SYDNEY ANNUAL THE 2009 REPORT ON ACHIEVEMENT AND PHILANTHROPY CONTENTS 3 04 welcomE 24 hoNoUr roll 2009 contents 04 Chancellor’s message 24 Individuals 05 Vice-Chancellor’s message 50 Organisations and Foundations 54 Bequests and Estates 06 DEVELoPmENT HIGHLIGHTS 55 Challis Bequest Society 06 Environmental research 10 Alumni profile 57 Foundations 14 Staff profile 16 Foundation profile 58 Gift reporT 20 Community engagement 59 investment and capital management reporT 62 further informatioN 4 WELCOME WELCOME 5 The fifth edition of the Sydney Annual is published The support of our alumni and friends is It gives me great pleasure to thank and A message A message critical to our success and allows us to honour our many donors listed in these From the at a time when we in Australia and the University From maintain our distinctive Sydney tradition; pages. Sydney Annual is published to of Sydney are carefully riding out the effects of the a tradition that values both academic recognise your invaluable support, and Chancellor the VIcE- excellence and deep engagement with the to highlight some of the many ways most severe world economic crisis in recent history. technical and social challenges that face philanthropy is assisting us to maintain Chancellor Australia and the wider world. and build upon our tradition of excellence. Together we can ensure that Sydney In 2009, despite prevailing market instability, confirms its place amongst the world’s best the University’s donor numbers rose by universities. It is during such times that education and It is with much appreciation and pride that I 20 percent. This is an outstanding result the young become even more precious to invite you to share these splendid accounts, that is both heartening and humbling. us; without them and the hope they bring, made possible by the gifts and foresight of Dr michael Spence we face a bleak future. our donors and friends. In 2010 the University looks to the future as we continue an exciting new phase of The Vice-chancellor and Principal Research, innovation and the nurturing of our strategic planning. Our planning is guided The University of Sydney best and most deserving students are the Her Excellency Professor by our ambition to create and sustain a foundations on which this University is built marie Bashir Ac cVo and will continue to be built in the decades to university in which, for the benefit of both come. It is only through the generosity, goodwill The chancellor The generosity of our Australia and the wider world, the brightest and foresight of donors and benefactors that The University of Sydney researchers and the most promising the University’s work can not just continue, alumni and friends is students, whatever their social or cultural but flourish. In this issue ofSydney Annual you never more important background, can thrive and realise their full will find inspiring and fascinating stories that potential. To support this vision our donors illustrate how their contributions are used, and than in times of economic give generously for research, scholarships, the results achieved. uncertainty. and a better student experience. ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH 7 Dr Greg Sword of the School of Biological Sword is a world-renowned expert on There is also another – rather more CautioN: Sciences is developing 21st century orthoptera, the group of insects including gruesome – driver of swarm behaviour, says NoT For solutions to a problem that has afflicted the cricket, the grasshopper and the locust, Sword: cannibalism. humankind since the dawn of civilisation. the infamous eighth of the ten plagues “It turns out that the locusts are entomophobes Tearing along bush tracks in a 4x4 truck, visited on Egypt in the Old Testament’s constantly trying to nibble on each other,” guided by satellite, ready to face down an Book of Exodus. he says. “Typically they are concentrated in areas where the resources are being depleted adversary that has stalked the world for “Humans have been observing locusts very quickly and at times like that, the next millennia: this is field ecology, Hollywood- for the entirety of recorded history,” says best thing, nutritionally speaking, is your style. But Greg Sword laughs off the “bug- Sword, who heads the School of Biological neighbour. So they constantly nibble and busting” premise of his recent foray into the Science’s Molecular Ecology Lab. “We’re keep moving to avoid being nibbled on and at TV industry. much better at it now, but we’re still not the same time they are nibbling on “We’ve just filmed a documentary for [pay that great at controlling them. Although the ones in front. It’s a chain reaction, a TV channel] Animal Planet called Swarm we are making tremendous progress in forced march.” understanding why locusts swarm and move Chasers and they were