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STEEL TURNS A NEW LEAF How Colorbond learned from the lotus 4 SERIOUSLY SOCIAL Tips for business on surviving social media 6 QUANTUM LEAP Move over Silicon Valley, here come diamonds 7 DIVINING INSPIRATION Melbourne researchers help make the Pope smile 8 BET THE HOUSE For small business, the stakes can be high 10 SITTING PRETTY Getting to the bottom of car comfort 11 MASALA MANUFACTURING Teaming up with India
together In nature we never see anything isolated, but everything in connection with something else which is before it, beside it, under it and over it. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,1749-1832
Popular history would have it that great breakthroughs in science, technology and culture spring from the private revelations of individuals – Archimedes and his bath, Newton and his apple, Mary Quant and her tape measure.
12 RMIT’S GLOBAL REACH We’re on every continent, if you get our drift 14 COOL OPERATOR What to wear when it’s flamin’ hot 15 BOUNDARY RIDER Blood research benefits from lateral thinking 16 GAME OF LIFE Merging play, technology and the human body 18 HUB AND SPOKES A vertical landmark in horizontal thinking 19 RECONNECTING WITH CUSTOMER DEMAND Insulating consumers from electricity shock 20 CHOOSE LIFE Construction clients can make a difference
But Archimedes’ Eureka moment had scant meaning in isolation from the rhythm of empire in the eastern Mediterranean. The Enlightenment gave context to Newton’s apocryphal bump on the head. And the miniskirt was surely the love child of the ‘60s zeitgeist. Progress in the 21st century is no less reliant on the interplay of individual and collective labour and inspiration. Indeed, given the seemingly unstoppable growth in the international trade of goods, services and ideas, the formation of alliances has strategic relevance like never before. That is why, 125 years after its foundation, RMIT understands that our connections to industry partners, to the urban communities within which we operate and to their governments are vital to our growth as a global university of technology and design.
20 CLEAN BILL OF HEALTH Cutting pollution is not to be sneezed at 21 STICKY SITUATION Working on the heart attack pill
I hope this magazine will give you fresh insights into the way that RMIT’s researchers are engaged alongside our partners in solving practical problems of our time.
22 SOLE SURVIVORS Inside the reality of welfare-to-work 22 MAKING THE NUMBERS WORK How to turn spenders into savers 23 POWER PUNT A technology agnostic talks solar
Professor Margaret Gardner AO Vice-Chancellor and President RMIT University Thursday 13 September 2012
24 CROWNING GLORY Art from a living treasure
www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections Making Connections has been produced by the Engagement unit at RMIT University. Publisher: Paul Noonan Editor: David Glanz Picture editor: Gosia Kaszubska Design and layout: Leon Powell, Narelle Browne RMIT University, 124 La Trobe Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000 Tel. +61 3 9925 2000 www.rmit.edu.au
Proudly printed by Hannanprint Victoria in accordance to ISO 14001 Environmental Certification. Printed on paper from well-managed certified sustainable forests. Please recycle. 12419 0712
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Cover image: A detail of RMIT’s new Design Hub. See the story on page 18. Images: Earl Carter, pages 1, 2. istockphoto.com, pages 3, 7, 11, 12, 13. Dan Murphy, page 4. Carla Gottgens, pages 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. Jane Burry, page 7. Tesla Motors, page 11. Katharine Dettmann, page 18.
STEEL TURNS STORY BY IONA SALTER
A building product developed for the harsh Australian sun is being adopted to withstand the deluge of a tropical monsoon. Many Australian companies now do more of their business in Asia, so it’s increasingly important to develop products with regional conditions in mind. BlueScope Steel has been operating in Asia for 40 years – with its steel used in Kuala Lumpur’s Petronas Towers and at Beijing Airport – and its researchers understand this principle well. The company’s Colorbond steel may be best known to Australian consumers through advertising images of quality testing in the Australian outback, but the product sold in South East Asia is very different.
The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur: benefitting from Australian technology.
Its development has taken into account the way buildings can be stained in tropical weather – using the lotus leaf as inspiration – highlighting the importance of research and development in the global expansion of local industry.
The features the research team are modelling have been influenced by nature; namely, the lotus leaf. “The surface of the lotus leaf is sparkling clean usually, in a dirty environment – you see this around ponds,” Yarovsky says.
RMIT’s Professor Irene Yarovsky has been involved in some of this research through an RMIT-BlueScope partnership. She says the ongoing study is improving the product and making it even more suitable for tropical weather and high pollution levels.
She says the leaves are hydrophobic, meaning they repel water. “They’re also rough, so when the water droplet comes to the surface of this leaf it’s being repelled due to the hydrophobic nature of the leaf.
“Staining of the coating is an issue because of climatic conditions in Asia, the high temperatures and tropical rain, that bring down a lot of atmospheric pollution,” Yarovsky says.
“And because it’s rough, the contaminant can’t go in and the water droplet just rolls off, carrying the contaminant with it.”
In order to improve the coating’s capacity to stay clean, the research team needs to understand its structure and the environment it will be used in, she says. Yarovsky, along with BlueScope’s Dr Evan Evans and a team of postgraduate students, do indeed have a very close understanding of the coating: the features they are modelling are smaller than 10 nanometres. The head of a pin, by contrast, is about 1 million nanometres across. It is rare that research conducted on nanoscale features is applied to large-scale manufacturing, but Yarovsky says this approach is helping keep the Asian variation of Colorbond – named Colorbond Clean – at a price that reflects its everyday use while maintaining quality.
In their modelling, the research team is testing similar concepts for the surface of Colorbond Clean. Evans says by modelling the potential changes at an atomic level first, only the best will be manufactured for real-world testing. “Some of those options may take us years to develop in the laboratory but it will take us far less time to develop the nanoscale models and test the models,” he says. Colorbond Clean is already well suited to tropical weather, but improving it may allow BlueScope Steel to provide customers in Asia with a longer warranty against product discolouration, which Evans says remains a major challenge in the Asian markets. “What we’re doing with RMIT is looking at the next generation of this product so that we can potentially build on our market leadership position in Asia.”
“It needs to be very intelligent technology because it needs to be cost-effective,” she says.
