UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

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UNSW Engineers

ISSUE 2 - 2018

UNSW’s first research base outside AustraliaWe’re off to space Disrupting the skincare industry

Making Safety

FunMiners see

VR potential

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

The School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering was awarded $16 million for 12 new projects in the latest funding round of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency.Associate Professor Bram Hoex, who is involved in six projects, says the funding will not only allow the University to retain its reputation as the one of the world’s leading solar photovoltaic experts, but will embed it more deeply in the companies driving the solar revolution.

Underpinning the majority of the research is UNSW’s Solar Industrial Research Facility, the first of its kind in Australia, bringing the technology developed to the level of industry readiness.

Five of the projects are focused on UNSW’s hydrogenation technology, using hydrogen to improve or fix potential issues in solar cells. These projects are being undertaken with specific industry partners, including Jinko Solar Co, SunPower, Trina Solar and LONGi Solar.

Other projects focus on the development of new contacts for solar cells, module technology, photoluminescence imaging methodologies, and tandem solar cells.

Onward and UpwardDean’s message

News

Arthur Ashe, the American tennis player who was the only black man to win at Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open, said: “Success is a journey, not a destination.” By that measure, UNSW Engineering has been on an impressive journey over the past year, powering ahead under our student-created ‘Innovation in Action’ motto and really changing the society we live in.

This year, 26% of the incoming student cohort is female. This is up from 23% in 2017, and 22% year before – putting us tantalisingly close to the Faculty’s target of 30% by 2020. This has taken determined effort by many people and led by the impressive staff in our Women in Engineering program. Their motto is ‘Changing the face of engineering’. And indeed they are.

We’ve also doubled the number of female staff who are professors or associate professors in the past 12 months, by recognising spectacular performance among our academics and promoting them, or through some of the 35 high quality new recruits we’ve hired.

Research income, the biggest predictor of a trajectory of success, rose by 35% led by massive growth in industry-related income, particularly in the area of energy. To grow this even further, our new UNSW Energy Institute is bringing together our many efforts under one roof.

We’re partners in the new $140 million Cyber Security CRC funded by the federal government and industry, and UNSW Engineering is leading seven of the state’s universities (as well as CSIRO’s Data61 division) in the new NSW Cyber Security Network, backed by the NSW Government.

Our $1.6 million, five-year ‘SECedu’ partnership with the Commonwealth Bank, to develop a centre of expertise for cyber security education and boost the nation’s paucity of cyber expertise, has enrolled almost 25,000 students to an online course in Applied Cyber Security created by the partnership.

Last year, our team at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) made UNSW the first Australian university to build its own satellite, UNSW-EC0, and successfully place it in orbit. ACSER also helped build a second, INSPIRE-2, and provided crucial components for another, Biarri Point, launched by Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group. With the creation this year of an Australian space agency by the federal government – to foster innovation between industry and academia – you can bet that UNSW will play a leading role.

But it will always be our graduates and alumni who are UNSW Engineering’s largest impact in the world. We’ve long produced the most graduates in the country, but this year’s intake is the highest ever: a remarkable 15,000 students have enrolled, with rising numbers of Australian high school graduates, but also students from India, almost doubling this cohort and diversifying our pool of international students. We’re impacting both Australia and our region.

These are many other great things happening across the UNSW Engineering community. We are indeed steaming ahead on our journey, and looking forward to many more successes in the year to come.

Professor Mark Hoffman Dean of Engineering

$16 million solar PV research boost

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Before the Impact Engineers left to catch their flight back to Sydney, one of the village elders rose to speak:

“There are a lot of people in our village. I am old and can’t see properly and I will die soon, but this program is so valuable to my younger generations. We are lucky and blessed to shine under your graciousness. This is a great act of merit. May you be reborn in a time when the Buddha exists and attain the supreme bliss of Nibbana!”

Buddhi Ranasinghe, a third-year student in Chemical Engineering, says the elder’s impassioned speech made the reason for him being there as crystal clear as the water he and his team aim to provide by installing a reverse osmosis water filtration facility in the village. The idea for Impact Engineers grew from a separate independent outreach program in Sri Lanka Ranasinghe and six other Sri Lankan friends embarked upon in their first year. They then went to the Engineering Faculty with a formal proposal with ideas about humanitarian projects they’d like to do in Sri Lanka.

