UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

ISSUE FOUR 2018

The Defence IssueJordan Forsyth charts his career from dismantling toys as a kid, to building drones and beyond

Future of Artificial IntelligenceDefending our oceans Drones on demand

UNSW Engineers

Collaboration

UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

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Three young UNSW researchers from the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering (SPREE) were recognised globally for their work with a 40 Under 40 award.

The trio, Associate Professor Bram Hoex (39), Dr Brett Hallam (32) and Dr Alison Ciesla (32) were among the top 40 people under 40 years of age attracting significant attention around the globe for their advances in solar technology.

A/Professor Hoex’s research looks at reducing the losses at the front and rear surface of the solar cell, both the contacted as well as the non-contacted regions by applying nanoscale thin films on the silicon surfaces.

great innovator, developed advanced hydrogenation passivation technology, helping to iron out defects in solar cells which has allowed efficiency of solar cells to be boosted a hundredfold.

Only time will tell how the next generation young guns of solar will make their marks.

When only the best will doDean’s message

News

As we come towards the end of a very eventful year, one’s inclined to review progress, both within UNSW Engineering and the wider world. Very quickly one sees significant changes in both. Notable is the increasing recognition of the role of world-leading research universities to serve as leaders within society, our economy and globally, and UNSW Engineering is stepping up to this challenge.

To best serve communities, one’s makeup should reflect them. I’m delighted that our goal of 30 per cent female representation among students, staff and academics by 2020 is progressing to reality: in this year’s intake, 27 per cent of undergraduate students were female, versus the Australian average of 17 per cent. And we’ve appointed Lucy Marshall as Associate Dean for Equity and Diversity – the first position of its kind created by any UNSW faculty. We’re now educating over 2000 future female engineers and 26% of the academic staff who educate them are female.

It was a pleasure to see seven of our academics named in the 2018 list of Highly Cited Researchers, placing them in the top 1% of their discipline: they were Cyrille Boyer, Liming Dai, Martin Green, Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, Derrick Wing Kwan Ng, Da-Wei Wang and Thomas Wiedmann.

2018 saw UNSW enter the top 25 across half the 4 major international rankings of Engineering and Technology and 27th for the third. These rankings consider both measures of our fundamental research quality, but also the impact of our education and research as perceived by peers and industry.

An increasing breakdown in world order and political instability is also changing, precipitating increasing worldwide focus on defence technologies, and Australia as a global political force is a part of this, as is UNSW as a global university.

Defence technologies have demands unlike any other. They must work every time, tolerate high degrees of stress, operate under even the most difficult environments, be safe to use (and difficult to misuse), and yet operate at a level of precision that can mean the difference between victory and defeat.

That is why defence manufacturers search the world for the most advanced research and the best engineers, from mechanical, chemical and electrical engineering to mechatronics, acoustics, electro-optics, aerospace and materials engineering.

In the past five years, UNSW has undertaken almost 100 defence projects valued at more than $16 million; we’re highly valued contributors.

We're working on the development of sonar-absorbing materials for Australian submarines and ships, and non-destructive evaluation techniques for the structural integrity of aircraft when they undergo fatigue testing.

As often happens with defence research, there are benefits for society at large. Take the $500,000 grant from the US Navy to advance the development of chips that can read neural activity in the brain: the resulting brain-machine interface being developed by Leonardo Silvestri, Francois Ladouceur and Nigel Lovell can be used to restore lost functions in disabled people.

Whether it’s developing new defence technologies or educating the next generation of Australian engineers, it’s clear that – for UNSW Engineering at least – only the best will do.

Professor Mark Hoffman Dean of Engineering

New dawn for UNSW solar as sun shines on next generationDr Hallam’s and Dr Ciesla work continues on from the groundbreaking work of the late Professor Stuart Wenham in advanced hydrogenation, aiming to improve the performance of silicon cells by eliminating or minimising defects in the cell materials.

The story of UNSW’s involvement in its development is synonymous with two giants in research: Scientia Professor Martin Green and the late Professor Stuart Wenham.