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Jeremy Yuille School of Media and Communication RMIT University JY
Amanda Gome CEO Private Media AG
Professor Mohini Singh School of Business IT and Logistics RMIT University MS
Luke McCormack Senior Analyst Deloitte Digital LM
Dr Tim Butcher School of Management RMIT University TB
Social media. Every business knows it needs to engage. But what’s the cost-benefit equation? RMIT brought five experts together to plot a path through the maze. JY
What’s the value for business of social media?
MS Organisations achieve value from social media in four sectors: energising and empowering employees; transforming and integrating business processes to capture data from social media; marketing, customer service and promoting the organisation; and innovation and IT-based efficiencies. It also helps organisations create corporate identity and promote transparency.
Social media in organisations is like the implementation of any new technology, where initial costs are high, there is a very steep learning curve and there are a lot more intangible benefits than tangible ones. LM When we go out and talk to clients the key is not talking about social media in a vacuum. It’s about leveraging social media to achieve your core business objectives. AG We do a lot of webinars and ebooks and education on social media for readers of our publications who want to grow bigger, better businesses. It’s important to get them experimenting, but also to get them to understand what they want out of it. A lot of people do it for the wrong reasons and it backfires. JY We hear more about the train wrecks than the successes. AG I think social media also prevent wrecks because people can complain directly to the company. It’s a terrific way to get close to your customers but also to ask them for feedback on how things are working. So often companies, if they do it properly, can get information and fix a problem before it gets really bad.
TB It’s a conversation. When using social media JY Social media is also being used internally, like Yammer, and this skill to have a conversation for marketing you have to be open, honest and starts to filter out. transparent. It’s what your brand stands for and if your customers don’t buy it they’re going to tell you. LM Before Yammer, our CEO, Giam Swiegers, never had a way of tapping into the broader LM It’s about identifying the issues before they hit the front page. Often we’ll find things bubbling along organisation and seeing if his strategy was being understood. A policy was put in place that was not in social media before they hit the headlines. We’re received well by staff and a Yammer thread started. seeing Telstra, for example, using social media Twenty-four hours later Giam jumps into Yammer as a customer support channel, as a two-way and sees this and says, we have a problem. He conversation with their audience. calls our COO, finds the person making the most With the recent PR disasters, they haven’t thought sense about this policy change, meets for coffee through the market perception right now of their the next morning, comes to an agreement and brand. With Qantas, “we’ve grounded our fleet, just the policy was reversed. In 36 hours. given our CEO a pay rise, what’s the sentiment out Giam will post on Yammer that he’s doing a there?” If that’s the market sentiment, perhaps we presentation to a client and will ask if anyone has shouldn’t be doing these shiny, dinky campaigns. suggestions and people will throw ideas around. AG People are getting a bit hard-headed about this. In terms of navigating that tacit knowledge of the organisation, it’s completely revolutionised the Corporations are saying, if we use social media way we communicate. we are going to have to accept that some people are not going to like what we do. We say it’s a PR AG I think social media is very driven by women. disaster – is it really a disaster for them to come I think online is. Look at business media. Only face-to-face with what people are saying on the 25 per cent of readers in print are women. Smart street and for companies to take it on board? Company set up Property Observer, for property TB That ability to respond is interesting. Who is on investors, and almost 50 per cent of readers are women, professional women. Women like the the other end of the tweet within an organisation is technology of it. It’s just a much better world interesting. A lot of early mistakes were made by for them. having a tech person on the twitter feed who wasn’t able to cope.
When Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott tweeted, it was very much one-directional, they didn’t want feedback, and when they eventually did target people to tweet to they were targeting people with very few followers, so that their message didn’t have a lot of reach. Because what social media is really about is reach. Luke, you train people to do this kind of job. Have you noticed that there are different qualities of people who are good at this? JY
MS These apps can be developed further but that’s dependent on data mining and pushing relevant information to whatever has been identified by personal use. JY
Where might we be in five years?
What happens to the people not on social media due to age or computer literacy? Will they be disadvantaged? From the point of view of organisations, there will be more standards and policies. MS
There’ll be networks bigger than facebook and twitter that we’ve never heard of today but people will be much more careful about what they share. Corporations will start using brandsafe environments to experiment. We work with banks, whose customers read Smart Company. The Commonwealth Bank did a social media experiment: we put up content, people engaged and the bank joined in, but in an environment we controlled – and we have good, well-behaved readers. AG
TB Trust is important. Organisations are going to have to show that they are trustworthy, authentic and aligned with customers’ values. Customers first, to the nth degree.
“Often we’ll find things bubbling along in social media before they hit the headlines.”
JY Mobile has totally changed the way we connect. Do you have any thoughts?
LM Mobile was a huge one last year and will continue to be a huge trend. All the clients we’re LM It’s really just having a conversation with talking to, we’re saying if you don’t have a mobile someone on the other end of a tweet or facebook strategy you seriously need to consider getting comment. One of our clients had a really negative one up and running. It really comes down to the comment come through on facebook. The person user experience side of things. How do I want that responsible for social media clicked on this person’s content delivered? We’re seeing more and more name and went through to their facebook feed. The access through mobile devices, tablets, apps, post prior to this one had their contact number. This where people are out and about. person called them and said “I’m from this company AG And geotargeting. Deals that flow through as and just read your really negative comment and you’re in the shopping centre, $20 off that dress just wanted to have a chat with you and resolve it” you’ve been hovering around. That experience is and suddenly the person on the other end of the going to revitalise the smart retailers who get into it. line is apologising profusely and retracting their comments.
LM Three major things: identity will continue to be a huge issue; I think open data and open innovation and crowd will expand; and social media inside organisations’ safe haven, get execs up to speed around social media because they have a safe place to play. Five years from now will we look back at social media like the phone today, we wouldn’t dream of an organisation not having a phone.