Fast forward six months and they had raised almost $20,000 from sponsors and a Go Fund Me campaign; consulted with multiple stakeholders in both Sri Lanka and Australia; identified two villages in need of a clean water supply; and visited the villages to prepare for the installation. Once operational, the facility should have the capacity to delivery 10,000 litres of clean water per day to over 600 families.

One of the most striking things about Impact Engineers is their ability to listen, process and act appropriately on the information they’ve received. Information from the National Water Supply and Drainage Board in Sri Lanka; from the village authorities; from the local University of Peradeniya; from their sponsors and supporters; and from their mentors at UNSW - namely Professor Greg Leslie, Director of the Global Water Institute, Dr Fiona Johnson from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Dr Nick Osborne from the Faculty of Medicine.

Student-led Activities

A crystal clear solution

Ranasinghe is keen to stress the project is not a one-person effort. “I know I speak for the whole team when I say how thrilled we are to align our humanitarian values with the skills we’ve gained from UNSW to make real positive change in the country we love,” he says.

“We feel very lucky because UNSW is so vibrant in the humanitarian sector. The University has a clear strategic focus to support global communities in need, so we have not only been able to give something back to our country, but also to the University who has supported us.”

If you would like to get involved in a student-led project please email engprojects@unsw.edu.au

In January 2018, the student-led project Impact Engineers completed their first in-country project to install a clean water facility in rural Sri Lanka.

“I know I speak for the whole team when I say how thrilled we are to align our humanitarian values with the skills we’ve

gained from UNSW to make real positive change in the country we love.”

– Buddhi Ranasinghe, Project Manager Impact Engineers and third year UNSW Chemical Engineering student

Full article: unsw.to/slp1

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

Innovation

We’re off to space

In April, UNSW-EC0 – a new research satellite built by a talented team of researchers and students at UNSW Engineering – blasted off to the International Space Station. It was deployed into orbit in May and is still operating.

It was the first Australian-built satellite in 15 years, and only the fourth built in the country – itself an achievement. But it was only one of the satellites our team at the Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research (ACSER) built and launched in 2017; they also helped the University of Sydney and the Australian National University build another, called INSPIRE-2.

Both were part of the international QB50 mission – a swarm of 36 small satellites, known as ‘cubesats’ and weighing about 1.3 kg each – designed to explore a little-understood region above Earth known as the thermosphere.Together, they will carry out the most extensive measurements ever undertaken of the lower thermosphere, which lies between 200 and 380km above ground.

UNSW-EC0, was built by a team led by ACSER deputy director Dr Elias Aboutanios and will study the atomic composition of the thermosphere using an on-board Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer.

Among the other UNSW-designed payloads that UNSW-EC0 carries is the new Kea Space GPS receiver, developed by a team led by ACSER director Professor Andrew Dempster, which gives high-resolution positioning data to allow satellites to fly in close formation without colliding.

ACSER’s other QB50 satellite, INSPIRE-2, also carried an ACSER Kea GPS receiver.

Last year also saw the launch of Biarri Point, a cubesat for defence applications carrying new Namaru GPS technology developed at ACSER for Australia’s Defence Science and Technology Group. Biarri is part of a five-nation defence project between Australia, New Zealand, the US, the UK and Canada that will see the launch of another two cubesats this year.

The fourth ACSER GPS receiver to be launched in 2017 was on yet another cubesat, Buccaneer, which was an all-Australian satellite led by the Defence Science and Technology Group.

These may have been the first Australian satellites since 2002, but many more will follow. “The good news is that the nature of the space industry is changing,” says Aboutanios. “We’re moving into an era where access to space is cheaper and easier than ever before.”

Says Dempster: “Australia has only 2% of the global space market, but we should have 4% based on Australia’s proportion of global GDP. So there’s a real opportunity there, because we have the skills and there are several Australian companies emerging in this area.”

