, however, be precisely it is the critical brain systems,” she says. soundwaves oscillating at up to 4000 in aircraft. targeted with robotically assisted HIFU. “Operating in this area presents the highest kilohertz, has gradually gained acceptance Fundamental research is continuing degree of difficulty for the surgeon in in procedures to remove benign tumours into the mechanisms of ultrasound avoiding any damage to critical structures.” in the uterus (uterine fibroids), and for transmission through multi-layered brain HIFU robotic neurosurgery was the tumours associated with prostate cancer. structures, and imaging techniques to subject of Professor Chauhan’s PhD at There are already several commercial ensure the most accurate and safest the Imperial College London in 1999. She devices approved for these procedures by targeting of lesions in the brain. has been working to make that research a the US Food and Drug Administration. “But we’ve still a long way to go,” reality ever since. Beginning with Focused Professor Chauhan says the FUSBOTs she Professor Chauhan says. “We are still Ultrasound Robots, nicknamed FUSBOTs, has developed for breast and prostate cancer working to prove our techniques in non- she has been working on trans-abdominal have now been extended to the treatment of critical surgeries, before we advance to the organs, such as the liver and kidneys, to other organs, including the liver and kidneys. brain – our ultimate goal.”  18 June 2014 Monash University

Australia-Indonesia Advances in fight build research bridge against rabies Some of the Asia-Pacific region’s most pressing issues – energy, food security, infrastructure, and sustainable health and education – are to be tackled by a new research collaboration Rabies kills about 60,000 people worldwide each that will team up scientists from Australia and Indonesia. year, but there are hopes of lowering that toll now The recently formed Australia–Indonesia Centre at Monash University’s that scientists have found a new strategy for the Caulfield campus in Melbourne plans to draw on the resources of the development of safe, highly effective live vaccines. region’s two largest economies to take on some of the most intractable Rabies, in humans or animals, is caused by 15 obstacles to economic and social stability. It will also explore ways for known species of lyssaviruses and transmitted by bats Australia and Indonesia to take a joint approach to increasing their global or dogs through bites or scratches. Unless it is treated economic performance. In gross domestic product terms, Australia and before symptoms develop, it is invariably fatal. Indonesia are the world’s 12th and 16th largest economies respectively. Taking a significant step towards protection from the Professor Paul Ramadge, a Vice-Chancellor’s professorial fellow at Monash disease, an international team of scientists led by University and former editor-in-chief of The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Dr Greg Moseley and Professor David Jans from the has been instrumental in establishing the centre. He is inviting the public, governments, academia and industry to recast the two countries’ relationship Monash School of Biomedical Sciences has developed and exploit opportunities to collaborate on regional and global challenges. a mutated virus that cannot evade the body’s immune responses. Rather than proving lethal, it no longer even Innovation space causes disease. The team reported its findings, which To achieve this, the centre plans to create networks of collaborating Australian Dr Moseley said brought new live vaccines closer, and Indonesian researchers. The Australian Government has contributed in the Journal of Infectious Diseases. A$15 million to fund the centre over its first four years. Monash has also contributed A$5 million, with the centre currently building a team to develop research networks, industry partnerships and government links. Already opting in from Australia are three other universities – the University of Melbourne, the University of Sydney and the Australian National University. Australia’s peak scientific and research agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), is also participating. Professor Ramadge says the first objective is to map participants’ research and development capabilities, identify shared national challenges between Australia and Indonesia, and then facilitate collaborative research. “The centre’s role is to identify pathways that haven’t been taken before Cutting the obesity– and through which we can make a difference,” Professor Ramadge says. diabetes link

Obesity and type 2 Watt and researchers of physiological diabetes have long at the Monash consequences of been connected University School of a fatty diet. but now scientists Biomedical Sciences Working with have discovered have discovered that researchers in the a protein that may fatty liver disease Netherlands, Professor break this unfortunate causes a particular Watt tested the blood chain of events. protein to be secreted, of patients with fatty Being obese which then causes liver disease and puts people at risk diabetes to develop. found raised levels of i on: J ust n G arns w orthy Illustrat of developing a fatty They first isolated this protein that were liver disease that is a group of proteins related to the level of similar to a condition secreted by a fatty insulin resistance. seen in alcoholics. liver that led to insulin He believes that Nearly two-thirds of resistance in skeletal developing a drug obese adults and half muscle, a characteristic to block the protein of obese children of early-stage diabetes. in question could have this liver disease, One of the proteins be a way to help which is a precursor in this group had a prevent some of the to type 2 diabetes. hitherto-unknown deadly consequences Professor Matthew role in the cascade of obesity. Monash University June 2014 19 of adults worldwide aged 20 and over are overweight and about 35%12% are clinically obese – figures that have doubled since 1980. Source: World Health Organization

Male pill in 10 Years

A drug that causes complete – but temporary – male infertility could be on the market as a male contraceptive pill within 10 years. Researchers Dr Sab Ventura and Dr Carl White of the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences are working towards a drug that blocks two proteins on the Live vaccines can smooth muscle cells that trigger the transport of sperm. This drug would easily be grown in stop sperm being ejaculated during sex, but as hormones are not involved, large quantities sexual behaviour and function would not be affected. The sperm would still be and delivered as a single produced normally, meaning there would be no long-term implications for the wellbeing of offspring conceived once the drug was no longer being taken. oral dose. Existing “killed” To date, strategies developed by researchers seeking a male pill have rabies vaccines must be generally involved hormones or the production of dysfunctional sperm, and injected several times therefore tend to interfere with sexual activity or damage fertility irreversibly. over an extended period, Dr Ventura says a drug targeting one of the proteins was already making them problematic available, but his team would have to find a chemical and develop a drug to for use, particularly in block the second one. They hope their research will mean that an effective, resource-poor countries. safe and readily reversible male contraceptive pill will be available within Most human rabies deaths a decade. The findings of their study have been published in Proceedings occur in Asia and Africa. of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. Plans are now underway to develop a vaccine based First hug of life Photo: iSTock.com on the mutated virus. When a mammal embryo is only eight cells large, its roundish cells appear to embrace in a first “hug” that Flat price takes fizz out of drinking seems critical to healthy development – and may have implications for human in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatments. Make alcohol more expensive This would make cask and Scientists from the EMBL Australia research team and people will drink less of fortified wine dearer and so have at Monash University’s Australian Regenerative it – but an effective approach a big impact on heavy drinkers, Medicine Institute used high-tech imaging equipment to problem drinking involves but leave occasional drinkers to observe this process for the first time. careful consideration of just pretty much unaffected. In research published in Nature Cell Biology, how to apply that price rise. The researchers noted that Dr Nicolas Plachta, Dr Juan Carlos Fierro-González and Dr Anurag Sharma from the any pricing control should be Dr Melanie White noted arm-like structures called filopodia Centre for Health Economics complemented by other strategies, appearing on some cells during the eight-cell stage. They at Monash University says it is such as public education watched them grab neighbouring cells, pulling them important to deter heavy drinkers programs, for the most effective closer and elongating the cell membranes. After they let as much as possible without also reduction of problem drinking. penalising moderate consumers. Alcohol consumption is one of go, the cells returned to a round shape and continued His team assessed the relative the top-three risk factors for their normal process of dividing and multiplying. merits of a minimum unit price disease globally and carries high When the cells did not compact like this, the embryo (MUP) and a uniform volumetric social and economic costs. tended not to survive. tax. The MUP would set a price for Dr Plachta says knowledge of a specified volume of pure alcohol this “completely unanticipated or alcoholic beverage under which mechanism” could be applied to drinks could not be sold. Volumetric human IVF treatments, helping taxation would be calculated on the doctors choose the best embryos amount of pure alcohol in a drink. to implant. He and his team The result? The volumetric are designing non-invasive tax would increase beer and wine prices, but lower the imaging approaches to see if cost of spirits and cider, human embryos used in IVF form so drinkers could simply normal filopodia and undergo change their tipple. The normal compaction. They will . c om more effective strategy would work in partnership with the be applying a A$1 minimum Monash Faculty of Engineering to

price for a standard drink. improve implantation success. Photo: 123 RF Photo: Brad collis Monash University Monash June 2014 It – Professor Dan Li – Professor ls engineering als teri e have Ma

opened opened a door and found a vast room with no walls or ceiling. is potentially limitless. 20 W Materials engineering

Monash University June 2014 21 Our new

A major technical obstacle has been jumped in science’s quest to deliver revolutionary graphene technologies to industry and medicine.