Professor Green first made his name establishing a number of solar cell efficiency records, but is perhaps best known for his invention of the PERC solar cell (Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell) in 1983. The late Professor Wenham, the Full article

unsw.to/newdawnforsolar

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

Rapid prototyping

Students float robotic ship hull cleaner to win Maker Games

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A robot that cleans and paints a navy ship while in dry dock is this year’s winning idea in UNSW Sydney’s Maker Games.

Now in its second year, the Maker Games Final Showcase at UNSW’s Roundhouse wowed the audience with prototypes made by budding engineers, inventors, entrepreneurs and designers to solve real-world problems set by industry partners.

Event winners Team Arash responded to the challenge set by a mentor from defence industry group BAE Systems to come up with a way to make the cleaning and painting of naval warships a cheaper, safer and more efficient process.

After months of brainstorming, bouncing ideas, tinkering with models and seeking advice from academic and industrial mentors, they emerged with AMAR – Autonomous Magnetic Attraction Robot.

“The robot is designed using magnets to attach to the side of a steel vessel, and then we added high pressure water which was simulated with hose nozzles and paints which could then be used to clean and paint the ship,” said team member Evan Pignatelli.

During their pitch to the judges, the team put AMAR through its paces in a simulation of the robot working on a ship’s exterior. AMAR appeared to be a compact, flat box on four discreet wheels,

about the size of a dinner tray, that moved autonomously back and forth along a makeshift ship’s hull that was set up on stage at an acute angle.

The team said conventional cleaning and painting of a naval ship involves having the vessel lifted into dry dock while many maintenance workers toiled in often dangerous conditions in a long and arduous process that costs $250,000 a day.

AMAR would require only one person per device to oversee its operation, and as well as eliminating danger, would reduce the maintenance bill by millions of dollars per ship.

The four winning members of Team Arash – Tom Grimes, Evan Pignatelli, Edwin Lipman and Kiel Allen – will be flown to California’s Silicon Beach, the tech hub of the western beach suburbs of Los Angeles where they will network with leading engineering and design organisations over the course of one week.

UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs was also in attendance and awarded the prize to the winners.

“This represents the very best of what I would call UNSW as an exemplar of generosity and partnership,” he said.

“It’s a wonderful example of people coming together.”

Project Officer for The Maker Games Kevin Duquette said a personal highlight was seeing students who didn’t make it onto the winners’ podium still walk away with some great industry connections.

“Some students told me they have already received an internship offer,” he said.

“I also heard that industry players are wanting to immediately negotiate IP, while external companies have expressed an interest in working with specific student teams.”

Students who designed a robot to clean naval ship hulls more quickly, cheaply and safely have won UNSW's Maker Games for 2018.

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Full article unsw.to/makergames2018

“This represents the very best of what I would call UNSW as an exemplar of generosity and partnership.”UNSW President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Jacobs

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

Collaboration

UNSW launched its defence capability portfolio at its inaugural Defence Showcase held alongside the Invictus Games in October.

The showcase presented an impressive insight into UNSW’s extensive defence expertise in the areas of training, research and industry collaboration.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UNSW, Professor Brian Boyle, gave the welcome address and highlighted the long-standing relationship between UNSW and the defence sector. He said that the Showcase was designed to bring academia, industry and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) together to collectively strengthen Australia’s defence capability.

“We come together at a time when defence spending by the Australian Government will reach $36.4 billion this year, setting Australia up to meet its 2020/2021 funding target of two per cent of GDP.

“Uniformed personnel will grow by 2.5 per cent with the total workforce forecast to exceed 76,000.”

Professor Boyle went on to say that in an increasingly unpredictable and technology-driven world, defined by the breakdown of previous long-term alliances and the emergence of new ones, defence capability is becoming increasingly more important.

UNSW Dean of Engineering Mark Hoffman highlighted UNSW’s extensive defence and security research, and its technology capabilities and facilities.

“We are proud to have detailed expertise in the 10 areas identified by the Department of Defence as being the most critical for defence science and technology. These include autonomous systems, hypersonics, human performance, cyber and aerospace.”