“Australia has only 2% of the global space market, but we should have 4% based on Australia’s proportion

of global GDP. So there’s a real opportunity there, because we have the skills and there are several

Australian companies emerging in this area.” – ACSER director Professor Andrew Dempster

UNSW became the first Australian university last year to build its own satellite and successfully place it into orbit.

Full article: unsw.to/OffToSpace

Close up of UNSW-EC0

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Technology

Making safety fun

As one of the School of Mining Engineering’s star students, Dr James Tibbett went straight onto his PhD after completing his degree in 2010. “That’s when I fell in love with virtual reality,” Tibbett says. “My PhD used VR technology to visualise big data from an underground mining operation and, once I’d finished it, the School offered me the role of Virtual Reality Development Manager which, of course, I jumped on.”

In this role, he developed a visionary 360-degree VR gamified Australian mining adventure for high school students and then it was just a hop, step and a jump to the idea for his startup company SeePilot. Launched in January 2018, SeePilot is a software platform that gives companies the power to create their own 360-degree videos and photos to create virtual experiences and communication pieces for their staff.

“Our software helps companies create virtual work-site tours allowing employees, site visitors and senior management to save time and be productive and safe from the moment they step onto site,” Tibbett says. “The joy of the software is that companies are in complete control of what they produce.”

Tibbett says the idea for SeePilot came to him while in the induction classrooms of mine sites. “Sometimes an induction would take a week or more and they could be, frankly, a tedious and disengaging experience. I would look around and see people weren’t really absorbing the information,” he says.

“I started to apply my knowledge of VR technology to the situation and saw very quickly how it could improve the induction process. A 360-degree camera could capture a whole scene for example, and you could use VR headsets and on-screen prompts to familiarise people with a workplace in a more user-friendly, exploratory and interesting way.”

Tibbett’s software takes the data from specialised 360-degree cameras and drones and visualises it to create an immersive ‘whole workplace scene’ that managers can then annotate with voice recordings and drawings. The module can be viewed by staff individually or collaboratively, allowing for both contextual training and spatial communication.

“There are a number of really attractive points to our platform,” continues Tibbett. “One is it makes safety training more engaging, which is no mean feat. Another is that it can drastically reduce the induction time, and another is that the software can track where people have been and what they have seen. So, for example, we know if a user has seen a hazard we wanted them to see.”

SeePilot has already attracted a number of early adopters and they are working hard to quantify the product and define just how much time and money they can save companies. Tibbett was also invited to join the prestigious Startmate accelerator program and is currently being mentored by a network of Australia’s top entrepreneurs and venture capital firms.

Tibbett says their first target user group is site health and safety managers because they’re responsible for inductions and making sure employees are engaged in the safety process. “The feedback is positive so far and SeePilot is seemingly achieving the impossible: making safety fun. We’re hearing things like, ‘Wow, why didn’t we have this sooner?’”

In addition to inductions, Tibbett and his team are looking at how SeePilot can be used for engineer-to-engineer communications, such as the handover procedure on a fly-in, fly-out mine site. “With VR, the engineer coming on site could receive the handover on the flight in and be up to speed with the operation by the time they arrived,” he says.

“The feedback is positive so far and SeePilot is seemingly achieving the impossible: making safety fun. We’re hearing

things like, ‘Wow, why didn’t we have this sooner?’” – Dr James Tibbett, CEO SeePilot

SeePilot helps companies create engaging virtual reality work-site tours and inductions.