Words Brad Collis putting graphite at the brink of becoming Professor Dan Li at Monash University’s one of the most valued ores ever mined. Department of Materials Engineering. Dark grey, a little greasy to the touch, It has usually cautious physicists Professor Li began searching for a graphite is neither pretty nor particularly and chemists itching with excitement, functional platform for new graphene-based useful. Most deposits around the world mesmerised by the possibilities starting technologies in 2006, barely two years sit largely untouched, although it is to take shape – from flexible electronics after a single layer of graphene was first used in a variety of ways in the steel embedded into clothing, to biomedicine separated from graphite. This was done industry, in batteries and lubricants, (imagine synthetic nerve cells), vastly superior by two curious University of Manchester and of course as “lead” in pencils. forms of energy storage (tiny but immensely physicists, Professor Andre Geim and But a few years ago, this poorest of ores powerful batteries) and an array of new Professor Konstantin Novoselov, who simply revealed a secret. At the molecular level materials that could make many of today’s used sticky tape to peel off micro flakes. It it is a unique two-dimensional molecule: common metals and polymers redundant. started as a bit of fun, but turned serious an electrically conductive lattice-like layer “We have opened a door and found when they realised that by repeatedly peeling just one carbon atom thick. In this state a vast room with no walls or ceiling. off further layers from the original flake it is called graphene, and an intensifying It is potentially limitless,” says one of they were able to get down to the thinnest global research effort into this attribute is the early graphene research pioneers, possible layer, just one carbon atom thick. Continued page 22 Materials engineering

22 June 2014 Monash University

Power burst Supercapacitors have short-term energy storage, compared with rechargeable Mining revival Super graphene batteries, but can About 75 per cent of the world’s graphite As a 2-D molecule, layers of graphene can is currently produced by China; however, take any form or flex to adhere to any surface. deliver intense the anticipated step-up in demand as Graphene is transparent, conducts current energy bursts, graphene technologies emerge is seeing more effectively than copper, is harder 10 to 1000 times renewed interest in graphite mining in than diamond and stronger than steel. countries such as Australia and the US. Being carbon, it is stable in more powerful A graphite mine was recently reopened corrosive environments and its than a battery. near Port Lincoln in South Australia, and resistance to heat makes it attractive They are regarded US mining interests are reported to be for use in applications such as energy preparing graphite operations following the storage and aviation componentry. as integral to the US Department of State declaring graphite a Graphene is already emerging as development of critical raw material for future technologies. the key to the next generation of battery more advanced World production of natural graphite is technologies as well as hybrid and electric currently about 1.1 million tonnes. Predictions vehicles, more efficient solar and wind electric vehicles. are for a six-fold increase in the years ahead. power generators, and fuel cells.

FrOM page 21 For many scientists this discovery is up sheets and dissolve them in water. From device has been touted as a breakthrough there with penicillin for the opportunity that this he has developed two new graphene in the field of supercapacitors. has been opened for graphene technologies technology platforms – the starting points Current supercapacitors use activated to impact on just about every aspect of for developing commercial applications. porous carbon impregnated with a liquid human activity and endeavour. Certainly One is a graphene gel that works as a electrolyte to carry the electrical charge. few were surprised when the pair were supercapacitor electrode, and the second The drawback is a low energy density awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. is a 3-D porous graphene foam. In a (energy storage-to-volume ratio) of just five The graphene gel provides the same supercapacitor to eight watt-hours per litre. But by replacing Functionality challenge functionality as porous carbon – a material the separated the porous carbon with a multi-layered However, while scientists can see currently sourced from coconut husks for sheets of graphene gel film, Professor Li’s team has extraordinary potential for graphene’s use in supercapacitors and other energy- graphene (in created a compact supercapacitor with properties – from its electrical conductivity conversion and storage technologies – the form of an energy density of 60 watt-hours per to the creation of new materials, including but with vastly enhanced performance. a chemically litre. Supercapacitors have an expanding bio materials, that would be lighter, stronger Professor Li’s research has already engineered range of applications as their capabilities and less energy-demanding than anything produced two papers in the journal Science gel) provide increase, from powering computer memory currently in use – the stumbling block has plus six pending patents. These are for a high ion- backup to powering electric vehicles. been to get graphene into a useable form. processes developed for suspending accessible The gel film is made by dissolving Being only one atom thick, the two- graphene in a water solution at room surface area, graphene in a water-based solution to create dimensional graphene layers pack tightly temperature (a major breakthrough because but are still far a graphene “ink”, which is then filtered (not like the pages of a book. For it to be graphene is otherwise water-repellent) more densely dissimilar to traditional paper-making). functional, ions or other molecules need to for the development of the gel and for packed than To make a graphene electrode from this be able to engage with the flat molecular the even more functional 3-D foam. conventional gel, Professor Li’s team used liquid electrolytes surface area between each layer. porous carbon. to control the spacing between the graphene So a challenge has been to find ways First stable platforms This gives sheets. In this way the liquid electrolyte plays to take the graphene sheets apart and These are remarkable achievements the graphene a dual role: maintaining a space between the reassemble them into functional macro that provide some of the first stable supercapacitor graphene sheets and conducting electricity. forms in which the full potential of the platforms from which new graphene-based a much higher In a parallel development, Professor Li’s individual sheets can be accessed. technologies can now be developed. “energy team has also been able to give graphene a This is where Professor Li’s research Professor Li has already taken the first density”, more functional 3-D form by engineering it into is opening the next tantalising chapter steps towards a commercial application by meaning much an elastic graphene foam. This is made by a in the graphene story. He has invented developing a high-performance graphene- more power process Professor Li calls “freeze casting”. a cost-effective and scalable way to based energy-storage device. Since from a much As the solution’s ice crystals form, they exert split graphite into microscopic graphene its unveiling in Science last August the smaller device. enough pressure to distort the flat structure Materials engineering