UNSW’s defence activities extend across several of its faculties in Sydney and Canberra, the latter being located at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA). It also opened the UNSW Defence Research Institute to coordinate and deliver world-class defence and national security research across the University and with its partners in the local and international defence community.

“UNSW has been a partner of the ADF as well as private sector defence contractors for several decades in the areas of research and development and specialist technical advice. That’s why we are here today,” Professor Hoffman said.

Following keynote addresses by former Australian Defence Force Air Marshal John Harvey AM; Chris Jenkins, Country Director and CEO, Thales Australia; and Air Vice-Marshal Warren McDonald AM, Chief of Joint Capabilities at the ADF Headquarters, attendees were treated to a series of mini-“pitches” from subject matter experts in some of UNSW’s key defence capability areas.

In the last five years, UNSW has undertaken close to 100 projects with the Department of Defence through the Department’s Defence Science and Technology Group, valued at more than $16 million.

Professor Boyle said that UNSW offers partners unparalleled expertise across its campuses and faculties, making it the obvious choice for collaboration on defence-based projects.

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Inaugural Defence Showcase launches UNSW as a partner for the future

“Defence spending by the Australian Government will reach $36.4 billion this year, setting Australia up to meet its 2020/2021 funding target of two per cent of GDP.”Professor Brian Boyle, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of UNSW

Full article unsw.to/defenceshowcase

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

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Women in Engineering

UNSW takes Women in Engineering to Invictus Games

Amie O’Dell had never heard of engineering when she was in high school at Grafton in northern NSW. She liked maths, science and tinkering with cars, but thought that she might end up a teacher – that’s if she went to university at all.

“My career adviser suggested that I consider studying engineering and after attending the annual UNSW Women in Engineering Summer Camp, I was sold,” Amie said.

“Women in Engineering does a lot of fantastic outreach activity with school students. I am now actively involved in the program because I want to help other girls realise that engineering is really cool and offers a huge range of varied career options. I am about to finish my third year of mechanical engineering and I am loving it.”

Amie was one of 30 female students that UNSW Women in Engineering took to the Invictus Games in October to run hands-on, biomedical-themed workshops for over 800 secondary school kids. Participants learnt how to design, build and test bionic hands and prosthetic legs.

Showing the children how to make these products for injured or disabled individuals exposed them to the life-changing impacts they could have on wounded servicemen and women as a biomedical engineer. It also opened their minds to new career possibilities in other fields of engineering.

UNSW Women in Engineering Manager Sarah Coull said: “Encouraging young girls into STEM is so important, because it

feeds service professions that need to have the make-up of the people they serve. Engineers design and build things for both men and women, yet female engineers represent only around 13% of the engineering workforce in Australia, a statistic we hope to change through initiatives to encourage schoolgirls into the field.”

Part of the Invictus Games Education Project, which gave schools the opportunity to spend a day at the Games to watch events and partake in educational activities, UNSW Women in Engineering sent its current students as role models to inspire girls (and boys) to study engineering.

The program has been running since 2014, with the goal to increase female enrolment in engineering at UNSW to 30% by 2020.

“To date the program has reached over 10,000 school girls who have been involved in engineering summer camps, school workshops

and events on campus. As a result, the number of women starting engineering degrees has increased by 78% since 2013 and first-year female enrolments for 2018 were at an all-time high, with 26% of the cohort being female. This is very encouraging,” Coull said.

Amie O’Dell will continue working with the Women in Engineering program next year.

“A lot of girls don’t consider engineering because they think it’s just for boys. Then they come to one of our events and realise how fun it is. I find this really satisfying.”

UNSW Women in Engineering took to the Invictus Games to run hands-on, biomedical-themed workshops for over 800 secondary school kids.

Full article unsw.to/wieinvictusgames

UNSW Women in Engineering Team

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

Student-led projects

Bugisu Project is a student start-up which aims to supply ethically-sourced coffee from Ugandan farmers to Australian businesses. As a not-for-profit, they will reinvest in charities and NGOs in Uganda, while working towards a zero-waste policy in Australia.