Hear the full conversation at www.rmit.edu.au/podcasts making connections september 2012
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QUANTUM STORY BY kevin slack
In computing, Moore’s law says the number of transistors on a circuit doubles every two years. That rate of growth, however, is likely to start slowing from as early as next year, according to some in the industry. Hewlett-Packard, the world’s largest information technology corporation, has identified the importance of quantum approaches to help maintain the growth in computer power. The theory of quantum mechanics underpins our understanding of the physical world and is central to most modern technology from the last century. Quantum logic is the step up for this century. Unlike current computers based on transistors, quantum computers don’t encode data using bits, but instead use qubits, which can appear as if they are in more than one state simultaneously. US-based HP Fellow and group leader for Large-Scale Integrated Photonics, Dr Ray Beausoleil, sees diamond as a front-runner to replace conventional silicon in the race for practical, large-scale quantum computers. “It’s diamond’s unique combination of solid-state, optical and quantum properties that make it so attractive for quantum computing,” he says. Diamonds are a special form of carbon with unusual properties. Synthetic diamonds, which are cheaper, have been manufactured since 1953. Beausoleil says the recent breakthrough with synthetic diamonds is the availability of batches that are more or less identical. “That’s why we are partnering with RMIT’s Associate Professor Andrew Greentree. Greentree is a theorist with a firm understanding of the experimental imperatives of quantum optical and diamond research,” Beausoleil says.
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“We’ve been working with Greentree for six years and his ideas have helped form many of the core research directions of what we call the Melbourne Diamond Group, and they have been substantially emulated worldwide.” Greentree is working on this research with Professor Steve Prawer at the University of Melbourne. The project is worth $1.7 million in cash and kind over three years into next year, with funding coming from HP and the Australian Research Council. Greentree says quantum technologies ultimately promise lower power consumption and improved functionality over classical silicon technologies. Although much of the quantum community has concentrated on the realisation of a full-blown quantum computer, this will take time. “Our research is exploring the role of diamond colour centres in the generation of quantum states of light,” he says. “We are aiming to integrate these sources with existing optical platforms, forming the basis for a quantum co-processor to extend the functionality of conventional computers. We are designing the interface for a hybrid classical-quantum device. “HP brings enormous experience and infrastructure, as well as a proven path to prototype and market for successful technologies,” Greentree says.
rmit » a global university of technology and design
Associate Professor Andrew Greentree.
DIVINING INSPIRATION STORY BY paul noonan
Architects are used to site inspections, but a visit from the Pope was a once-in-a-lifetime honour for the design team untangling the mysteries of Gaudí’s unfinished masterpiece, la Sagrada Família. When Pope Benedict XVI said: “I would like to mention each and every one of those who have made possible the joy that fills us today, from the promoters to the executors of this work, the architects and the workers, all who in one way or another have given their priceless contribution to the building of this edifice,” he was, in part, talking about Professor Mark Burry and his RMIT team. Burry has been involved with la Sagrada Família in Barcelona since 1979. He says Gaudí worked on the project for 43 years, from 1883 to 1926. “During the 1930s civil war, Gaudí’s onsite workshop was attacked by vandals and drawings were burnt and large-scale models, that held the secrets, were broken.” With expensive high-end equipment and the latest software, Burry’s team has been able to assist with the continuing construction of the church. The research starts from the interpretation and reverse engineering of Gaudí’s models to fully understand his intentions, and involves a forensic approach to the surviving evidence.
“Most of us in the project are using software which is not the first choice for architects, but it is actually of a richness that can deal with the complexity of the building. “I argue that the way we use the computer today is actually much closer to the way Gaudí modelled with plaster.” Prominent for Burry is the way the “executors of this work, the architects and the workers” collaborate. “In Australia, we typically design the building, find consultants, and when it’s fully designed we look for a builder and go through the tendering process. “Sagrada Família is completely different. We work as a team. We work as a family. It means that there aren’t disputes.” In November 2010, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated la Sagrada Família, declaring the basilica a magnificent achievement of engineering, art and faith, and “an important step in a long history of hope, work and generosity that has gone on for more than a century”.
PASSION PLAY Facing the setting sun, symbolic of the death of Christ, the Passion Facade at the main tourist entrance is a very worked-over project. The differences between a 1917 photograph of the original drawing (above) and a respected 1980s model, developed without digital technology, need to be negotiated. Working from this worn photo, Jane Burry uses parametric modelling to forensically unlock Gaudí’s intentions. Associate Professor Burry from RMIT’s Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory says: “Maintaining the unique organic spirit in the photographed Gaudí drawing takes trial, error and patience to solve the riddle.” SIAL’s technology allows Burry to produce many versions of physical plaster models from different versions of digital models using rapid prototyping technology. Changing one part of the model will automatically update all the others – sometimes thousands of individual parameters – without altering the generic geometrical relationships between the parts. “There are mathematical formulae in the model that link the parts, but sometimes it is important to break these symmetries to maintain the vitality of the architecture. “Success relies on teamwork with lots of discussion around a physical artefact,” Burry says. – Paul Noonan
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections
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BET THE
HOUSE
Family businesses employ almost half the Australian workforce. To achieve success, owners take big risks and face personal challenges, as Kevin Slack discovers Many people know that earlier this year Australian bus king Ken Grenda sold his family business and gave $15 million to his 1,750 staff – an average of $8,500 each. What most don’t know is that in the late 1980s the business – bus services and a bus manufacturer, Volgren – almost cost him his home. Grenda, 80, recalls how a bus industry dispute with the Victorian Government, over metropolitan operating contracts, severely strained the entire industry. “Staff had to be laid off, which was a painful decision for the family. The outlook was bleak and culminated with a knock on my door at 8am one morning,” he says.
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Ken Grenda (left) can partly attribute his success to having a documented family constitution, according to Professor Kosmas Smyrnios (above).
“It was the man from the bank who had come to check their asset – my home – which, like the homes of many business people, was used as security. This is not an experience any businessman ever wants to put his family through. At that stage we could have given up on the manufacturing business.” Volgren is Australia’s largest bus body builder, supplying the Australian and export markets. Last year, it built 750 buses, while Grenda’s bus operating business had a fleet of 1,300 under six brands including Moorabbin Transit. Ken’s son Geoff, an engineer, retired at 55 after eight years as the CEO, when the business was sold. Son Scott, 45, was going to take over, but decided against it for family reasons. Grenda says none of his grandchildren was old enough to run the business and he couldn’t bring himself to get an outsider in, so he sold it, paid off the bank and distributed millions among the family. And it is an Australian family business established in 1924, Ventura, that has bought the buses, with Volgren going to the Brazilian listed company, Marcopolo, which is also family controlled. Tax and accounting firm MGI Australasia Executive Chairman Sue Prestney says she is proud to say that Ken Grenda and his family have been clients for 24 years.
MGI has also spent the past 10 years supporting the MGI Australian Family and Private Business Survey undertaken by RMIT’s Professor Kosmas Smyrnios.