Monash University June 2014 23

of the graphene sheets and, significantly, the Professor Kaner, who is Distinguished Professor primary academic background) rather effect is irreversible. The graphene sheets stay Professor of Chemistry and Distinguished Dan Li says than a physics approach. This, he says, is separated after the liquid thaws into a foam Professor of Materials Science and his team has how he found a way to make the graphite that has a similar cellular structure to cork. Engineering at UCLA, is also researching a platform to dissolvable in water, which was the starting The graphene blocks produced by this graphene energy applications, but has move from the point for the graphene gel and foam. revolutionary process are extremely light, taken a different path. “My research is laboratory to “These are very exciting because they able to support more than 50,000 times investigating light-scribed graphene. We hit commercial are bridges between concepts and actual their own weight, are efficient conductors of graphite oxide with a powerful light source developments. new technologies.”  electricity and are highly elastic. “We’ve been to convert it to a porous carbon network. able to preserve the extraordinary qualities of Our approach suits the development of graphene in an elastic 3-D form. This paves micro supercapacitors. Dan has opened the way for the anticipated uses that people up a more macro-scale platform.” have for graphene, from aerospace materials Professor Li likens his developments to to tissue engineering,” Professor Li says. having invented bricks, and now it is time to “We have a platform from which bring in architects and builders to create new to move us from the laboratory to technologies based on his platforms. “The commercial developments.” opportunities now are limitless,” he says. “These graphene molecules bring a New energy whole new capability to nanotechnology One of the leading researchers internationally and materials science, and this includes in the use of graphene for energy applications, new-generation energy storage and Professor Richard Kaner from the University harvesting devices, bio-compatible of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), says materials able to work in the human Professor Li’s high surface area developments body, separation membranes for water open up exciting new energy applications. purification, and strong and lightweight “The beauty of Dan’s gel development is composite materials for aerospace.” that it is scalable so could be used to build Professor Li attributes his success in very large supercapacitors of high-energy tackling the graphene separation issue density,” he says. to his decision to take a chemistry (his Photo: Brad collis

The Monash PhD

The Monash PhD offers the expert supervision needed to complete your thesis, whilst giving you the practical skills required for a successful career beyond university. With one of the widest ranges of disciplinary and inter-disciplinary options, no matter what field is your focus, leading academics will provide the guidance your PhD deserves. To learn more visit monash.edu/phd CRICOS provider: Monash University 0008C CRICOS provider: Education

24 June 2014 Monash University Global CLASSROOM Universities are pursuing with increasing confidence and creativity the education opportunities presented by online technologies that can link teachers and students from around the world. i llustrat i on: son a Krets c hmar Education

Monash University June 2014 25

Down at the track, a high- platform called FutureLearn, listing among their appeal but it was quickly laid to rest. performance, aerodynamically its partners not only top UK universities “If you go in there, it’s stunning,” he says. sophisticated racing car is put through but also cultural institutions such as the 2007 “There are the students, without teachers its paces. In the heady atmosphere of a British Library and British Museum. Last around, immersed in discussion and trading room, investment bankers make year Monash became its only Australian debate, and working collaboratively.” UK Open Other programs take the university split-second decisions as they buy and partner, with two courses scheduled University sell, gain and lose. In a virtual laboratory, to start this year – one on computer reports 16 into a world that not so long ago would using virtual materials, pharmaceuticals programming for creative design and the million course have been impossible outside science of myriad forms are created and other about the science behind medicines. downloads fiction. Thanks to Skype, an expert from through perfected. And in a tutorial room that The measured approach taken by iTunes U; anywhere in the world can readily appear in looks much like any other, a student turns Monash contrasts with the enthusiasm with 89% from a classroom, but the real-virtual mix goes to chat to a classmate – who just happens which others have embraced MOOCs, but outside beyond that. When pharmacy students to be on the other side of the world. is entirely in keeping with Professor Evans’s the UK. at Monash learn the complexities of Welcome to university education, 21st- view that keeping education in good shape tablet-making, they do so using software, century style. Although lecture theatres are still calls for a flexible framework, not a cookie- gaming technology and a virtual laboratory a part of life in education institutions around the cutter approach. His guiding principle is to rather than an industrial machine and real globe, technology and shifting expectations search for the best of what is available. ingredients – and it is not only more effective, are progressively unsettling and undermining “Technology is an enabler,” he says. “It it is also a lot cheaper (see page 28). the generations-old model by which allows us to do things we never dreamed Meanwhile, their counterparts in business academics transmit knowledge to students. of, but it must still be fit for the purpose for 2014 and economics gain similarly effective training The internet and mobile devices give which it is used. We are experimenting in without leaving the classroom, which in extraordinary access to information from the online course world with FutureLearn their case is the STARLab trading room (see just about anywhere: students no longer and other companies such as Pearson. More page 29). Here a “real” trading environment than 250 prevails as students get to practise the need to be in the same place at the same It is a matter of understanding what the colleges and time as their teachers. The same rapidly technology can bring to those initiatives universities theories learned in management studies, developing communications technology and assessing it. What will be the impact on offer more banking and finance, and economics. that is behind that change has also students? What can we learn from online than 9000 But for all its wow factor and ability to free courses contributed to a world in which employers assessment that we can then bring back online. provide a new perspective, technology increasingly seek graduates who come ready into the campus learning experience? Is it is not always going to be the answer, Source: primed with an international outlook and better than something we currently do?” Open Professor Evans says. Sometimes, that time- a cultural understanding that transcends The last question, broadly applied, is at Universities honoured connection between teacher and Australia the boundaries of their home country. the heart of the new approach to education students, aided only by a whiteboard and Universities everywhere are he is introducing at Monash through the some coloured pens, is the best way to get feeling the pressures, even as they “Better Teaching, Better Learning” agenda. the message across. Provided it stands take up the opportunities that new up to the challenge of being questioned, capabilities are making available. A challenging philosophy he sees no reason to throw it away and “We are in a disrupted world of “I want our teaching to be challenged would indeed actively promote it. education,” says Professor Darrell Evans, in the same way our research is,” Engagement that is not just personal who as Vice-Provost (Learning and Teaching) Professor Evans says. “Researchers are but seriously hands-on has also proved its is instrumental in taking Monash University always coming up with new ideas, testing worth. Teams of engineering students from into the future. “We must ask ourselves how them, making changes. No one would ever hundreds of universities and colleges around we are going to tackle things differently. use ‘I’ve done it this way for 10 years, it must the world, including Monash, get engaged How are we still going to be a university be all right’ as a philosophy for research.” in the building of race cars for Formula SAE, in 20 years’ time if we don’t transform Modern communication technology most a competition that started in 1978 (see page the way we understand education?” clearly threatens lecture-based teaching, but 27). They do the hard practical laps of design, An academic world still coming to terms it is not simply a question of the pros and construction and testing, and in the process with flipped classrooms and blended learning cons of moving online. Personal connection they must also reinforce the academic was further challenged by the advent in is important; curriculum design is important; aspects of their study, learning to defend, the past few years of massive open online learning spaces are important – and all, support and explain what they are doing. courses (MOOCs). The New York Times Professor Evans says, must work together. dubbed 2012 “the year of the MOOC” and Sometimes this may mean quite practical A new world of learning take-up has been phenomenal. MOOCs changes, such as those undertaken recently One of the challenges for modern are mostly short courses; they are often by the Monash School of Physics when universities, says Professor Karen O’Brien, provided by a leading professor at a top- it reconfigured a workshop to provide Vice-Principal (Education) at King’s College drawer university, and they are both free more areas for small-group learning, London, is combining students’ “virtual and freely available to anyone. Harvard with appropriate equipment from tables connectivity” to information and to each University, Stanford University and the to technology. In the shift from lecture- other with the face-to-face interactions Massachusetts Institute of Technology, based to more interactive learning, the and collaborations that are still important along with many other elite American set-up encourages students to be fully in classrooms and laboratories. universities, have swept into the world involved as they grapple with the principles “As educators today, we must create of MOOCs, working through platforms and problems inherent to this field. radical new learning opportunities such as edX, Coursera and Udacity. Rooms were also made available for from the multiple ways in which our The US leads the field, but in 2012 the pre and post-class discussion and activity: students interact and gain access to UK’s Open University founded a MOOC Professor Evans admits to a qualm about information and knowledge,” she says. Continued page 26 Education