The idea for Bugisu Project was born in 2017 following a pilot program between UNSW Engineering and Gulu University where students visited Uganda for three weeks and worked on farms with local agriculture students. It was on one of those farms that Brody Smith and Darcy Small met Daniel Okinong.

“Daniel blew us away, not only with his knowledge of local agricultural practices but also world economies and business. He grew up in a coffee growing region and told us about the experiences of the coffee farmers and the multiple challenges they face,” says Smith, sixth year Biomedical and Mechatronics Engineering student.

“Australia has an $8 billion coffee market and people are becoming more ethically aware and interested in transparency with the supply chain, so we thought we could partner with Daniel to create an ethical business that could satisfy Australia’s love of coffee while driving some development projects in Uganda,” he continues.

Back at UNSW their idea continued to percolate. They talked with the UNSW Engineering Student Opportunities team and with academics. They recruited some fellow students and started firming up their business model. They joined a UNSW pre-accelerator program, undertook a one-week coffee trial with four companies in Sydney, and started sketching out a return trip to Uganda to visit farmers, potential development partners and experts in the international coffee trade.

“We travelled back in July 2018 for a two-week, two stage trip,” says Darcy Small, fifth year Photovoltaics and Solar Energy Engineering student. “We are by no means experts in ethical procurement, or setting up an import/export business, but that’s been the exciting thing. We’re talking to as many people as we can and learning as we go. It’s a complex space that even experts make errors in, so we want to do our research properly.”

Meanwhile, in Australia the impact is not limited to the warm fuzzy feeling you get from knowing the coffee you’re drinking is ethically sourced and benefitting vulnerable people, Bugisu Project also plans to create sustainable production and consumption practices.

Next steps for the Bugisu Project team are to continue talking with their potential development partners in Uganda, start to drum up business and partners here in Australia and start a recruitment drive among UNSW students to help them get the project going.

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A new way to create social impact

Full article unsw.to/ethicalcoffee

Monica Wang, Brianna Kerr, Brody Smith, Darcy Small.

Photo: Chrissie Hall

UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

Alumni profile

Go-getting Jordan Forsyth charts his career from dismantling toys as a kid, to building drones and beyond.

What’s the story of JAR Aerospace?

It was founded in 2016 by four university students, including two UNSW Engineering students, who wanted to develop Australia’s capabilities in unmanned systems. They wanted to enhance local knowledge so that instead of having to import this technology, Australia can grow its own aerospace industry. That’s where the education component comes in. We are training younger generations, and working to align this content with the STEM curriculum in schools, to build capacity for the future.

What does your role involve?

I’m a Lead Mechanical Engineer and develop drones for a range of applications. One of those is defence and over the last year I’ve developed, tested, 3D-printed and delivered our technologies both physically and at conferences.

One application we are developing is a UAS for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) that flies around with optical sensors looking for threats, enhances communications and assists ground vehicles and patrols. We are currently working on getting this system airworthy certified by Australia’s governing body CASA (Civil Aviation Safety Authority).

What made you decide to study mechanical engineering?

I was interested in everything when I was growing up! I drove my parents crazy asking, “why, why, why?” I loved to see how things worked and whenever I was given a new toy, I’d pull it apart, even before I played with it, so I could put it back together again. I ended up focusing on mechanical engineering because you can work anywhere and learn a lot about everything.

Looking at your CV, I’ve never met anyone who was involved in quite so many student groups as you: Redback Racing, MechSoc, CREATE, soccer, ultimate frisbee, underwater rugby, the Circus Society… What did you get out of all this participation?

I love communicating, getting involved, hearing other people’s stories and trying new things.

I gained great friendships and had a lot of fun. But it was amazing to go from the classroom, having learnt about things like stress and fatigue, for example, to then apply that knowledge and create a product that helped the Redback Racing car speed around a racetrack. That was incredibly fulfilling. I loved having a tool in my hand, as well as a pen.

We hear a lot in the news about ‘killer robots’ and the danger of machines making life and death decisions, does it worry you that your tech is travelling into dangerous realms for humanity?

It crosses my mind a lot. There’s a lot of advanced tech out there, so it is a worry, but the technology that JAR is involved in is primarily for ISR and communication solutions and there is always a human operator in the loop.