trying to make it like Sword is particularly interested in the the way they do.” something from the movie Twister,” he says. mechanics of swarm motion. Figure that “They were out to make us look a lot more Only recently, he explains, have scientists out, the reasoning goes, and controlling an outbreak becomes much easier. Cannibalistic locusts exciting than we really are but, in a way, our begun to discover some of the mechanisms job is like that. We get the GPS coordinates, behind the locust’s instinct to swarm in “We get the impression that these swarms are all in a day’s work we drive out into the desert; we look for sky-blackening numbers that can extend are all of one mind or have some kind of for Greg Sword, writes locusts. The really funny thing was that the into the hundreds of millions – sometimes master plan or destination in mind,” Sword sound guy was terrified of bugs. We had a billions – and lay waste to enormous tracts explains. “But it turns out that isn’t the case Jason Blake lot of fun with him.” of land. at all. Each locust is only interacting with ENVIRONMENTAL 8 RESEARCH There is also another – rather more gruesome – driver of swarm behaviour, says Sword: cannibalism. Dr Greg Sword locusts within about 12 centimetres around Sword’s team is also collaborating with the Undergraduate studies in ecology in Arizona, with Australian plague locust it. So they are only responding to things in a Australian Centre for Field Robotics (based led to doctoral work in Texas and post- specimens very local environment. But when you have in the University’s School of Aerospace, doctoral studies at Oxford, and fieldwork in these local responses happening millions and Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering) West Africa, home to the plague locusts of millions of times over, you get what is called to develop cutting edge insect tracking Exodus 10:12-15. an emergent property: the group takes on a technologies. Compared to its African or North American certain shape, a direction.” “We are working on developing unstaffed cousins, the Australian plague locust is And if that direction can be predicted, says aerial systems – surveillance drones – “a puny little creature”, says Sword, who Sword, farmers and agencies such as the equipped with incredibly sensitive cameras,” grew up in Arizona, where grasshoppers Australian Plague Locust Commission will be says Sword. “We’re developing little reflector can grow as big as a man’s thumb. “The Australian plague locusts are about the size better prepared to deal with the potentially tags that only weigh a couple of milligrams of your pinky nail.” When Aussie locusts devastating effects of a swarm. that can be attached to some of the insects. The aerial drone will have a high powered swarm, however, they do so spectacularly. Investigating the collective dynamics strobe and a digital camera timed to it that In 2008, one swarm was estimated to be of a swarm requires a great deal of will pick up the little flash from the tag, nearly 6 kilometres long. inter-disciplinary collaboration. Physics, which allows us to get movement data in real “Australia has three swarming locust species mathematics and robotics may all come into time on tens or even hundreds of individuals.” and unlike species elsewhere, the Australian play at some point and all are areas of great Sword has devoted much of his career plague locust, in particular, swarms pretty strength on campus, says Sword. to developing an intimate understanding reliably,” says Sword. “If you want to study “There is a body of mathematical theory that of grasshoppers, crickets and locusts, a swarming behaviour in any given year, this is tells us how large groups behave and you can passion that began during childhood while the best continent to do it.” apply the same techniques – some of which collecting bugs and snakes in the deserts General donations to the have been developed in statistical physics – of the American southwest. “I always knew Sydney Development Fund help to support to model the motion of a swarm.” I was going to be a scientist,” he says. research projects like Greg Sword’s. ALUMNI PROFILE 11 The professional rugby league has come for sick children in hospital; and speaking can’t maintain a sporting career and study Bright star in for more hard knocks in the media to high school students in Sydney’s west at the same time,” he says. “If you have the than on the playing field in recent times. about the importance of a university opportunity and the willpower to do it, it’s rises in the Little wonder then that the Bulldogs, education. He is also a board member of the not that hard.” struggling with their reputation as the Rugby League Players Association. west Besides, says Payne, his parents wouldn’t NrL competition’s bad boys, took a shine And all this he does very quietly.