Full article: unsw.to/vrtech

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

Research

Collaborating for the Environment

“The Centre for Transformational Environmental Technology is a huge opportunity for UNSW researchers and Australian industry,” says Scientia Professor David Waite on UNSW’s most recent venture. “We are actively looking for researchers and companies with expertise in environmental technologies who want to explore the vast array of opportunities in China.” CTET, as the new centre is known, is UNSW’s first research base outside of Australia and will act as a conduit for two-way information and opportunity exchange between UNSW researchers and their collaborators in China. “The Centre is a strategic alliance with the largest high-tech zone on environmental protection in China and will showcase UNSW’s environmental research credentials,” says Dr Yuan Wang, Head of the Torch Precinct at UNSW. “Specifically, CTET will provide access to local environmental problems (including wastewater and contaminated soil), which is critical when applying technologies developed in the lab to practice. It will also provide access to local industries, not only in Yixing where the Centre is located, but also in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, and across China. Importantly, the Centre will open up a stream of new funding opportunities to researchers and industry in both China and Australia,” she continues. Waite, who is the Centre’s inaugural Director, says the focus is firmly on fast-tracking the commercialisation of environmental technology, but there will also be a myriad of opportunities for UNSW undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdocs looking for industrial experience and internships.

“We are actively looking for researchers and companies with expertise in environmental technologies who want to

explore the vast array of opportunities in China.” – Scientia Professor David Waite, Director of the Centre for

Transformational Environmental Technology

Opportunities abound for researchers and companies interested in commercialising environmental technologies in China.

Scientia Professor David Waite

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Professor Brian Boyle, UNSW Deputy Vice-Chancellor Enterprise, says CTET is a place where UNSW researchers will be able to connect with other experts in their field and deliver not only outstanding research but also real impact on a global scale. “Our vision for the centre is that it becomes a hub for the large-scale translation of UNSW environmental research into industries across China,” he says.

CTET, which was officially opened in January 2018, is located in the largest high-tech zone on environmental protection in China in the Yixing Environmental Science and Technology Park, about 30 minutes by high-speed train from Nanjing and/or Hangzhou. The park covers 212 square kilometres and is home to over 100 companies from more than 20 countries and regions, all of which are exclusively focused on environmental technologies. It is part of the Chinese Torch Program that was established by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology about 25 years ago – arguably the most successful entrepreneurial program in the world, having spawned over 150 high tech zones across China.

“The Torch Program was conceived as a way of bringing like-minded industries together to undertake R&D in theme areas such as energy and environment, materials and medicine,” explains Waite. “In 2016, the first Torch Precinct outside of China was established at UNSW to promote collaboration between the two countries. Not long after, our team was approached by the Torch Precinct in Yixing asking if we’d like to partner on this new Centre.”

Waite says they jumped at the chance. “We have a relatively weak manufacturing base in Australia which limits the funding our researchers can access for applied R&D. Our exposure to the Chinese environmental technology industry, through the Centre, will be a huge boost for UNSW researchers in this respect.”

Wang is excited about being able to use CTET as a successful model to generate interest among UNSW alumni and existing industry partners. “We invite our alumni to find out more and come to work with our researchers. We are also happy to use our connections at the Centre to link them to Chinese industries with the aim of developing technologies that benefit the communities of both countries.”

Waite says the types of Australian organisation they are hoping to partner with range from small startups, who are looking to develop a single technology, through to government enterprises.

Full article: unsw.to/ctet Full article: unsw.to/infusion

What do tomatoes have to offer the maintenance of smooth well-hydrated skin?

“Lycopene,” says Associate Professor Frank Lucien at UNSW Chemical Engineering, who has just helped his industry partner Abundant Produce create a completely natural, one-of-a-kind tomato infusion face cream.

“Lycopene is the red pigment in tomato skin; it’s an active material with powerful antioxidant properties that can absorb the damage the sun’s rays would ordinarily inflict upon your skin and reduce the visible signs of ageing,” says Lucien.

Abundant CEO, Tony Crimmins, says consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the power of natural botanical extracts in everything from dietary supplements to cosmetics - an awareness supported by a large and growing body of scientific evidence.

“We’ve been breeding new sub-species and varieties of vegetable plants for years for the food industry,” he says, “but at our core we’re not so much a seed producer as a plant technologist, and over the years we’ve built up an I.P. portfolio of close to 5,000 plant varieties. This means we can breed new plants, completely GM free, with a precise mix of traits. So, it seemed obvious to us to offer consumers a range of scientifically validated, plant based, nutraceutical skin care products.”