Do you have any big ambitions for your future career?

I’ve consciously been getting involved in startups because that’s the direction I want to go in the future, and I follow all those big companies, like Google and Tesla, because I am inspired by the things they’re doing with batteries and renewable energy. That’s what I want to get involved in: creating a more sustainable and safer future through product development and innovation.

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Full article unsw.to/jordanforsyth

A pen in one hand, a drill in the other

Jordan Forsyth

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

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“After I published It’s Alive!, people started asking me lots of questions about the social impact of AI, in particular the increasing concerns about how it’s encroaching into our lives,” he says. “That’s why I wrote my second book, 2062: The World that AI Made, which ignores the technology, and focuses instead on the reality and impact of where AI is going to take us.”

According to Walsh, this future look less like the dystopian world of The Terminator and more like the sensitive world of Short Circuit. “Most of the movies from Hollywood featuring AI paint a very disturbing picture of the future. But there is one movie that seems to get it right,” Walsh continues.

“As the Internet of Things gets more established and our devices become interconnected, things like your front door, washing machine, fridge and TV, will all be voice activated. You’ll just walk into a room and start talking and the room will obey your commands,” he says.

While Walsh makes a series of predications based on the way the technology is heading, he is very careful to emphasise that the future isn’t fixed. There is no technological determinism and what happens next in AI is very much the product of the choices we make today. In other words, we must consciously choose the future we want.

The book covers topics including privacy, education, equality, politics, warfare and work and although Walsh says there is absolutely no need to be worried about the Hollywood version of the future where the robots rise up and take over the world, there are a few things we do need to urgently address.

Jobs is one area that is already seeing major disruptions. From drivers to pilots and from medicine to journalism, AI is infiltrating every industry. Another concern is the impact AI will have on warfare.

Think about the implications of handing over the reins to decide who lives and who dies to machines,” says Walsh, who was one of more than 100 global tech leaders who signed an open letter in 2017 calling on the United Nations to ban killer robots.

Another big concern, continues Walsh, is that we may unconsciously build algorithms with many of the biases we are currently struggling with – racism, sexism, ageism etc. “We have to be careful not to bake these into algorithms and take ourselves backwards,” he continues.

Walsh says he is a pessimist in the short term but an optimist in the long term. “I wrote 2062: The World that AI Made to stimulate the conversation I think the whole of society should be having. We are in for a period of struggle as the world changes but ultimately, I think technology will deliver on things like climate change and the other crises we are experiencing,” he says.

Artificial Intelligence expert Toby Walsh’s new book urges us to take stock and choose wisely as we embrace the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

What will happen when we’ve built machines as intelligent as us? According to the experts this incredible feat will be achieved in the year 2062 – a mere 44 years away – which certainly begs the question: What will the world, our jobs, the economy, politics, war, and everyday life and death, look like then?

Fortunately, Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at UNSW has done the research for us.

An avid sci-fi fan from childhood, Walsh, who also leads the Algorithmic Decision Theory group at Data61 – Australia's Centre of Excellence for ICT Research, has long been fascinated by robots, machines and the future. In 2017, he published his first book, It’s Alive!, in which he tells the story of AI and how it is already impacting our societies, economies and interactions.

Technology

“We are at a critical junction in history where there’s a lot to play for. It’s rightly called the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and we need to start making choices so that it turns out to be a revolution that everyone can benefit from.”Toby Walsh, Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW and leader of the Algorithmic Decision Theory group at Data61

Choosing the future we want

John McCarthy, one of the founding fathers of AI, coined the term "artificial intelligence" in 1955.

Full article unsw.to/futureofai

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UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

It is rare to come across someone as altruistic as Henry Pan. It’s almost like he is living in an elevated sphere, just talking to him inspires you to want to do more for others.

His achievements are all the more extraordinary because fate has not always been so kind to him. In 2006, while Henry was helping resolve a custody issue for a couple, he was brutally attacked and blinded by the estranged husband. It was a setback, he says, but it was never going to stop him working towards the things he found most important in life.