Smyrnios says one reason for the Grenda family’s business success was that in 1997 they prepared a family constitution with the assistance of MGI, and updated it annually.
Prestney says the results of this survey help MGI to identify issues and trends in the family business sector and to ensure its service offering to this market always reflects its current needs. “With his extensive work on this survey Kosmas also brings an important independent external view to our business, which also benefits our clients,” she says.
“A family constitution prevents or minimises conflict between the interests of the family and the business, ensures the goals, values and objectives of the family are reflected in the conduct of the business, protects the business and maintains family harmony,” he says.
Smyrnios has been monitoring the attitudes of Australia’s two million family business owners since 1994 and says the Ken Grenda story highlights both the strengths and weaknesses of the family business model.
“Our survey has consistently found that only a small percentage of family businesses have a documented family constitution. It is not a coincidence that the Grenda family had a family constitution and has so successfully dealt with both family succession and their exit from the business.”
“There was Ken Grenda at the age of 56 faced with having his home taken from him by the bank, which highlights the difficulty that most family businesses face in terms of raising capital,” he says.
Smyrnios, with the help of PhD student Lucio Dana, is now preparing the 2013 MGI Australian Family and Private Business Survey of 5,000 Australian companies. Next year will be the eighth round of the research.
“Yet at the same time, Ken’s story highlights the unique growth culture that you can only really develop in a family business that has been around for a few generations. And then at the end of it all, the Grenda story highlights the unique succession issues and exit strategies that most family businesses face.”
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections
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Tony Baxter from Futuris (left) with Dr Martin Leary.
Sitting pretty A lot of thought goes into making sure you are comfortable behind the wheel. Deborah Sippitts reports
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rmit » a global university of technology and design
When you sit in your car and adjust your seat, the last thing you think about is how efficient the sliding rails are that it moves on. You are much more likely to be thinking about the road ahead, but these rails and how well your seat moves on them are an important part of how happy you are with your car. RMIT’s Dr Martin Leary is working with industry partner Futuris Automotive on automotive seat optimisation. Futuris designs and manufactures automotive interior components including seat systems and seat hardware. Leary says that although car seats have been made for more than 100 years, there is still plenty of opportunity for innovation. “Once a design has been rolled out, it will stay in use for as long as possible to keep manufacturing costs economically viable, so it is imperative that the design process is supported by smart engineering.” RMIT’s Applied Optimisation Group, which Leary leads, is working with Futuris on a variety of research projects related to automotive products and processes. Engineering Manager, Seating Structures, at Futuris, Tony Baxter, says working with RMIT over the past two years has been extremely beneficial to both parties. “It has enabled us to pursue novel, difficult and time-consuming developments that we would not have otherwise had the resources, including the intellectual resources, to deliver.” But back to the seat, which, by the way, is a very stylish car seat for the American Tesla Model S high-performance electric vehicle. Baxter says: “Within the Tesla Model S seat system, which we have designed and are now supplying, mass optimisation is critical – but this has to be without compromise to the very high level of comfort, safety and functionality required by the American consumer. “The seating system will be fully articulated and electronically powered. The motors and gearboxes that drive the seat kinematics (movement between points) are heavy and this weight poses a considerable problem.”
masala manufacturing The Tesla Model S.
Leary, together with his team of researchers at RMIT’s Advanced Manufacturing Precinct and product engineers from Futuris, developed a computer model that did a lot more than find an acceptable solution to this problem. Leary says: “We developed an extremely efficient model to allow over 250,000 simulations. Normally this would be done by manual calculation, prototyping and iteration until an acceptable solution is found – all of which takes time and money.” However, the new model delivered a comprehensive list of solution sets optimised for different combinations of parameters. From this, Futuris were able to build a physical model and confirm the result, with the entire project completed within a few weeks. Baxter again: “This new model is now the basis for the kinematic layout for the Tesla front seat system and, in performance terms, this system is around 15 per cent more efficient than previous designs. It’s difficult to quantify the mass saving, since the previous designs were never developed, but this in itself avoided months of development work and significant prototyping costs. “This research not only contributes materially to Futuris’ product portfolio but also gives us a competitive advantage.” The new model can be applied widely to various mechanisms and is not restricted to seating systems. Other joint projects in progress include work on shape memory alloy actuators, high strain rate fracture, and integrated actuators – potentially more groundbreaking research and products to keep Futuris ahead in the global automotive market.
Standing in Bangalore earlier this year, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu announced the establishment of an Australia-India Research Centre for Automation Software Engineering at RMIT. Baillieu said the centre would put Victoria at the forefront of global software engineering for advanced automation technologies. RMIT will collaborate with ABB Australia, and ABB Corporate Research Centre and Global Industries and Services in India. Research laboratories at RMIT’s campus in central Melbourne, ABB in the Melbourne suburb of Notting Hill and ABB Bangalore, India, will be linked to form a virtual R&D laboratory – enabling the rotation of PhD students and researchers between industry and academia. Speaking in Bangalore, Baillieu said Melbourne would be ABB Australia’s new centre of excellence for automation and robotics. “AICAUSE is a Victorian and Indian bilateral research centre for real-world applications in the field of global software engineering for automation and heavy engineering. Its establishment will provide significant strategic benefits to RMIT,” he said. The centre will support ABB Australia and other businesses in industry sectors including advanced manufacturing, energy generation and distribution, utilities, building automation and mining and natural resources. The ABB Group of companies operates in 100 countries and employs 130,000 people. ABB Australia expects to generate 300 highlyskilled jobs in Victoria over the next four years.
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections
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RMIT’s Ghent, Belgium An expansion of a pioneering Melbourne-based program, the Ghent Graduate Research Conference supports innovative postgraduate architecture and design research.
Germany Through the RIIERP internship program, students undertake placements with Robert Bosch GmbH in Stuttgart; the Games and Experimental Entertainment Laboratory has a European centre in Karlsruhe; and PhD students can study in Aachen and Ingolstadt.
Los Angeles (US), Berlin (Germany), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Melbourne (Australia), Papua New Guinea Research on irregular migrants, involving case studies and in-depth interviews across five countries, has investigated how citizenship is changing in globalising cities.
blacksburg, united states A $1 million grant from the United States Office of Naval Research is supporting research to improve the fire safety of ships, in a collaboration between RMIT and Virginia Tech.
plainfield, united states As part of the long-running internship program RIIERP, RMIT aerospace engineering students spend a year working on the combat jet F136 engine program as part of the GE Rolls-Royce Fighter Engine Team.