26 June 2014 Monash University

FrOM page 25 Another, says Professor Evans, is the need to interact and operate on a global Portal opens way to scale. Like others around the world, Monash is a multi-campus university; it virtual Classrooms has hubs not only in Australia but also in Malaysia, India, South Africa, China and Italy, with strong connections to the Words Alice Russell for running a course for people at two University of Warwick in the UK, thanks institutions who not only live in different to the Monash–Warwick Alliance. The students gather for their class, time zones but also work to different Universities will increasingly seek to arranging themselves in a large academic calendars. To fit into the limited link learning between campuses, and to do so circle. A dynamic discussion overlap between semesters, for example, in a way that includes personal connection. develops. At times they courses are planned as high-intensity units “You can come away from a course with break into groups, or that run for just two or three weeks. knowledge but you need the interaction to international post their findings Students appear to relish the experience. really excite the learning journey,” Professor portal on whiteboards. Just “They are with the group across the Evans says. “With distance learning, it’s another uni tutorial? portal in a short space of time, and that especially important for students to learn Not exactly. The creates a real dynamic,” says Monash as communities – how do we do that?” students in the part of University’s Dr Sarah McDonald, who co- An early step towards answering this the circle that is beyond leads the international portal project with is the “international portal” that links a the large screen on the end wall are the University of Warwick’s Dr Nick Monk. classroom at Monash University’s Caulfield not just in another part of the room Potential administrative tangles are eased campus in Melbourne with one in Warwick, – they are 16,000 kilometres away. by collegial connections underpinned by the allowing students from both universities to do “You feel you could walk over and Monash–Warwick Alliance, a partnership the same course, at the same time and in – touch them; you forget they are not there between the two universities whose goals virtually – the same room (story this page). in person,” says Monash University lecturer include meeting the increasing demand “It’s across time zones. In Melbourne, Dr Sarah Pasfield-Neofitou, one of the co- for graduates with a global education. we stay late – they get up early; everyone teachers of Forms of Identity, the first course “Some students who are unable to interacts. It’s a first stage, but it shows what undertaken in this mingled real and virtual study abroad welcome the experience can be done when you are working with You can space termed the “international portal”. with lecturers and students from a different multiple campuses or of course if you have come away Here, where technology links Monash location,” Dr McDonald says. “It gives them other kinds of links with overseas audiences.” from a in Melbourne, Australia, and the University the opportunity to engage with a cohort With an enthusiasm for learning that course with of Warwick in the UK, people on either side they would not normally be exposed to.” has pushed his career from research knowledge of the portal can see each other at close It is not all about classes. The first in biology to a full focus on education, but you to life size, thanks to a screen that runs International Conference of Undergraduate Professor Evans is keen to seek out scope need the almost from floor to ceiling. Cameras and Research, founded by the Monash–Warwick for improvement anywhere he can find it. interaction microphones are unobtrusively installed Alliance, was held simultaneously at both “We can give people the opportunity to to really in such a way that anyone anywhere universities in 2013. The next conference, learn anywhere. There are people who like excite the in one room can see and hear anyone scheduled for September this year, will to learn on the bus or train, because they learning in the other room. There is immediate expand to include partner universities in like the buzz but they still get immersed; journey. engagement with everyone involved. Malaysia, Singapore and South Africa others prefer to be at home. Technology Classes proceed much as they would as well as Australia and the UK. should enable us to learn differently; – Professor if everyone were in the same physical Lecturers hope portal technology to learn where we want to learn.” Darrell Evans space, with some inevitable adjustment will ultimately link more campuses and Overall, he says, it’s a universities as its potential is increasingly question of generating an realised. The next course planned for the approach that can adjust portal has the apt title of Global Connections, to the many different needs and the future may open up more scope of different fields of study, for academics to teach in fields not offered while also remaining open at their home institution, for example, or for to inevitably changing J ones Photo: Paul students to “attend” more classes in other pressures and demands. institutions. Even at this early stage, students “We must stay and researchers alike gain from exposure responsive to change. to more varied academic expertise than Once you have a model, they could expect at just one institution. then you lose that flexible Along with the very high-tech side, quality because it just low-tech elements also contribute to becomes the way you efficient functioning. On each side of do things. We want to the portal there is a carpet with a large keep things dynamic so circle on it. Students in each room that we can keep hitting form a physical half-circle at “their” end the changes that are that joins – virtually – in the middle. happening very quickly “To us in the room, it feels as at the moment though the circle goes right round,” in education.”  Dr Pasfield-Neofitou says.  Education

Monash University June 2014 27 Photo: Paul J ones Photo: Paul

Monash motorsport

Fast-track learning

Words Brad Collis Monash Motorsport team leader fluid dynamics: “We were one of the first SAE teams Edward Hamer (right) and fellow to introduce this, although the idea has been around At the 2013 Formula 1® Rolex Australian Grand engineering student Andrew de for a while. That’s what it’s like in motorsports; a lot Prix two cars attracted an inordinate amount Morton with the race car that puts of innovations float around until someone can work of attention from team engineers, given they theory into practice. out how to build them into the complete package. were not part of the headline event. But the two “Also with SAE you have to be able to explain and Formula SAE race cars nonetheless embodied justify your decisions: not just make a fast car.” what F1 racing is all about – technology. Both cars were built by engineering students: an electric Applied aerodynamics prototype race car built at the Swinburne University of Mr Hamer says this is what makes the motorsports Technology, and a more conventional high-performance program valuable to students. “To be a successful car built by Monash University engineering students. engineer you have to be able to build a legitimate The Monash students and their car represented argument to support your ideas. Monash Motorsport, a student-inspired and driven initiative “That is what is demanded of us in developing these that over the 14 years since its inception has reached cars. We have to apply what we know, take in critical the top of the international Formula SAE competition. feedback, learn to work as a team and articulate the Formula SAE was started in 1978 by the Society of academic reasoning behind everything we do.” Automotive Engineers to give the world’s engineering About 50 students are currently involved in Monash students the chance to apply their knowledge by Motorsport, representing mechanical, aerospace and designing and fabricating a race car that embodies electrical engineering, and mechatronic engineering. race track performance and engineering excellence. The team reports to an academic supervisor, Teams from more than 550 universities compete Dr Scott Wordley, who was one of the students annually to build a car that demonstrates critical thinking and who started the program in 2000. problem-solving. Monash Motorsport is currently ranked Mr Hamer says the program embodies what number two, behind the University of Stuttgart in Germany. students believe engineering should be. “It is The car demonstrated at the 2013 F1 Grand Prix creative and challenging and you are expected to be featured an innovative drag reduction system. “It’s a intelligent. People will push you, and that’s good. pneumatic system that turns the flaps to a neutral low-drag “And we have a clear goal: to become the most position when travelling in a straight line, using less fuel and respected SAE team in the world. That shapes our increasing car speed,” team leader Edward Hamer explains. decisions and how we conduct ourselves and we Mr Hamer says the Monash team has focused heavily take it seriously because it gets everyone working on aerodynamics and the application of computational collaboratively and moving forward.”  Education