“I knew right away that I had to change and adapt to my new way of life quickly. I knew that there was no point in blaming anyone, or wondering why this tragedy happened to me, my key focus was to live on and continue to be a useful person,” he says.

Born in Singapore, Henry came to study Mechanical Engineering at UNSW in 1970. Despite only understanding about 20 per cent of his lectures at first, he says he immersed himself in his studies and graduated four years later with a First-Class Honours Degree and the University Medal, followed by a long career in teaching and consulting.

But it is not for his paid work that Henry has been bestowed so liberally with awards and accolades – which include the Order of Australia and a Centenary Medal. It is his 40-year unswerving dedication to improving the opportunities for migrants as they work to integrate themselves into Australian society that has seen him heralded on the national stage.

“The drive for my longstanding volunteering is due to my gratefulness to the Australian community for giving me the

Being blinded in a terrible attack has not prevented UNSW alumni Henry Pan OAM from dedicating his life to helping others.

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opportunity to study at UNSW almost half a century ago,” Henry says. “That sort of thinking actually comes from Chinese teachings: you always show gratitude to the people or institutions that help you.”

Henry’s volunteering journey started in 1980. At the time, he and his wife had a small child and were doing the familiar juggling act of work, study and childcare when it became clear to them, and others in their community, that there was a complete lack of culturally appropriate childcare services for Chinese and other Asian migrants.

So, he, together with some other enthusiastic volunteers, established a fledgling organisation which would soon become the Chinese Australian Services Society, commonly known in the community by its brand name ‘CASS’.

“Because of its comprehensive range of services, CASS’s social impact has been very large, not only in the Chinese community but also in other East-Asian communities. I would say that over the last 37 years we have helped tens of thousands of people,” he says.

Henry’s wonderful blend of business acumen, charitable spirit and grassroots participation has been a large contributing factor to this success. For all his work, Henry was recognised by UNSW in 2018, when he was presented with the prestigious UNSW Alumni Award.

“CASS’s social impact has been very large, not only in the Chinese community but also in other East-Asian communities. I would say that over the last 37 years we have helped tens of thousands of people.”Henry Pan OAM, Honorary Executive Director of Chinese Australian Services Society

Without sight yet full of vision

Full article unsw.to/fullofvision

Henry Pan OAM

Alumni profile

Collaboration

UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

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Innovation

Drone on demandProfessor Con Doolan and his aeroacoustics research group draw on owl expertise to develop 3D-printed, tailored drones.

What does this project aim to do?

The drone-on-demand project is about providing the Defence Force with the capability to create specialised, custom-made drones using 3D printing. The idea is that rather than transport a whole series of different drones into the field, all they need to take is a 3D printer and the raw materials. Depending on the specifics of the mission, they put the details into a computer program and the 3D printer creates a drone tailored to that requirement.

Who are your collaborators and how long has the project been running?

The drone-on-demand project is a 12-month Defence Innovation Network (DIN) funded project that started in October 2018. By the end of the project we aim to provide an algorithm that will link the drone design parameters (i.e. size and shape) to its acoustic signature.

The project was initiated by the University of Sydney who invited us to join them on the application to the Defence Innovation Network (DIN)..

Why do you think the University of Sydney was interested in collaborating with you on this piece of work?

Making a drone quiet is a very important consideration, particularly for the Defence

application, and we have a pretty good reputation in this space. We have already been able to demonstrate the use of 3D printing to create quiet rotor blades which would be effective for drones, particularly propellers which are the noisiest thing. We draw our inspiration from different things, but owls are a big one, because certain types of owls can fly very quietly.

Why can owls fly so quietly?

The construction of an owl’s wing is both porous and elastic, so we’ve been trying to create porous structures within the rotor blade that will absorb the sound of the rotor blade itself.

Is there anything on the market like this at the moment?

Not that I know of. There are lots of drones designed for specific purposes of course, but there is nothing that can create a specific drone for a specific occasion at a specific time.

Are there many civilian applications for this technology?

Yes, lots. Wind turbines are one of our big areas of interest because the noise they create is one of the biggest reasons people don’t want them built in their vicinity. The quieter we can make them, the more wind turbines we can build and the more renewable energy we can generate.