Grenoble, France
Mexico City (Mexico), Sile (Turkey), Melbourne (Australia) A project that aimed to reframe social experience in three urban centres leveraged the role of public art in improving community safety and building trust.
Bogota, Colombia An interactive documentary prototype was used to document a World Vision program for internally displaced people in Bogota, in research exploring new ways of using online video to document aid projects.
Scott Base, Antarctica A world-first project to reduce the environmental impact of an Antarctic base could be replicated across the continent.
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rmit » a global university of technology and design
MBA Executive and other postgraduate business students undertake study intensives on European Management at the Grenoble L’Ecole de Management, one of the top business schools in France.
barcelona, spain RMIT is establishing an office to build education and research partnerships.
Milan, Italy RMIT’s top industrial and furniture design graduates have been chosen to show their work at the prestigious Salone Internazionale del Mobile for almost a decade.
Porto Alegre, Brazil Former residents of an urban slum have moved into new community housing, thanks to a long-term project supported by RMIT that set a new precedent for sustainable slum rehabilitation.
Tianjin, China The Tianjin Government Leaders Training Program supports the next generation of Tianjin leaders through international training at RMIT.
Xuzhou, China Researchers are collaborating with the China University of Mining and Technology to improve mine safety and support more efficient mining emergency and management services.
Sepon, Laos
Satkhira (Bangladesh) and Hue (Vietnam) Researchers are working to help two secondary cities better understand climate risks and design adaptation guidelines.
More than 100 local workers have been trained by RMIT in a variety of trades – from automotive to electrical – at the MMG LXML Sepon mine through an innovative apprenticeship program.
Shanghai, China The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and RMIT’s Global Cities Research Institute teamed together to explore the challenges of urbanisation.
Guangdong, China China’s largest Chinese Medicine hospital is backing RMIT researchers to help provide better health outcomes for sufferers of emphysema and chronic bronchitis.
Hyderabad, India Environmental and industrial research projects are the focus of a joint research centre established by RMIT and the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology.
Tra Vinh, Vietnam Training and research development to strengthen local resilience to climate change impacts has been the focus of a UNsupported project in the Mekong Delta.
bangalore, india Researchers are collaborating with ABB on automation software engineering.
Hambantota, Sainthamaruthu, Seenigama, Thirukkovil (Sri Lanka) and Chennai (India) An in-depth investigation into social recovery from the 2004 Tsunami focused on five case study sites to evaluate the longterm benefit of disaster aid.
Pretoria, South Africa Research on the occupational disease silicosis among South African gold miners has shed light on the role of migrant labour, state regulatory authorities and science in hiding the pandemic.
melbourne, australia
East Timor Indonesia In a partnership with adidas, researchers are working to advance sustainable manufacturing of sports shoes and clothing by identifying the capabilities and requirements of suppliers in Indonesia.
Working with Ireland’s largest aid and humanitarian agency, Concern Worldwide, researchers are examining how and why rural communities in East Timor adopt new technologies.
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25 years of doing business Weft and warp: Dr Rajiv Padhye and Dr Olga Troynikov are collaborating with Bruck Textiles on the project.
O C OL
operator
1987 – 2012
STORY BY deborah sippitts
More than 24,000 young people have studied RMIT programs through our partner, the Singapore Institute of Management. Here’s to the next quarter century of doing business across Asia. Find out more about RMIT and Sim online: www.rmit.edu.au www.sim.edu.sg
When you sit in front of a log fire the things you love are the heat, the flickering flames and the feelings of comfort and warmth. Comfort is also important for firefighters, but in a very different way. For them, the priority is keeping cooler so they can do a much better job. RMIT’s Dr Rajiv Padhye and Dr Olga Troynikov are working with Bruck Textiles to develop protective textiles with enhanced comfort properties. Padhye explains: “If we can improve the protective performance and comfort of the materials used to manufacture firefighters’ garments, it will improve their experience and performance at work. They will be able to work for longer periods, minimise heat stress and have better concentration.” Over the next three years, Padhye and his team will look at existing protective textiles and garments, and consider how they can be improved for Australian conditions. His Head of School, Keith Cowlishaw, says Bruck Textiles is uniquely positioned as the only Australian manufacturer of high-quality, highperformance, technical fabrics for the protective and safety markets.
“Bruck recognised they did not have sufficient in-house resources to make the necessary breakthroughs, especially in research, to enhance their current products. “Consequently, Bruck initiated the establishment of the Australian Textile Technologies and Innovation Centre (ATTIC), in partnership with CSIRO, RMIT and the Defence Materials Technology Centre in early 2010.” As well as involving Bruck and all ATTIC members, the research includes consultation with firefighters from the Country Fire Authority and the Melbourne Fire Brigade. This research is an Australian Government-funded initiative under the Textile Clothing and Footwear Strategic Capability Program. Bruck Textiles Chief Operating Officer, Sandip Ranjan, says the project will enable Bruck to develop and manufacture next-generation fabric constructions. “We will be able to incorporate these into the latest garment designs by 2014, which will position Bruck at the forefront of this global industry.”
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections 14
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boundary rider
STORY BY yvonne pecujac
In the highly specialised world of academic engineers, Professor Arnan Mitchell is that rarest of creatures: a generalist. “A mentor once told me that innovation and discovery happens at the fringes between disciplines and it’s a philosophy that I’ve taken to heart,” Mitchell (pictured) says. “It’s true that people find me and my work hard to pin down because I’m multi-disciplinary. I am actively seeking out the boundaries between what is engineering and what is fundamental physics, between engineering and chemistry, between engineering and biomedicine … this is really where you get new discoveries happening.” Mitchell’s lab-on-a-chip project is a case in point. The size of a microscope slide, the chip uses a single drop of blood to determine if it will or will not clot. “This is really important because if your blood doesn’t clot you might bleed too much, but if your blood clots too much you’re likely to have strokes,” Mitchell says. The chip came about in answer to a problem facing the Australian Centre for Blood Diseases at Monash University, which had been experimenting on a mouse. “They gave this mouse aspirin and did everything else they could think of to stop its blood from clotting,” Mitchell says.
