Message from the Dean
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Issue 4 August to October - 2012 Message from the Dean As we all know China is a power house of the world’s economy and Australia’s leading trading partner. Even regular visitors to China are continually astounded at the rate and quality of China’s advancement. It seems that every few months China’s landscape visibly changes as it improves the living standards of its vast population by developing and implementing technologies and infrastructure to provide energy, water, housing, health, transport and other services that many other countries take for granted, but which in China have only recently become practically available on a large scale. The energy, creativity and dynamism required to implement such massive change is immense, but Chinese Universities, Industries and Central and Provincial Governments are determinedly rising to these challenges. Welcome to the Engineering Comprehending the scale of China’s achievements and ambitions is not an easy matter. China has to build about 4 United States of America’s to offer its newsletter for 2012 population a similar standard of living as in USA. In 2010, Chinese expenditure Featured in this issue: on research and development was over $US149 billion and some estimates for 2012 suggest it will be $US199 billion. This will be greater than Germany, . Editorial France and the UK combined. .Discover Engineering Day .Canadian Geotechnical Award Australia is well placed to partner with China in R&D. At a recent China- .CESE2012 Australian alumni celebration I attended in Shanghai a few weeks ago, attended .CME Student Success by over 300 Chinese born graduates of Australian Universities, it was clear that .Between a rock and a hard place there was tremendous goodwill towards Australia from these very high .Race In2Uni achieving people across all walks of Industry, Commerce, Government, Science .IRMMW‐THZ 2012 and Engineering. One of the major prizes for high achievement on the evening .IEEE Awards was won by Prof Chen Jun, Director of the Key Laboratory of Advanced Energy .Future Fellowship Materials Chemistry at Nankai University, who obtained his PhD from .Awards Boom for Blast Fence University of Wollongong. Last year Dr Simon Chung, Global Chief Operating .Mining Conferences Officer of ChinaSoft International, which is now one of China’s largest IT .ACARP Funding Success companies in its field, was awarded the major alumni prize and he also is a PhD .AMPT2012 graduate of University of Wollongong. .METSOC Field Trip So Wollongong University, along with several other Australian Universities, is .Farewell Dr Dany Tague leading the way in partnering with China in Innovation. Our Faculty has many formal and very vigorous R&D technology based partnerships with Chinese This newsletter is published by Institutions and Industries, ranging from regular staff and student exchanges, the Faculty of Engineering. formal research contracts, joint research projects, and jointly organised For further information about conferences both in China and Australia attended not only by researchers but by items in this newsletter, email Industry personnel. [email protected] or telephone Continued next page ext 5364 Continued from page 1 ... John Brumby, former premier of Victoria, and now a Board Member of Chinese telecommunications company Huawei Technologies, China’s largest privately owned company, with an annual turnover of more than $US32 billion, predicted in 1999 that within a few years China would be Victoria’s largest trading partner. He says: “Several people told me that I had my figures wrong – that it couldn’t happen that quickly. But it happened in 2006.” He adds: “Today I make another prediction: within five years China will be one of the largest funders of Australian R&D.” It would be a brave person to contradict him, and Universities in Australia have a major role to play in developing and fostering such constructive partnerships. Asia of Business Faculty of Events Director Engineering Sinead Yeo, International Officer Professor Jun Chen Anji Phillips, and UOW Faculty of Professor Jun Chen, Engineering Dean award finalist and Professor Chris Cook UOW graduate at the 2012 Australia Selina Ling, China Alumni Professor Chris Cook Awards. and UOW alumnus and Australia China Alumni of the Year 2011 winner Simon Chung. Discover Engineering Day Faculty representatives recently attended the “Discover Engineering Day”, hosted by Engineers Australia, held at Port Kembla Illawarra Senior College for interested High School students in Year 9,10 and 11. The students were introduced to What Engineers Do, Examples of Engineering Projects, How to Become an Engineer, as well as hands on activities and presentations from current Electrical/Mechanical student engineer Kimberley Murdoch and Professional Engineer Joe Cato from Cato Consulting. There were 162 attendees, including students, teachers and representatives from UOW, UNSW, UTS, Institute of Technology NSW, BlueScope Steel, and members of the UOW F SAE Team. Students attended from Kiama High School, St Gregory’s College Campbelltown, Lake Illawarra High School, Warilla High School, St Joseph’s Catholic High School, Dapto High School, Kanahooka High School, Woonona High School, St Mary’s and Illawarra Christian School Cordeaux Heights campus. 