28 June 2014 Monash University Photo: 123 RF . c om

pharmatopia

– GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and the CSL Group. The cyberspace pharmacy tablet machines have been replaced by a 3-D virtual factory in which students can simulate the use of the Photo: Paul Jones most advanced industrial tableting technology. Words Dr Gio Braidotti “The first module – developed with pharmacy academics and practising pharmacists – was developed The use of 3-D virtual-world computer gaming just for Monash students,” Dr Larson says. “Evaluations technology is giving pharmacy students a realistic soon showed Pharmatopia to be a better, more engaging experience of the complex industrial processes learning activity than the traditional method.” involved in pharmaceuticals manufacturing. Specially developed software provides a virtual Knowledge shared laboratory in which they can test, via interactive animation, When trials by other universities proved similarly different formulations and receive detailed feedback successful, the Pharmatopia software was made on the correctness of their work. The software is called available, at no cost, to any education institution. Pharmatopia and the simulated manufacturing process gives As Pharmatopia’s use spread, it also came to the students a far deeper understanding – through practice in attention of GSK in the UK. The company now uses this virtual laboratory – of the numerous formulations that Pharmatopia (under licence) to help its workforce better are needed for different types of tablets and capsules. understand the tableting process and improve problem- Previously students’ experience of the manufacturing solving when tablets fail quality-control tests. process took the form of crowding around expensive Dr Ian Larson has been “We now have an ongoing relationship with GSK to (and often outdated) industrial tableting machinery, instrumental in developing co-develop further online training activities,” Dr Larson says. gaining only a limited understanding of the different tablet alternative hands-on teaching This is in addition to modules Monash has properties that are possible from different ingredients. modules. developed in collaborations with other universities, Senior lecturer at Monash University’s Faculty of including one with Victoria University in Melbourne to Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Dr Ian Larson create two modules sponsored by the CSL Group. says a pharmacist often needs to be able to explain to a Monash also recently helped the University of Namibia patient what is in a medicine and why it is there, including to make the simulation resources available to the newest the inactive ingredients needed to make the tablet. “Many pharmacy school in the world. “While it is fantastic to share tablets are only five to 10 per cent drug. The other ingredients resources with the developed world, maybe some of the are required to assist drug function,” he explains. biggest gains are to be had by working with universities “So we felt students were wasting too much time on skills in the developing world, which have the same need for – learning to use the machinery – that are no longer relevant. expertise but far fewer resources,” Dr Larson says. “Instead we needed an activity that allowed any kind of Having witnessed the benefits and popularity of shared tablet to be made and different formulations compared, so online teaching resources, the Monash academics now host students acquire practical experience of how ingredients a website, SABER, where pharmacy and pharmaceutical affect a tablet’s properties, including drug delivery.” science educators from all over the world can collect and share Dr Larson has been instrumental in developing this teaching resources and network for new collaborations.  alternative teaching module now adopted by universities worldwide and by two leading pharmaceutical companies www.pharmatopia.monash.edu; www.saber.monash.edu Education

Monash University June 2014 29

The STARLab, where business and finance students simulate working in a currency trading room. Photo: Paul J ones Photo: Paul

Starlab

Real-world pressure test

Words Brad Collis also involve Australian students trading in real time with students at Monash University’s Malaysia campus. Associate Professor Kevin Tant sits in a control “We’ve also expanded the subjects to include room, fingers speeding across keyboards as he investment portfolio management, business finance, simulates myriad economic and behavioural forces accounting, equity markets and even deeper risk- influencing the money market. He is at once a management strategies using options and other derivatives central bank adjusting monetary policy, a cluster as well as climate change and emissions trading. of investment bankers entering and leaving a trade, “STARLab is also a research facility because, at and a score of other commercial forces typical of the the end of the day, it’s really a behavioural lab.” influences that test professional traders every day. This is the Simulated Teaching and Research Dealing with challenges Laboratory (STARLab) and Associate Professor Tant, At its core, STARLab emulates a treasury dealing room from the Department of Banking and Finance at Monash and students operate in teams of three – a dealer, University’s Faculty of Business and Economics, risk manager and accountant. They have to deal with is using it to challenge, in real time and with real- challenges requiring rapid decisions that in the real world scenarios, teams of students who are putting world could be making or losing millions of dollars. into practice all that they have learned as theory. Another component of this practical, interactive The objective of this innovative teaching program is learning environment is being responsible to a CEO. to deliver graduates as close to job-ready as possible: to “Employers need graduates to come on-stream as have them leave university with practical experience and quickly as possible after they start work. So part of that exposure to the real-world pressures of careers in finance. preparation is me performing as a CEO in class, rather Associate Professor Tant initiated the program several Employers than an academic,” Associate Professor Tant says. years ago in response to some students being unclear need “That means students learning to communicate and about how various course units fitted together. “Because to write reports to a level that management can use. my background is banking and finance I decided to create graduates “So we have moved away from the traditional lecturer– a trading room – STARLab. It was conceived to provide to come student engagement to a more interactive learning model.” real-world application for management studies, banking on-stream The facility is also used by industry. The National Australia and finance, accounting and economics. We set it up as a Bank (NAB) has used it to give staff who are responsible capstone – an all-encompassing final-year unit,” he explains. as quickly as for calculating market risk an insight into the pressures “This required me developing a software package, possible after that traders face. Chris Hoy, NAB’s manager of market risk ‘Monash Trader’, which replicates a real trading environment. they start analytics, says risk managers have the advantage of being This has continued to evolve in response to student and work. able to take a considered viewpoint of an established position. industry feedback and is now a web-based program.” “But what they can’t see is what actually goes into Associate Professor Tant hopes to further develop – Associate Professor Kevin Tant creating that position in the first place. This is where the program over the next 12 months so that it can STARLab has been of enormous benefit,” he says.  History

30 June 2014 Monash University

Merchants of culture European colonisation is portrayed mostly as an era of brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples, but new studies are showing the cultural engagement may not always have been so crudely one-sided. ourtesy of M useum Vic tor i a Photo: R e p rodu c ed ourtesy

Baldwin Spencer seated with the Arrernte elders, Alice Springs, Central Australia, 1896.

Words Alexandra Roginski of anthropology had begun asking who community of authors, correspondents these people were, how they lived, and how and readers who often used their colonial In 1914, as Europe was on the European settlers should relate to them. experiences to claim authority,” she says. brink of war, an expedition of several Today, the voluminous BAAS archives By the time the BAAS experts arrived hundred scholars from the UK’s finest are at the heart of a research project on Australian shores, similar expeditions

institutions sailed to Australia. Guests exploring the history of this elite group of Photo: J ames B raund had already visited Canada (in 1897 and of the Australian Government, these scientific minds and the global network 1909) and South Africa (in 1905). members of the British Association they spun to glean information from the For Monash University historian for the Advancement of Science furthest corners of the British Empire. Professor Lynette Russell, leader of (BAAS), many of them anthropologists, “The BAAS was crucial to scientists Professor the ARC project, the BAAS expedition undertook a whirlwind schedule of engaged with anthropology. Soon after Lynette Russell embodies the story of early anthropology. lectures, state events and field trips. its inception in the 1830s, it became a She says it also provides glimpses of Their visit reflected a fascination powerful carrier of debates about human Aboriginal empowerment in the face of by British scientists, the public and difference,” explains Dr Leigh Boucher, a forces that tried to subjugate them. humanitarians in the indigenous people of the Macquarie University historian who is part of Professor Russell, who is the director colonies; an interest dating back to the mid- an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded of the Monash Indigenous Centre, describes 19th century. Scholastic debates had begun project looking into the BAAS studies. a field trip to South Australia’s Coorong to grapple with the origins and hierarchy of “While based in the UK, the network region, encompassing the vast mouth of races. Whether turned to the native people of members stretched around and beyond the Murray River, in which the BAAS of New Zealand, North America, South the British Empire. Together, these scientists were chauffeured to a corroboree Africa or Australia, the nascent discipline imperial interlocutors forged a global staged by the local Ngarrindjeri people. History