“But when they crushed an artery, sure enough they could see that the blood was clotting. “They claimed this was proof that overturned the long-held belief that blood clotting was chemical as this was happening purely as a result of mechanical stress. But they needed to show that all the chemistry in the mouse had truly been switched off.” The Centre asked Mitchell, as head of RMIT’s Microplatforms Research Group, to come up with a way to repeat the experiment away from the complex environment of a live mouse. Mitchell worked with Dr Francisco Tovar, looking at how they could deliver a precisely engineered artificial version of the crushed artery. They came up with a chip that could slide under a microscope to show the clotting action of a single drop of blood as it is pumped into a funnel, accelerates down a tube and decelerates through a second funnel – a journey just 30 microns long, or less than the width of a human hair. Funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and published in Nature, the process has been patented and is poised to be commercialised through a company led by the
Australian Centre for Blood Diseases. Research is continuing to refine the chip, making it cheaper and simpler to use. “We are really using the cast-off micro technology that came out of computer technology, which needs to be small and precise,” Mitchell says. “There’s an unlimited amount of breakthroughs you could achieve with micro technology because the precision and the control is unparalleled.” But the academic admits that his unconventional multi-disciplinary approach has its disadvantages: “The breakthrough here is really biomedical; the engineering is sort of secondary, but for the biomedical researchers there’s not enough biomedicine and for the fluidics people there’s not enough fluidics.” The Microplatforms Research Group, which is part of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence CUDOS, includes more than 50 researchers. RMIT is building on its strength in micro/ nanotechnology with the appointment of Professor James Friend as Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow and Professor Leslie Yeo, who together with their research team are world leaders in the interaction of micro fluidics and acoustic waves.
making connections september 2012
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Game of life 16
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Their hands clad in high-tech oven mitts, two young men laugh and cheer as they pop virtual bubbles. A young woman works up a sweat while hanging off a bar, resting her feet every few seconds on logs that float along the animated river raging beneath her. Sounds like fun, but at the Exertion Games Lab, this is serious business. The lab is one of two research centres at RMIT working on gaming and design. While interactive gaming is a rapidly growing industry – predicted to be worth $2.5 billion in Australia and $90 billion globally by 2015 – both Exertion Games and the Games and Experimental Entertainment Laboratory are looking far beyond mere recreation. “We focus on the merging of play, technology and the human body to help us understand how to design better interactive experiences,” Exertion Games Lab director, Dr Florian “Floyd” Mueller, says. “It’s about inventing the future of play, designing games and working prototypes to inspire industry.” An alumnus of the MIT Media Lab, Mueller has encouraged a similar inter-disciplinary creative culture at RMIT, drawing designers, artists and engineers from around the world. The lab’s practical but left-of-field approach last year attracted the interest of US performance and condition monitoring firm Zephyr, which gave researcher Wouter Walmink free rein to take its pioneering BioHarness in new directions.
Digital playtime is now a very grown-up affair, as Gosia Kaszubska discovers
Popular with professional athletes, the BioHarness measures your critical vital signs such as heart and breathing rate, while contextualising the information with physical activity. Walmink’s take resulted in a prototype cycling accessory that already has bike riders in Melbourne excited. “The Open Heart Helmet shows your heart rate to your fellow riders,” he explains. “At first the cyclists we tested with couldn’t see the point – why display it on the back of my helmet where I can’t see it? But when they wore them, they got it. “During the ride, they’d use the numbers to motivate each other. The one in front would be pushed to go further and harder, the one behind got instant feedback, seeing the effect of their encouragement on the heart rate displayed. The social aspect of riding that’s at the heart of the sport became much more expressive and supportive – they loved it.”
Jumping to it: Dr Florian “Floyd” Mueller and Dr Steffen P Walz (seated).
Other projects emerging from the 11-strong team include the Bubble Popper (combining the magic of popping bubbles in a merged physical-virtual space), Hanging off a Bar (where a wild river projected underneath the player pushes them to hang on as long as they can) and the Joggobot (a flying robot to give you both company and motivation on your morning jog).
While the Exertion Games Lab is precisely focused on physical activity, the Games and Experimental Entertainment Laboratory has a wider brief. The GEElab’s projects range across industries, from automotive to publishing, with the aim of bringing game design thinking into everyday life. Concepts for in-car entertainment systems of the future are being developed through a collaboration with Audi. GEElab doctoral researcher Chris Berry recently travelled to Germany to meet Audi’s Head of Predevelopment, Andreas Reich, and further the project, which is looking at combining holographic 3D projection, gestural interaction and geotagging to both entertain and educate those in the back seat. “Through the collaboration with the GEElab, we hope to benefit from a new and non-automotive view on interaction design in vehicles,” Reich says. “Applying these perspectives and the GEElab expertise offers huge potential for new and even more entertaining in-car interaction. “In contrast to basic result-orientated task execution, playing games motivates the user continuously. Transferring this approach to the main design of in-car infotainment systems can provide a new impulse for enjoyable and user-friendly systems.” GEElab director Dr Steffen P Walz splits his time between the lab’s two hubs in Melbourne and Karlsruhe, south-west Germany (establishing an Asian base in Shanghai is next on the agenda). The lab’s research projects range from enterprise engagement (using game thinking to engage, motivate and reward employees) to future cities (improving wellbeing, engagement and sustainability through game design methods) and new generation textbooks (collaborating with major German publisher, Cornelsen). Workshops helping industry apply an understanding of games to concrete business challenges are also in high demand – Nokia Services in Finland and LG Display in South Korea are recent clients. “Forward-looking companies can see that games and entertainment media are the emergent cultural forms of our time, and that game thinking offers a distinctive competitive edge,” Walz says. “Bringing playfulness into your strategy, whether to motivate employees, improve customer relations or drive product and system innovation, simply makes business sense.”
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections making connections september 2012
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Global urban connected
hub and spokes STORY BY david glanz
There’s a relationship between form and content. Parliament couldn’t deliberate in a suburban home any more than a yoga class could convene on a rollercoaster. That’s why the architectural innovation informing one of Melbourne’s most striking new landmarks, RMIT’s Design Hub, doesn’t end with its remarkable skin of 16,000 sand-blasted glass discs.