2 CESE2012 Canadian Geotechnical Award The Faculty of Engineering’s Environmental Engineering has clinched three prestigious awards from the 5th International Researchers from the Centre for Geomechanics and conference on Challenges in Environmental Science and Railway Engineering and Centre of Excellence for Technology (CESE-2012) held in Melbourne in September. Geotechnical Science and Engineering have been recognised in the Robert M.Quigley Awards by the Scientific contributions in the field of membrane science and Canadian Geotechnical Society. technology by academics and research students from UOW were given a standing ovation at conference. PhD candidate Dr Xueyu Geng, Professor Buddhima Indraratna and Kaushalya Wijekoon and Master by Research candidate Dr Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn, were selected by the Shufan (Aileen) Yang both received the Best Student Oral Canadian Geotechnical Society to receive the 2012 Presentation Awards while Associate Prof Long Nghiem was Robert M. Quigley Honourable Mention Award for honoured with the Best Young Scientist Award. their outstanding contribution to the Canadian Geotechnical Journal. “This event has cemented my wish to continue with a PhD study and helped me to realise my own potential”, said Aileen The recognition was for their paper: “The after the conference. effectiveness of partially penetrating vertical drains under a combined surcharge and vacuum preloading”. Since the conference, Aileen has completed her Masters study. The 12 months of Aileen’s hard work have resulted in Their contribution deals with a new theory for three journal manuscripts. One has just been accepted for modelling rapidly consolidating soft clay foundations publication by Water Science and Technology and the others for road and rail embankments using much shorter are currently under review. Her thesis received drains than those typically installed much deeper in to recommendation for special commendations by both the clay foundation -- sometimes up to 40m deep. examiners. Aileen’s Master thesis project was supervised by Dr Faisal Hai and Associate Professor Long Nghiem. The outcomes of this research have been applied extensively now in Australia for various real-life From left: Dr Faisal Hai, projects including the Sandgate rail track, Ballina Kaushalya Wijekoon, Aileen Bypass and Port of Brisbane reclamation. Yang and A/Professor Long Nghiem For the full article visit: http://media.uow.edu.au/ news/UOW131877.html CME Student Success Two of our PhD students Alexander Simon and Ming Xie have won the prestigious European Membrane Society Travel Awards to attend ‘Euromembrane 2012’ to be held at the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre at the end of September in London. This is an important recognition of Alex and Ming’s work by the international community in their research field. Euromembrane is an International mega size conference in the field of membrane science and technology where the latest and the most cutting edge research results are reported. Both Alex and Ming are jointly supervised by Professor Will Price from Science, and Associate Professor Long Nghiem from the School of Civil, Mining and Environmental Engineering (CME). Geotechnical PhD student, Ana Heitor, supervised by Professor Buddhima Indraratna and Dr Cholachat Rujikiatkamjorn, has been awarded the prestigious 2012 NSW Outstanding Research Student Award of the Australian Geomechanics Society (AGS), part of the Young Professionals program initiated by the Institution of Engineers, Australia. Ana is the 3rd Candidate from the School of CME to win this award in recent times. Ana’s research work is focused on the investigation of cost effective and non-destructive testing methods for evaluating the compaction efficiency of reclamation fills. The use of this novel methodology will enable practitioners to efficiently control compaction of various landfills over large areas for Civil infrastructure construction. Ana was presented the award on the 8th August during an Australian Geomechanics Technical Session. 3 Between a Rock and a Hard Place During the mid-semester break, UOW mining engineering “Our pit tour of Drayton Mine was different to our previous students visited a number of surface coal mining operations in the experiences.