What is it that interests you about aeroacoustics?

It combines physics, fluid mechanics and acoustics, which attract my interest academically. But it’s also important to so many technologies. We’re even doing projects on supersonic aircraft, where acoustic loading is really important on their structure.

Our overall objective is to make things quieter for people, to reduce environmental noise and thus improve the quality of life in urban environments, which I think is a pretty inspiring thing to work towards.

“It started in 2016 when my colleague Associate Professor Arnaud Castel and I were doing some work for the CRC for Low Carbon Living,” says Professor Stephen Foster, Head of UNSW Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering, who explains that project sponsors, The Ash Development Association of Australia, and the Australasian (iron & steel) Slag Association, had approached the CRC because they were looking for innovative ways to use industrial by-products: fly ash and steel slag (respectively).

Little did they know that they would create a unique high density concrete technology that could help address two of the biggest issues of our time: climate change and the sustainable use of resources.

When Foster crossed paths with A/Prof Ron Cox from the UNSW Water Research Laboratory, they made a serendipitous connection.

“I was describing the new dense concrete we had created, and Ron was telling me about how climate change and predicted wave size increases meant Australian coastal protection systems need to be upgraded, and all of a sudden we melded these two ideas,” continues Foster.

The result is a new breakwater concrete mix design which has several impactful benefits. In addition to utilising the by-products of fly ash and steel slag, creating new high value use opportunities, the high density of the concrete means units can be smaller, providing significant cost reductions and a smaller carbon footprint overall.

Fourteen high density low carbon geopolymer concrete 18-tonne Hanbar units have been cast and placed on the north breakwater at NSW Ports’ Port Kembla Harbour.

“This project is an excellent example of how researchers and industry partners can work together to bring innovative technologies to market,” says Foster.

Climate change problem solved with waste products

Full article unsw.to/droneondemand

Professor Con Doolan and his aeroacoustics research group from UNSW Mechanical Engineering

Full article unsw.to/wasteproducts

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Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering researcher Dr Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina has won a Heart Foundation Future Leader fellowship which she will use to perfect the way that cardiac patches are integrated with a damaged human heart.

Worth more than $400,000 over four years, the fellowship will allow Dr Rnjak-Kovacina to understand the physical and biological cues that drive tissue vascularisation – in other words, the extent to which body tissue develops capillaries.

Cardiac patches are comprised of cardiac tissue analogues grown in the lab from biomaterials developed to interface with human hearts.

In theory, they have the potential to be viable long-term alternatives to treating myocardial infarction. But in practice, the effectiveness of

cardiac patches is hampered by slow or insufficient vascularisation which may result in cell death and poor patch integration.

“We can now grow human tissue analogues in the lab, so we can take a material like silk, we can isolate cells and then seed them onto the silk,” Dr Rnjak-Kovacina explains.

“However, those tissues don't have capillaries, which means they don't have a blood supply. And so they rely on passive diffusion of oxygen and nutrients, and passive diffusion can only go so far.”

Following a heart attack or degeneration of tissue due to myocardial infarction, heart cells starved of oxygen eventually die and form scar tissue.

“The idea behind the patch is essentially to replace the bit of the heart that has died with a living tissue that we've grown in the lab,” Dr Rnjak-Kovacina says.

But the jury is still out on how the cardiac patch can be integrated with the heart, and Dr Rnjak-Kovacina is at pains to point out that we are at the very early stages of the study, with such treatment in humans still a good decade away.

There are two parts to Dr Rnjak-Kovacina’s research. The first is finding the best way to promote vascularisation using silk as a kind of scaffolding material to build the tissue around, and the second is to determine the best cells most suitable for the job, with stem cells being the leading contender.

“Over the course of the project we want to develop new biomaterial architectures and test how quickly they vascularise in animal models,” Dr Rnjak-Kovacina says.

“Then at the end of the project we want to take those materials that look promising, combine them with cardiac progenitor stem cells – which are cells that will differentiate into cardiac muscle – and then develop a cardiac patch prototype to test in an animal model.”