RMIT works with industry and business to enrich and transform the future. Contact us today: www.rmit.edu.au/industry
Inside the building, on the busy city corner of Swanston and Victoria streets, space has been organised to literally remove barriers between researchers and their partners in industry, government and community organisations. Each warehouse floor takes the form of an open-plan area, stretching the length of the building. Furniture can be repositioned to create dynamic working zones. Researchers in different disciplines – both staff and postgraduate students – will find themselves sharing space and, no doubt, ideas. Interior walls can be turned into flexible galleries of work in progress, while the corridors flanking each floor will also be used for curated displays.
Disciplines including textile and fashion design, architecture, industrial design, landscape architecture, interior design, urban design, engineering, fine art and creative media will share the space. RMIT Vice-Chancellor and President, Professor Margaret Gardner AO, says: “The Design Hub will enhance Victoria’s status as a centre of design excellence and strengthen the positioning of Australian design in the global economy. “By working with industry, government, community and education sectors, the collaborative research facility will build design capability to cultivate new practices and tools.” The building, part-funded by a $28.6 million grant from the Federal Government’s Education Investment Fund, has opened its doors to researchers. A formal launch will take place later this year.
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections 18
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RECONNECTING WITH CUSTOMER DEMAND STORY BY fiona marsden
Dr Yolande Strengers: a dramatic shift in what householders think of as normal energy use.
Evolving attitudes are changing the way residential customers use electricity – driving concentrated consumption bursts and contributing to rising infrastructure costs. In response, energy companies are harnessing professional research expertise to understand and influence customer behaviour. Australian householders are arguably cleaner and more comfortable than ever before. We wash our clothes more often, shower more often, and consider it acceptable to air-condition our entire home on hot days. The rise of large-screen televisions, smart phones and gaming consoles means we’re plugged in 24/7, further escalating our electricity consumption. “There has been a dramatic shift in what householders think of as normal energy use,” says RMIT researcher Dr Yolande Strengers. “And when they use electricity, they don’t think about the resource itself. They think about the things it helps them accomplish, like showering, laundering, cleaning and watching TV. “Yet demand management programs offered by electricity companies have traditionally focused on consumption of the resource. There has been a discrepancy between the way energy companies manage electricity demand, and the way customers actually approach energy use.” During her early research on demand management programs in 2007, Strengers began working with Ausgrid (then known as Energy Australia), a stateowned utility that distributes electricity to 1.6 million
NSW households and businesses in Sydney, the Hunter region and the Central Coast. Strengers interviewed Ausgrid and some of its customers who were trialling a form of demand management called “dynamic peak pricing”. During the trial, Ausgrid nominated peak periods of four hours, up to 12 times a year. These correlated with times of predicted peak demand, such as hot days. Ausgrid charged different rates for electricity during peak and non-peak periods, to encourage householders to reduce use and lessen the likelihood of blackouts. “Traditionally, householders have been passive consumers when it comes to electricity,” says Strengers. “But participants in the dynamic peak pricing trial felt a social responsibility to respond. They felt they were helping manage a resource problem, as well as saving money.” This replicates overseas findings that certain kinds of demand management programs can change the relationship between providers and consumers. “The relationship becomes one of co-management,” says Strengers. “Householders begin to think more abouttheir energy consumption and manage it more actively in their everyday lives.” Strengers’ research has led to further work with Ausgrid and other energy providers. She and her colleagues are researching aspects of Ausgrid’s
proposed home energy advisory service, which will offer customers a home visit from an energy expert, to advise on ways to reduce energy consumption and save money on electricity bills. The service will focus on how householders use electricity; not just the amount they consume. The service is part of the $100 million Federal Government-funded Smart Grid, Smart City trial being rolled out by a range of providers across five sites in Ausgrid’s NSW market. “We are interested in testing a behavioural approach to help households make changes without compromising their lifestyle,” says Jane Mills, Ausgrid’s Executive General Manager–Energy Services. “Working with Dr Strengers and other researchers is an important part of this.” Strengers and colleagues are also collaborating on a project with Ausgrid, neighbouring electricity distributor Endeavour Energy and high-voltage transmission network owner TransGrid, to better understand householders’ energy demand and identify opportunities to influence it. “Working with professional researchers like Dr Strengers allows TransGrid to leverage expertise that’s not commonly held within our organisation,” says Dr Ashok Manglick, TransGrid’s Manager for Network Support and Consultations. “This is vital in helping us determine the behavioural drivers that influence electricity demand.” making connections september 2012
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choose
life STORY BY kevin slack
The construction industry performs poorly in occupational health and safety. Despite advances in technology and safety management systems, construction workers continue to suffer a persistent incidence of work-related deaths and costly injuries and illnesses. The Australian construction industry accounts for 9 per cent of the Australian workforce but, in 2008-09, accounted for 11 per cent of all serious workers’ compensation claims.
Lingard says this research involves an international benchmarking study of construction OHS practices and performance in the US and Australia over five years.
In the same financial year, construction recorded more fatalities than any other industry and the fatality rate was more than twice the rate for all industries.
“In one review of 100 incidents in the United Kingdom construction industry, researchers identified client requirements, design criteria, and the project procurement environment as contributing factors to incident occurrence,” she says.
RMIT’s Professor Helen Lingard (pictured) says the construction industry is characterised by intense competition, conflict and pressure to drive down prices, all contributing to its poor OHS performance. To help improve things, Lingard has teamed up with RMIT’s Professor Ron Wakefield and Associate Professor Nick Blismas to undertake an investigation of the ability of construction clients to drive OHS improvements through their procurement and project management practices. The three are engaged in an international collaboration with researchers from the Center for Innovation in Construction Safety and Health at Virginia Tech in the US.
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“So far, the majority of OHS efforts in construction have been implemented at the level of the construction firm, although there is a growing recognition that the root causes of OHS incidents can be traced back to problems inherent in industry-level systems of work. “Addressing the whole of the construction industry work system has the potential to lead to real breakthroughs in the reduction of construction accidents, injuries, illnesses and fatalities that remain at an unacceptably high level in both the US and Australia.”