Although lycopene is well-known as having antioxidant properties and can be artificially produced in a lab, Lucien agrees there is a strong argument for keeping it within its “natural matrix” because of the other beneficial natural materials coming out of the extract. “To that end, we have developed a unique process using carbon dioxide to remove the lycopene at a low heat. This enables us to produce a completely natural extract which we can then use to make the cream,” he says.

The collaboration is the result of a serendipitous meeting between Crimmins and Lucien on the UNSW campus, when Crimmins was visiting chemical engineer Professor Tam Tran as part of another project. The pair of them got chatting, discovered some key synergies, and from there the tomato lycopene extraction project moved with lightning speed.

“We met in December 2016 and by January had a research contract in place to start doing the initial investigations,” says Lucien. “By July 2017 we had a product on the shelves! I worked as a product engineer with Procter & Gamble before coming to UNSW, so I know that for every 10 product ideas they are lucky to get one successful release, and that will usually take the better part of two years to be commercialised. We did it in six months – that’s quite amazing!”

Crimmins couldn’t be more complimentary about the experience of collaborating with UNSW on the project. “It was so fast and efficient. It’s not just the pure chemical extract that is valuable to us, but the statistics and analysis too. The quality of Frank and his team’s work is outstanding.”

Nature knows best according to a blossoming research collaboration between UNSW Chemical Engineering and ASX-listed Abundant Produce.

Fruit-based face cream for healthy skin

Dr Yuan Wang

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

Wenham passed away peacefully on the morning of Saturday 23 December with family and close friends by his side. He died from malignant melanoma, for which he had been in treatment since being diagnosed on September 8, and had hoped to make a full recovery – but his condition declined quite suddenly.

“Stuart was a wonderful colleague and an inspiring leader who will be deeply missed by all who knew him,” said Prof Mark Hoffman, UNSW’s Dean of Engineering.

“His influence as an Australian engineer on the world’s transition to renewable energy was considerable. In an incredible career spanning more than a quarter century, he invented or co-invented suites of solar cell technologies that have been licensed to solar cell makers around the world and have had a major impact on renewable energy generation.

Wenham is inventor of the Advanced Hydrogenation hydrogen passivation technology, which has allowed efficiency of solar cells to be boosted a hundredfold. The technology, based on the use of lasers to control the charge state of hydrogen atoms within a silicon wafer, was heralded as a “breakthrough for silicon photovoltaics” by the UK Institution of Engineering and Technology when it awarded him the 2013 A.F. Harvey Engineering Prize.

News

According to Dr Michael Stevens, a researcher in the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, rotary heart pumps are playing an increasingly important role in not just extending life expectancy but greatly improving the quality of life for people waiting for a heart transplant or who have a heart condition.In fact, they improve the quality of life for patients so much that medical professionals are also approving their use in patients who weren’t eligible to receive a heart transplant.“My particular research interest is developing a kind of “cruise control” system whereby the heart pump becomes highly responsive to daily patient activities. We want to set up a system that can automatically adjust pump flow based on patient activity,” he says.There are a couple of ways to do this. One way might be to implant blood flow sensors, to monitor the current state of blood flow. Another way is to look at the pump data itself and analyse things like the energy we’re putting into the pump and the waveforms the pump is producing. Research has shown that those waveforms can give us some idea of patient activity.“Ultimately, heart pumps have opened up the opportunity for people with heart failure to enjoy life again. Initially, heart pumps were about adding years to the life of patients, but now the focus is on quality of life. What I want to do is take that to the next level,” Stevens says.

Pioneering solar engineer Stuart Wenham dies, aged 60

Cruise control heart pumps

“I am fortunate enough to have seen Stuart in all aspects of his life – work, family, church, sport, and friends,” said his daughter, Dr Alison Ciesla, a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW’s School of Photovoltaic & Renewable Energy Engineering. “He had the same positivity, enthusiasm, passion and care for everyone and everything in his life.

“It is some consolation knowing that he will live on through his many solar projects and the engineers he taught around the world, as well as the values and kindness he inspired in those around him,” she added.

“Stuart was a wonderful and very positive person, enthusiastically supporting those around him and lightening the mood of even the tensest situation by his insightful humour,” said UNSW Scientia Professor Martin Green, a long-time collaborator and friend (pictured on left with Wenham).