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The visit was organised by a business-savvy An explanation for Australia’s Aboriginal elder. ascendance in global anthropology dates 50 years of Indigenous engagement “There is one little cryptic comment made back to the discovery of gold in the fledgling Half a century ago, in 1964, Monash University took the by someone at the corroboree,” says Professor colony of Victoria in 1851. The influx of then-radical step of establishing a centre dedicated to Russell. “This person describes the Aboriginal capital and fortune seekers could easily have research and study about Australia’s Indigenous people. promoter of the corroboree as a man who launched Melbourne onto the usual trajectory It was a move in keeping with the iconoclastic would have found a comfortable career as towards becoming a big “flashy” city. outlook of the young university, which had enrolled an entrepreneur in London’s West End.” But instead, Professor Russell says, its first students only three years earlier. Melbourne became an intellectual scene The Monash Indigenous Centre (originally Agents in history of international standing. “There was a called the Centre for Research into Aboriginal Professor Russell explains that Australian community of intellectuals through the Affairs) was the first such centre in Australia and Aboriginal people had been ranked near Mechanics’ Institutes, the Royal Society remained the only one for nearly 20 years. the bottom of the racial hierarchies of the of Victoria, and various philosophical Under the initial direction of Dr Colin Tatz, it 19th century, far lower than the native and other societies. Every night you assumed a broad role combining not only research people of North America or New Zealand. could go to lectures, and many of them and teaching but also engagement with real-world Their acts of resistance and engagement were about what was paternalistically issues. This philosophy continues under the current were either dismissed or misunderstood by phrased ‘our Aborigines’.” directorship of Professor Lynette Russell. Europeans who were much more familiar, In 1854, the National Museum of Victoria One of the centre’s most significant programs, the for example, with the organised guerrilla was established and initiated a long history Monash Orientation Scheme for Aborigines (MOSA), was warfare of the Maori people or the native of documenting the lives of Australia’s first launched in 1984, with Associate Professor Isaac Brown people of North America. By contrast, peoples. This was particularly so after the as inaugural director. The scheme’s brief was to redress Australian Aborigines were seen as passively 1899 appointment, as museum director, inequities in education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait accepting European colonisation. of Sir Baldwin Spencer, an anthropology Islander people. It was the first program of its kind in the But events such as the Coorong pioneer internationally. With his connections country. The Yulendj Indigenous Engagement Unit now corroboree present historical opportunities to London luminaries in this field, Spencer continues the work, recruiting and supporting Indigenous for a different reading. Here, the comment strongly influenced the anthropological students through pathway programs, academic support and about the corroboree promoter suggests angle of the BAAS expedition. the promotion of excellence among Indigenous scholars. the local Aboriginal group cannily brokered Professor Russell is fascinated In MOSA’s first year, nine Indigenous a deal for the performance of the ceremony by early anthropologists such students enrolled; now there are more than and dances, and probably for payment. as Spencer and his peers. 170 studying in a range of disciplines. “The reality, we find, is far more Above her desk hangs In 2014, Monash University is complex than this idea of anthropologists the painting Portrait of Portrait of celebrating 50 years of contributing to studying disadvantaged, disconnected, A.W. Howitt by prominent A.W. Howitt, 1900, greater understanding of Aboriginal disassociated Aboriginal people. My Australian artist Tom Tom Roberts, history, anthropology, culture, identity argument would be that Aboriginal Roberts, which was Monash University and literature, and of supporting people were never that disconnected or commissioned by Spencer. Collection. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander disestablished,” Professor Russell says. Alfred William Howitt was people in accessing higher education. The terminology of anthropology an explorer, magistrate suggests this was indeed the case. and natural scientist, whose 1904 tome on www.monash.edu.au/about/indigenous/celebrating-50-years Aboriginal men and women who engaged the Aborigines of south-east Australia is a with researchers are termed “informants”, cornerstone of early Australian ethnography. which inherently indicates that a choice was “Howitt engaged with Aboriginal people Photo: Reproduced courtesy made to engage and offer information. This and wrote volumes of observation. These of Museum Victoria might have been due to cultural pride, an are of course patronising and paternalistic, The project brings this impulse to have one’s stories recorded in the as one would expect from a man of the 19th remarkable expedition out face of impending colonial change, financial century. But in his personal correspondence of the shadows of World gain or just plain curiosity in the engagement. there were also expressions of friendship, of War I, which erupted admiration, and even – one might say – of as the BAAS scientists Golden age affection and love,” Professor Russell says. reached Adelaide, in The BAAS expedition to Australia appears Through Howitt, she was also captivated South Australia. to have been far more interested than by the diaries of George Augustus In many ways, other expeditions in people. At the Robinson, appointed the Protector of her work represents front of the expedition handbook was Aborigines in Victoria, and her interest an inversion of the a chapter on Australian Aborigines. has now evolved into a broader study of mass arrival of these For the Canadian expedition, a similar Victorian ethnographers, funded by the scientists from the UK a chapter was placed after chapters ARC. This study also includes the often- century ago. Professor about Canada’s natural environment. unrecognised wives, daughters and Russell is an Australian The approach to South Africa was mothers who assisted in the work. academic travelling different again. “The South African Later this year, Professor Russell will to the UK to conduct fieldwork within The handbook includes anthropology, but it begin a visiting fellowship at the University an institution regarded as a repository anthropologist is more concerned about how to govern of Oxford, using the BAAS archives of that country’s knowledge of the Baldwin these large numbers of people. It uses there to better study the Australian world’s indigenous peoples. Spencer in anthropology very specifically in terms expedition and how it differed from similar “I’m collecting the collectors,” she Alice Springs, of control,” Professor Russell says. journeys to Canada and South Africa. observes wryly.  1901. Industry engagement

32 June 2014 Monash University

formed when you’ve got a large number of objects all interacting with each other,” Dr Garoni says of the cars, buses, trucks, trams and trains he has turned into

Illustrat i on: S on a k rets c hmar mathematical abstractions. His task is to make sufficient sense of these patterns to give transport system managers a tool or model that lessens the chaos and frustration. The project showcases MAXIMA’s role of bridging the gap between theoretical formulations – which can be excellent for modelling complex but idealised geometries, relationships and interactions – and the real world, which tends to be unruly and unpredictable. MAXIMA members use tools such as computational physics, statistical mechanics and combinatorics to better predict behaviour of physical systems in the real world. Once behaviour can be predicted, it can be controlled and optimised using other powerful tools from mathematics. Since 2008, Dr Garoni has been working with VicRoads, the statutory body overseeing roads and traffic in the state of Victoria, to model transport scenarios that are difficult or impossible to test through field trials. Collaborating with Dr Lele Zhang, also of Monash, and Associate Professor Jan de Gier from the University of Melbourne, Dr Garoni has applied mathematics to traffic-flow data to determine different priorities at traffic lights. It has provided an interesting test case Mathematical for theoretical maths and some of the real- life imponderables that get in the way. In this case, Dr Garoni explains that a traffic-light system following a mathematical minds rally model that allows it to be totally adaptive and demand-driven could lose its predictability. Combine loss of predictability with human behaviour and the outcome could be to problem solve even more frustration and chaos. “In other words, if you were just designing Words Alexandra Roginski networks from a mathematical perspective, an Next time you are adaptive, demand-driven system is what you Traffic jams – an exasperating would have,” Dr Garoni says. “But in reality, stuck in a traffic jam, fact of life in every major city in the drivers like to know what is about to happen.” world – challenge planners, engineers So traffic management remains calm yourself with and motorists, and especially a perpetual challenge – balancing mathematicians for whom efficient theoretically sound mathematical the knowledge that vehicular movement is a source of solutions with what can be implemented endless fascination and possibility. in practice – but one that mathematicians somewhere in the In Australia, it is one of the tasks being are determined to eventually solve. tackled by a new problem-solving centre It reflects the real-world engagement realm of statistical called the Monash Academy for Cross & intended for MAXIMA by its director, Interdisciplinary Mathematical Applications Professor Kate Smith-Miles. Ask her mechanics lies (MAXIMA), a member of which is Dr Tim “to which problems can mathematics Garoni, senior lecturer with the Monash be applied?” and her answer is “to an explanation University School of Mathematical Sciences. which problems can’t it be applied?” “Traffic is a good example of statistical Professor Smith-Miles sees mathematics for your plight. mechanics that deals with the patterns as the engine room for new science and Industry engagement