Helping Dr Rnjak-Kovacina achieve this goal is Associate Professor James Chong, a cardiologist at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research. A/Professor Chong will be looking at the best type of stem cells to use in the cardiac patch.

Despite being wary of her research contributing to a false dawn of expectations about cardiac patches, Dr Rnjak-Kovacina looks forward to the next steps after her research is completed.

“If the research looks promising, I'd definitely like to take it through to large animal models and ultimately follow it into humans, but that’s some years down the track.”

Drawing on her knowledge of silk-based biomaterials, Dr Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina will be using a Heart Foundation Future Leader fellowship to improve technology that could one day repair the hearts of cardiac patients.

Health

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Dr Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina

HEART OF GOLDBiomedical engineer wins grant for cardiac research

UNSW Engineers – Issue Four 2018

12

Back in 2013, with just 30 minutes to pitch their unique liquid crystal technology to Thales, a major defence contractor for the Australian Defence Force, the Zedelef team knew they had to impress.

“We offered them a quick demo of the system, which I think took them by surprise because optical technology is notoriously difficult to set up,” says Professor François Ladouceur from UNSW Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications (EET) and CEO and Founder of UNSW start-up Zedelef.

“We showed them how it worked, then one of them asked if it was sensitive to vibration and banged on the table to see if it would disturb it. When it didn’t budge, they said, ‘Wow, that’s really impressive!’ and called more engineers into the room.”

Five years and $1.5 million of development funding later, Zedelef and Thales had combined their know-how to develop and trial a 16-channel array sonar in Macquarie Lake. The success of the trial will now underpin an application to the Defence Innovation Hub (DIN) and lead to productisation for the Australian Navy.

Military vessels are equipped with all sorts of detection equipment, one of which is sonar. Whereas a traditional sonar emits a ping and listens for an echo (which will tell of the presence of another ship, submarine or the bottom of the ocean), a towed array sonar is a net that contains hundreds of microphones (also called hydrophones), that gets pulled behind the vessel and listens to the ocean continuously.

“The idea behind a towed array sonar is that every hydrophone receives sound signals at a slightly different time. If there is a ship or submarine within a few kilometre radius of your vessel it will not only hear it, but will triangulate its position and pinpoint exactly where it is in relation to you,” explains Ladouceur.

Research

Defending our oceans According to Ladouceur, there are a few problems with a traditional towed array sonar, such as the cost and weight, that Zedelef’s technology can mitigate.

Zedelef’s solution is a transducer that can take a small electrical signal from most types of sensor and passively turn it into an optical signal. Their technology has enabled Thales to replace all these copper wires with a single optical fibre. In one swoop this technology reduces the cost, weight and noise associated with the signal.

“Using this magic trick called multiplexing, which can only be done in the optical domain using light, our technology can read the output of these hundreds of hydrophones using a single optical cable in a robust, simple and cost-effective way,” Ladouceur says.

With the sea trials successfully undertaken, Ladouceur, along with fellow Zedelef founders Dr Zourab Brodzeli and Dr Leonardo Silverstri from EET, will work with Thales and the Department of Defence on formulating an application to the DIN.

“We need to advance the technology readiness level (TRL) from TRL5 validation in relevant environment to TRL7 demonstration in actual environment which typically represents a $1–2 million project over a period of two to three years. This will advance the technology into a product which can be purchased by the Department of Defence or the Navy.”

UNSW start-up, Zedelef, culminates their ground-breaking five-year collaboration with Thales in a successful sea test of a 16-channel array sonar. Now the partnership has set their sights on even bigger things.

UNSW Engineers is published by UNSW Engineering, UNSW Sydney 2052 AustraliaPhone +61 2 9385 0748 Fax +61 2 9385 5456Production Cecilia DuongDesign UNSW DEx Creative ServicesWriters Penny Jones, Lachlan Gilbert, Louise Templeton, Wilson da SilvaPrinter Cliff Lewis PrintingContact us Got a story to share? Know an alumni we should profile? Want to tell us what is going on in your part of the engineering world? We’d love to hear from you! engalumni@unsw.edu.auOn the cover Jordan Forsyth

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