“He was also a brilliant and creative researcher, able to see patterns in results that eluded most of us, and new ways of capitalising on these.”

“He made huge contributions to the recent emergence of solar as the cheapest option for bulk electricity supply. This was not only through direct technical input, but also by his performance on ‘roadshows’, ultimately attracting billions of investment dollars into manufacturing capacity expansions. He will be very sadly missed,” Green said.

Full article: unsw.to/swehnam

UNSW is mourning the passing of Professor Stuart Wenham, a pioneer of Photovoltaics.

Dr Michael Stevens

Full article: unsw.to/heartpump

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People who suffer from depression may find it hard to recognise the onset of their symptoms. However, their smartphone may soon be able to hear signs of depression in their voice and provide the welcome nudge to seek help.

“My team has recently been awarded an ARC Linkage grant to develop a diagnostic aid to monitor depression using voice analysis software on a smartphone,” says Associate Professor Julien Epps from UNSW Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications.

“We’ll be working on the project with our longstanding partners at Sonde Health, who are located in Boston in the US, and the Black Dog Institute, a medical research institute affiliated with UNSW Medicine.”

The three-year, $500,000 project seeks to understand how artificial intelligence, or specifically machine learning, can help measure, analyse and understand characteristic changes in the voice related to one’s emotional and mental state. This platform aims to generate and aggregate this health information to create a clinical and/or individualised approach to monitoring and managing depression.

Epps has been studying emotion and mental state recognition from speech since 2007 and says vocal analysis has a number of benefits as an indicator of depression. The data is easy and cheap to collect, it’s non-invasive and can be monitored remotely. There are also a number of known vocal hallmarks of depressed speech. For example, due to psychomotor retardation, depression often results in the slowing down of thoughts and movement.

“Speech carries a significant amount of information that all plays together in the way it sounds. There is word choice and the speaker’s unique vocal signature, but embedded in that will be the speaker’s emotional state and information like fatigue level and cognitive load,” he says.

Why vocal analysis may be the Holy Grail of monitoring depression and other mental health conditions.

The ECG for mental health

Health Application

Epps explains that in many ways the project is already well-advanced. “Sonde Health has already developed a speech collection smartphone application and gathered large volumes of data. What they want to do next is improve the methods used to assess the level of depression from the speech they’ve captured,” he explains.

“Using short speech samples on everyday devices to assess mental state might sound like it’s in the realm of science fiction, but we’re on the verge of turning this idea into reality,” continues Dr Michael Chen from Sonde Health.

Sonde Health is a digital medicine company focused on voice-based technology with the potential to transform the way mental and physical health is diagnosed and monitored. Chen says this Linkage Project is exciting because much of the work in this field so far has been laboratory-based.

“There is a need to move this research into ‘real-world’ environments and this project will allow us to push the boundaries of acoustic health analysis and enhance health management,” Chen says.

The Black Dog Institute is a global technological pioneer in this field and already has a range of apps designed to help people track their mental state over time.

Dr Mark Larsen from the Black Dog Institute explains that this project is part of their Digital Dog research program, where researchers are using new technologies to find markers for mental health risk and harnessing these to link people with evidence-based digital interventions for depression, anxiety and suicidality.

Full article: unsw.to/EcgforMentalHealth

“Using short speech samples on everyday devices to assess mental state might sound

like it’s in the realm of science fiction, but we’re on the verge of turning this idea

into reality.” – Dr Michael Chen, Sonde Health

Julien Epps

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

No one was more surprised than Professor Arcot Sowmya, of UNSW Computer Science and Engineering, to find that her research on computer vision, pattern recognition and machine learning could have important medical applications.

“We had been working on analysing images using vision and learning algorithms for some time when my team were approached by a private radiology group to see if we could help them. That was about 15 years ago and where it all started,” she says.

The radiology consortium were interested in diffuse lung diseases – specifically, in using the UNSW-developed technology to learn how to extract features and recognise diffuse diseases from a CT scan of a lung. “They came to us and said: ‘Can you adapt your expertise in pattern recognition to help us automate diagnosis?’” she continues.