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she is making MAXIMA a rallying point provides will mean there will be no shortage Trained to collaborate One of for mathematicians whose careers may Professor Smith-Miles believes that the of research options for the new recruits. MAXIMA’s have branched off into other fields such ability to collaborate with researchers from This mobility is reflected by primary goals as engineering, information technology, medical, engineering and other disciplines Professor Smith-Miles’s own diverse career is to seek out econometrics, astronomy or epidemiology. is a learned skill. MAXIMA’s goal of training path, which has taken her from modelling collaborative Professor Smith-Miles’s mission is to the next generation of interdisciplinary neural networks to optimising the scheduling projects encourage these dispersed mathematical thinkers is illustrated by a research project of robots inside pathology testing machines. that provide minds out from their departmental niches on human immunity that has important “As the MAXIMA director I’m the mathematical to form a critical mass of skill, experience implications for vaccine manufacture. first port of call and people come to me challenges. and thinking that can develop creative The project was instigated by PhD with interesting problems that need a solutions to multidisciplinary problems. students Melanie Neeland from the Monash mathematical approach,” she says. “I think once you’re trained as a Department of Physiology and Qianqian Wu In fact, it was after fielding requests for her mathematician you continue to view problems from the Monash School of Mathematical mathematical insight from researchers working through a mathematical lens,” she says. Sciences. It centres on events that occur in fields as diverse as stem cells, bionic vision, MAXIMA intends to respond to within the body’s immune systems that are psychology, physiology and regenerative industry needs, to support Monash’s central to the body’s ability to recognise medicine that the need for a facility such as interdisciplinary projects, to train up- and fight infections and cancers. MAXIMA became apparent. “There is a huge and-coming mathematicians in the “art” Recognition of a threat results from array of practical applications for beautiful of collaboration, and to communicate to interactions between two types of immune mathematics and we enjoy tackling significant school-aged mathematicians the exciting cells – dendritic cells and T cells. Dendritic problems that impact society,” she says.  potential of mathematics-based careers. cells in effect “gobble up” foreign material (such as bacteria or viruses resulting Broad research church from infections or vaccines), munch that MAXIMA provides a research platform material down and then display some Calculating brain “floppiness” supported by about 50 mathematically of the debris to other immune cells to Brain injury might generally be considered the exclusive trained academics from across Monash alert them to the identity of the threat. province of trauma surgeons or sports doctors, but at University’s faculties and departments. This Dendritic cells primarily display Monash University it is also the concern of mathematicians. platform has also recently employed a small their trophy (the ‘antigen’) to T cells, In a new approach to understanding shockwaves team of mathematicians with experience of which are the immune cells capable of that resonate through the brain after a knock to the interdisciplinary collaboration at other leading directing the entire immune system to head, researchers from the Monash Department of universities such as the University of Oxford, train its biochemical weapons against Physiology are working with MAXIMA mathematicians Pennsylvania State University, Harvard that particular disease threat. to model these concussive repercussions. University and the Schlumberger-Doll “So we are interested to know how many The idea originated in a research project pursued by Research Center (a Harvard industry partner). antigen-affected dendritic cells you need in undergraduate science student Jessica Crawshaw and “We’ve recruited mathematicians the lymphatic system to trigger an immune supervised by MAXIMA’s Professor Kate Smith-Miles and who’ve become experts in epidemiology response,” says Professor Smith-Miles, who Dr Jerome Droniou, and Associate Professor Ramesh Rajan and infectious disease modelling, in carbon co-supervises the students with Associate from the Monash Department of Physiology. sequestration, and the study of complex Professor Tianhai Tian (MAXIMA) and “At the moment what we have is a whole bunch of fluids,” Professor Smith-Miles says. Dr Michael de Veer (Monash Department descriptions about the changes that occur as a result of a “We have people who work on models of Physiology). blow to the head – for example, during a car accident or a of bone formation, and others who work This question is important for vaccine sporting field accident,” Associate Professor Rajan says. on understanding the process of wound development since vaccines work by “However, our data told us that in the first healing and how the rate of healing is providing the immune system with a instance – just after the head hits a solid object affected by oxygen and bacteria levels.” harmless replica of a bacteria or virus in – a pressure wave is created and it can cause One of MAXIMA’s primary goals is order to prime dendritic and T cells to fight damage as it travels through the brain.” to seek out collaborative projects that should they come across the real thing. The MAXIMA mathematicians are working to provide provide mathematical challenges. “We “Possibly, some vaccines are too strong; the brain physiologists with accurate predictions require a mathematical solution, but maybe they don’t need as many antigen- of how pressure waves move given the particular we don’t know straightaway how to do affected dendritic cells to achieve an properties of the brain’s structures – its fluid-filled it – it triggers the need to create new immune response. Or maybe the current spaces versus the areas filled with dense cells. In turn, mathematics,” Professor Smith-Miles says. vaccine strategies are not activating enough those models are being tested for their ability to predict For researchers Professor Fima T cells to trigger an immune response.” where damage in the brain is most likely to occur. Klebaner, Associate Professor Kais In the process, both students are “If we can understand the sort of pressure generated Hamza and PhD student Rotem Aharon learning how to work across disciplines. at each point in the brain as a result of the pressure wave that means examining, using probability For Ms Wu, it is a chance “to learn how to then we are in a much better position to predict the kinds theory, the migration of cancer cells talk to a physiologist, to understand the of medical interventions best suited to individual brain when subjected to radiation therapies. language and the terminology, and convert trauma patients,” Associate Professor Rajan says. Probability theory provides a way to that into a mathematical framework”. “So the collaboration with the mathematicians analyse seemingly random behaviour to “A new generation of mathematicians is about taking knowledge about the occurrence of reveal deeper patterns. These patterns trained to speak the language of pressure waves and translating that into predictive can provide insights into how a system that other disciplines will help accelerate the tools that have important clinical applications.” seems erratic and unpredictable – such as impact they will have on society,” This fusion of mathematics and physiology is now seen as the movement of cancer cells when shocked Professor Smith-Miles says. The intellectual a first step for a whole new approach to studying brain injury. by radiotherapy – actually changes over time. mobility that a mathematical background communications

34 June 2014 Monash University

Mobile phone ownership as percentage of population People who Global average: 86% cannot read Source: TNS market research can still learn Senegal: 90% how to use Ivory Coast: 93% icons on the Ghana: 88% Uganda: 79% phone; people Nigeria: 82% Kenya: 71% who can’t Cameroon: 86% Tanzania: 80% write can South Africa: 90% communicate textually using voice recognition programs. These are tools that empower a person. A bridge across the – Dr Larry Stillman technology divide Photo: istockphoto.com