Sowmya went on to lead a large research team including radiologists, physicians and several artificial intelligence researchers, who successfully applied for Australian Research Council funding for a project which ran for several years between 2002-2005.

“When that project was over, one of the companies involved initiated a continuing project, which resulted in a series of algorithms and prototype software that they could use to recognise specific features of different diffuse lung diseases,” says Sowmya.

By this point their published research had piqued the interest of a whole new set of medical professionals from the Prince of Wales Hospital. Together they started a new project, still with CT scans but looking at asbestos-related diffuse disease. The result: more algorithms and software to recognise features of this condition and a lot more interest in their work.

Medical Partnerships

Computer-aided medical diagnosis

“Computers are already very much part of the workflow of physicians today. What we are trying to do is make that role more intelligent so the computer can take over some of the automatable tasks. This will free up the physicians

to do the more complex tasks that require their judgement and experience.”

– Professor Arcot Sowmya, UNSW Computer Science Engineering

Full article: unsw.to/ComputerMedicalDiagnosis

Arcot Sowmya is making life easier for physicians through her work on computer vision, patternrecognition and machine learning.

“Since then, we’ve been very busy. We’ve worked with radiologists to try to recognise prostate cancer from MR images. We’ve worked with brain MR images to try to recognise features of mild cognitive impairment, which can often lead to dementia, including Alzheimer’s disease. We also have productive and ongoing industry partnerships with companies which manufacture the hardware and software for CT and MR machines in this domain,” she says.

“Computers are already very much part of the workflow of physicians today. What we are trying to do is make that role more intelligent, so the computer can take over some of the automatable tasks. This will free up the physicians to do the more complex tasks that require their judgement and experience.”

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“I take X-ray micro computed-tomography images of rocks, particularly those relevant to the oil and gas industry,” says Dr Ryan Armstrong, Senior Lecturer in UNSW’s Petroleum Engineering. “Then we use the images to predict the rock’s effective properties - so how easily water, oil or sometimes gases flow through it.”

Armstrong says Digital Rock technology is a fast, efficient and accurate way to predict rock properties, and has become a vital tool for oil and gas companies involved in reservoir simulation and management. “The process was much more cumbersome in the past,” he says. “Companies would have to take a rock core sample from the reservoir, hook it up inside a flow cell in a lab, and pump water and gas into it to see how easily they passed through. It might have taken two weeks to get a single result, but with Digital Rock we can do it in an afternoon. It’s revolutionised the process.”

Having done his PhD at Oregon State University on X-ray microtomography imaging, Armstrong embarked on his postdoc at the Shell Technology Centre in Amsterdam where he and his colleagues honed their digital tools to evaluate rock properties for reservoir scale models.

About three years ago he joined UNSW to continue in his theme and in 2015, along with his colleague Dr Peyman Mostaghimi, set up the Multiscale Transport in Porous Systems research group. Most recently, they’ve been promoting their COALSIM Technology - a new method to accurately calculate the petrophysical properties of coal. In particular, the team is able to predict gas production from coal seam gas reservoirs with significantly greater accuracy, thus improving gas yield.

Simulation

Digital Rock

“It might have taken two weeks to get a single result, but with Digital Rock we

can do it in an afternoon. It’s revolutionised the process.”

– Ryan Armstrong, Senior Lecturer, UNSW Petroleum Engineering

Petroleum engineers, says Armstrong, are always dealing with a very sparse data set so any intel they can gather is crucial: “Even at the most mature reservoirs in the world, we have only retrieved about 40% of the available oil, so there is a lot left to learn about recovery. One way, for example, might be to inject different surfactants and chemicals to help mobilise the oil, and this is precisely what we can analyse with Digital Rock.”

Although applications are mostly aimed at the oil and gas industry, Armstrong says the technology is very broad and can be applied to any type of porous media, for example to understand hydrogen fuel cells or carbon sequestration. As for the future, he is very excited about advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning and how he might integrate this into his research.

Full article: unsw.to/digitalrock

UNSW Engineers is published by UNSW Engineering, UNSW Sydney 2052 Australia

Phone +61 2 9385 0748 Fax +61 2 9385 5456

Editor Deborah Smith Production Cecilia Duong Design UNSW Creative ServicesWriters Penny Jones and Wilson da SilvaPrinter Oxford Printing

Contact us Got a story to share? Know an alumnus 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 Dr James Tibbett

CRICOS: 00098G

Ryan Armstrong is unlocking the secrets of that mysterious solid aggregate of minerals that holds so much of our planet together.

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UNSW Engineers - Issue 2 - 2018

The humble engineer

Dr Viboon Tangwarodomnukun

Profile: Dr Elizabeth Cohen

Which way next?

While softly spoken and rather modest about her achievements, there is no question that UNSW Chemical Engineering alumnus Dr Elizabeth Cohen is incredibly focused and extremely good at what she does.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but my PhD changed my entire career and direction,” says Cohen, who is currently working in the US with a view to returning to Australia within her five-year plan. “It was an industry-based project at the CSIRO Land and Water in Floreat, WA. I was working for Rio Tinto who wanted to work out how to clean a contaminated site. I had stumbled into environmental chemistry and I loved it,” she says.

Following her PhD, Cohen plunged straight into consulting as a hydro-geochemist for Parsons Brinkerhoff in Sydney. In both her current role as a Principal Consultant for ERM in Detroit, and her previous role with Arcadis in Phoenix, Cohen’s work has focused on complex site remediation chemistry projects and site remediation strategy development and she says her work has allowed her to become a national technical expert in certain areas.

“My career has been very good to me in that respect. Every contaminated site is different, so everything I end up doing is an ‘innovative solution’. You can take methods from one site to another and adapt and change the things you’ve done in the past but essentially every solution is unique, which means I’m always learning,” she explains.

“I know it’s a cliché, but as well as the problem-solving aspect, I love my work because it makes such a huge difference in people’s lives. Ensuring people have access to clean water is a very satisfying thing to do.”

Cohen remembers her time at UNSW very fondly and mostly because of the people she met through her course. “They were so smart and from such diverse backgrounds. It’s been fascinating to see everybody going in their own directions and the paths they decided to take. I think I’m a better person from having done it and now I have this amazing breadth of experience to draw inspiration from. I think that’s very cool.”

As for the advice she would give to her 18-year-old self, Cohen is quick to answer. “I’d tell myself: ‘Say YES to as many different things as you can. The more experiences you can get along the way, the better prepared you’ll be when you finally find that thing you want to do for the rest of your life.”

“I know it’s a cliché, but as well as the problem-solving aspect, I love my work because it makes such a huge

difference in people’s lives. Ensuring people have access to clean water is a very satisfying thing to do.”

– Dr Elizabeth Cohen, UNSW Chemical Engineering alumnus

What’s your current role and where do you work?I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Production Engineering at King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT), in Bangkok, Thailand. I teach several subjects and head up the Micro-Fabrication and Advanced Machining Research Group. My research is on micromachining processes, particularly the use of lasers in the cutting process.What’s the big picture aim of the work you do?Laser use is now widespread in manufacturing industries for material processing. Laser optimisation can reduce waste and increase productivity, particularly across automotive and aerospace industries where high-strength metals and composite materials are essential.

Profile: Viboon Tangwarodomnukun Electronics manufacturing is another sector set to benefit as they use lasers for cutting and soldering micro-electronic components.Who has inspired you in your career and why?Professor Wang, my PhD supervisor from the School of Mechanical Engineering at UNSW. I consider him a role model for teaching and research excellence. He encouraged me to do high quality research and motivated me to push my limits. This solid foundation has really influenced me to become what I am today.What are your plans and ambitions? As a manufacturing engineer and researcher, my plan is to continue to invent and explore cutting-edge manufacturing technologies to enhance our quality of life.

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Say YES to opportunity and see where that takes you, says Chemical Engineering alumnus Elizabeth Cohen.

Dr Elizabeth Cohen