Words Rebecca Jennings information and communication technologies (ICTs) Digital solutions such as computers with internet access require ePost A postman on a donkey delivering a text message digital skills and expensive network infrastructure. To overcome geographical to a village in rural Africa. Bangladeshi village women Dr Steyn’s recognition that most DI projects fail barriers, Monash University using social media to communicate their needs to prompted him in 2006 to establish the International researchers have simulated a a humanitarian organisation. An Indigenous child in Development Informatics Association, a platform communication model to be remote Australia logging on to a computer built to for sharing experiences and research ideas. used in a village with traditional handle the rigours of a hot, dusty landscape. Can “There has been an amazing uptake of mobile phones social networks but no global technology change the circumstances faced by among the world’s poor,” Dr Steyn says. “The dominant use connection (via internet). Using five billion people around the world who live in poverty is for communication with family and friends. In itself, this mobile devices, multimedia with poor health, worse education and no access constitutes a considerable success even if there is no clear messages can be “posted” to the knowledge that could change their lives? economic benefit: it has made people’s lives easier. But we are to the village’s ePost office. The developing world is not exactly in a digital still far from using ICT for empowerment through knowledge.” They are then collected by stone age – mobile phones are used even in remote The practical and sustainable transfer of technological an ePostman (passing the African communities – but the question, according hardware and skills comes down to acceptance village on a donkey, camel or to Monash University’s Dr Jacques Steyn, is how to that DI is actually a socio-technical discipline: the llama). When this ePostman usefully mesh “corporatised” technology into developing human component is a critical consideration. travels past a global network, countries? How to tackle digital illiteracy? How to deliver Monash researchers are therefore testing and assessing the messages are distributed. health, hygiene, education and farming knowledge systems designed specifically for the developing world Even villages sharing a single to empower social and economic change? and for remote Indigenous communities. They are also phone could participate. These are challenges he faces every day as head of involved in training engineers to bring a more socio-technical Digital Doorway the School of Information Technology at Monash South perspective to projects such as the Digital Doorway, Open-access computer Africa, where research focuses on information and and to promote a communication model that combines kiosks designed for multiple communication technologies for developing countries, a a traditional postal service with mobile technologies. users have been developed field known more formally as development informatics (DI). by South Africa’s Meraka “Technology helps us to communicate over geographical You can’t eat a computer Institute (of the South African distances and across time boundaries. It makes knowledge DI projects come with a moral question: do developing Department of Science exchange possible, which offers opportunities for self- communities want this ability to connect? and Technology). Monash empowerment,” Dr Steyn says. “Just knowing that basic Dr Larry Stillman, senior research fellow in the Centre University is training engineers hygiene helps to avoid sickness improves quality of life. for Organisational and Social Informatics in the Faculty of and testing the kiosks. There But knowledge like this, which we take for granted in Information Technology at Monash in Australia, explains: are now more than 200 Digital our developed lives, is often absent among the poor.” “When we think of technology, we think of computers, Doorways throughout South Technicians are still grappling with the social, phones, programs designed for an affluent middle class. Africa and Uganda and in geographical and logistical barriers to introducing “But we’re talking about poor AIDS-afflicted communities three remote Indigenous technologies into the remote regions of Africa. Modern without health, education, clean water – and you can’t communities in Australia. Monash University June 2014 35

eat a computer. When we take these technologies into developing countries, there is a danger of overlaying our Western expectations onto their usefulness as well as how they will actually be used. These moral concepts are important considerations.” Dr Stillman refers to a traditional village of about 200 residents in rural Limpopo, South Africa, where he examined the relevance of ICTs to village life, working with the Meraka Institute, a government- funded research organisation. Dr Stillman says the Meraka Institute has now installed a robust, multi-user computer – a Digital Doorway – in the community meeting house, and the community is engaged in recording how it affects their lives. His research about the complex issues involved have also taken him to KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, working with Oxfam Australia and a local organisation that empowers Theories, Practices Jean Galbraith: Breaking the Silence: HIV-positive people to become community and Examples for Writer in a Valley Survivors Speak about facilitators, and to Bangladesh to design a low- Community and Social Meredith Fletcher 1965-66 Violence in cost, community-focused information system, Informatics Indonesia again working with Oxfam and local agencies. Edited by Tom Denison, Mauro Writer in a Valley is the compelling Edited by Putu Oka Sukanta Sarrica and Larry Stillman story of Jean Galbraith (1906–99), (translated by Jennifer Lindsay) Generational change one of Australia’s most influential A community may accept technology, but Community informatics, which botanists and writers on Former political prisoner then be hampered by the high illiteracy among focuses on the design and nature, plants and gardens. Putu Oka Sukanta is the editor adults in the developing world. Monash ICT implementation of information and As a garden writer, she of this collection of accounts researchers are addressing this by focusing communications technologies for was notable for spreading from people around the on the next generation, as children tend and within localised communities, knowledge of Australian flora archipelago who experienced to be able to teach themselves how to use is an emerging discipline area. and encouraging the cultivation the 1965 violence in Indonesia. a computer or learn from their peers. In recent years, Monash of native plants in home Fifteen witnesses from The researchers are also looking University has developed gardens. As a botanist, she Medan, Palu, Kendari, Yogyakarta, for features within the technology that considerable expertise in wrote accessible field guides Jakarta, Bali, Kupang and Sabu enable digital competency, Dr Stillman this field; two of the book’s to Australian wildflowers that Island share their stories of how says. “People who cannot read can still editors, Dr Tom Denison and made a vital contribution to the they navigated this horrifying learn how to use icons on the phone; Dr Larry Stillman, are researchers conservation of native plants. period of Indonesian history and people who can’t write can communicate in the Monash Centre for Galbraith conveyed the how they have lived with this past. textually using voice recognition programs. Organisational and Social wonders of nature to generations The lives of ordinary people These are tools that empower a person Informatics in the Faculty of of children through her child- – teachers, artists, women’s in a developing country, or groups of Information Technology. centred stories of adventures rights activists, police – were people together, helping each other. One This collection combines in the natural world. Her nature turned upside down when attacks may talk, the other may type – this is the theoretical exploration with writing evoked the spirit of began on those considered African idea of ubuntu [human kindness]. detailed case studies as it places she knew well and to be supporters of the “And a mobile phone is simple examines how social order introduced readers to the Communist Party of Indonesia. technology that can be charged from a is mediated through these beauty of the Australian bush. These accounts, including car battery, shared by a family or even a technologies, and considers their www.publishing.monash.edu/books one from a perpetrator who is village, and used with minimal training.” general effects on community and now tormented by guilt, and Dr Steyn hopes that the differences cohesion, class and power, and survivors who still feel isolated these technologies are making in a few personal and social psychology. and rejected by society, show communities will create a ripple effect. www.publishing.monash.edu/books how the violence continues to “The way forward is a slow one and influence Indonesian society. requires patience. But if a rural community www.publishing.monash.edu/books has better knowledge about how to manage their produce, about healthier living, about women’s rights or floods, we have helped them make the world a better place for themselves.” 

Monash South Africa, www.monash.ac.za; International Development Informatics Association, www.developmentinformatics.org A global initiative for the UN has chosen Monash to play a lead role in developing sustainable solutions for our future. We think that’s brilliant.

In 2012, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) was launched by the UN Secretary-General to help find solutions for some of the world’s most pressing environmental, social and economic problems. Monash has been chosen as the Australia/Pacific Regional Centre for the SDSN and will mobilise researchers, industry and community organisations to develop ways to end extreme poverty and protect the environment. It’s a brilliant responsibility that will help pave the way for a bright future. CRICOS provider: Monash University 00008C CRICOS provider:

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