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clean bill of health Energy use in homes is being targeted to help reduce climate change, but this could also have major co-benefits for public health. An international research group is investigating strategies to improve energy efficiency in UK homes and introduce 150 million low-emission household cookstoves in India. With the assistance of the World Health Organization, its members are assessing the effect on health of changes in the indoor environment. One of its members, Dr Ian Ridley, joined RMIT earlier this year from University College London. He says the research shows that for UK homes, interventions were beneficial for health where strategies combined insulation, ventilation, fuel switching and behavioural changes. “We estimated 850 fewer disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs), and a saving of 0.6 megatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), per million population in one year, on the basis of calculations comparing the health of the 2010 population with and without the specified outcome measures,” Ridley says. “The cookstove program in India showed substantial benefits for acute lower respiratory infection in children, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and heart disease. “Calculated on a similar basis to the UK case study, the avoided burden of these outcomes was estimated to be 12,500 fewer DALYs and a saving of 0.1 to 0.2 megatonnes CO2-equivalent per million population in one year, mostly in short-lived greenhouse pollutants.” – Kevin Slack
St ick y
Situation STORY BY yvonne pecujac
Professor Peter Little AM has set his sights on a big target: reducing the number of deaths claimed each year by the world’s biggest killer – cardiovascular disease. Atherosclerosis, which leads to blocked arteries, heart attack and strokes, is the chronic inflammatory process that underlies most cardiovascular disease, the largest single cause of premature death in developed – and now developing – countries around the world. Little hopes his team’s groundbreaking research into targeting ways to stop cholesterol from sticking to blood vessel walls will eventually be turned into drugs to treat and prevent heart attacks and strokes. But he admits it’s a long road from their promising mouse studies, which show drugs reducing the development of cholesterol deposits by 50 per cent, to getting the drug onto shelves. Little says turning a promising compound into a manufactured drug costs about $800 million and takes at least 10 years, involving extensive human trials. Still, he’s encouraged by a study published in February by New York’s Stony Brook University showing that treating people who have not yet had a heart attack with drugs for high cholesterol and blood pressure is just as effective as implanting stents through an angiogram to open up blocked heart arteries – now the major activity of all cardio hospital departments in Australia and the US. Each year, 22,350 stents are performed around Australia at the cost of about $18,300 each. Little says the current gold standard for drugs in this area – cholesterol-lowering statins – prevents only 30 per cent of heart attacks. But if these were used in conjunction with drugs developed out of his team’s research, many more patients would be kept from the operating theatre with a treatment that would be cheaper and just as effective as stents.
Since the Vietnam War, studies have discovered that young men are already showing early signs of atherosclerosis, particularly in the West with its growing trend towards sedentary lifestyles, obesity, high cholesterol and blood pressure. More cholesterol deposits on vessel walls over time, increasing the chance of these deposits rupturing, which causes a blockage and a heart attack. If this happens in a blood vessel in the head, it will cause a stroke. Little’s research lab team, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council, has been investigating how cholesterol in the bloodstream deposits on to vessel walls due to the sticky nature of molecules in the wall called proteoglycans. “We are targeting the initial response – the cholesterol sticking to the vessel wall – so if you can slow that down, you’ll slow down the later stages of the disease and you might then delay a heart attack by 10 years,” he says. Professor Wenhua Zheng, who runs a neuro pharmacology lab at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, works on neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s. He has been collaborating with Little over the past four years and their shared interest in signalling pathways has led to them authoring eight papers together. “Little’s work is important for understanding, and eventually for treating and preventing, atherosclerosis,” Zheng says. “This is critically important for the new treatment of cardiovascular diseases.” Little spent 20 years running a research lab at the prestigious Baker Institute and was awarded an Order of Australia in 2007 for his work in diabetes. He is also the founding head of RMIT’s new pharmacy department, which opened its doors early last year.
Peter Little: targeting the way that cholesterol sticks.
Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections making connections september 2012
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Making the numbers work
§
OLE URVIVORS
Dr Kay Cook has been examining potential gaps between policy and reality.
STORY BY fiona marsden
Financial disadvantage and social marginalisation are daily realities for many Australians, locking them out of opportunities others take for granted. Australia has about 2.7 million families with dependent children. Almost 20 per cent are headed by single parents, most of whom are women. In 2006, the Howard government introduced “welfare-to-work” reforms to reduce dependence on benefits and encourage workforce participation among a range of target groups, including people on sole parent payments. The reforms included changes in eligibility for benefits, and minimum requirements for participating in employment or further education. The Rudd and Gillard governments have continued to embrace welfare-to-work. However, a three-year collaboration spearheaded by RMIT researcher Dr Kay Cook and the Brotherhood of St Laurence suggests the reforms have left many sole parents worse off. The Melbourne-based study tracked the experiences of about 350 sole parents as they attempted to comply with participation requirements. “Our research shows a substantial disconnect between government policy and on-the-ground reality,” says Cook.
Women who have been out of the workforce caring for children may lack current work skills, making it difficult to find work that is mentally stimulating and offers reasonable tenure. If they do find something suitable, they may not have access to conveniently located and affordable child care. “The research makes it clear that welfare-to-work policies must focus not only on employment outcomes, but on boosting measures that will improve sole parents’ ability to participate in the workforce,” says Cook. The completed project is still proving a valuable resource for the Brotherhood of St Laurence. Paul Smyth, General Manager of Social Action Research, says: “Dr Cook and her colleagues brought cutting-edge research methodologies to the project, enabling us to build a strong evidence bank and respond authoritatively to government policy-making.”
“These families often live in outlying areas where rents are cheap but employment opportunities are limited. In any case, there aren’t many jobs for people who have to leave in time to collect children from school.”
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Many low-income Australians lack knowledge and confidence about managing money. This makes it harder to break out of the cycle of disadvantage and build a positive future. To address this issue, ANZ and the Brotherhood of St Laurence developed “Saver Plus”, a financial literacy and matched savings program that has been running since 2003. Eligible participants learn skills like managing everyday banking and dealing with debt. They also set a 10-month savings goal. If they reach it, ANZ matches it up to a cap of $500. From modest origins, the program has grown to about 7,500 participants and multiple providers across more than 60 sites nationally. ANZ contributes about $3.5 million a year to Saver Plus, focusing on matched savings, program development, IT and marketing. Keen to ensure that the program was underpinned by a strong evidence base from the outset, ANZ formed a partnership with RMIT researcher Dr Roslyn Russell. “Independent research brings a credibility that’s really important when we’re setting the program’s directions and discussing its achievements with stakeholders,” says Michelle Commandeur, ANZ’s Senior Manager of Financial Inclusion. Russell’s most recent report shows that more than 86 per cent of participants continued saving the same amount or more after the 10-month matching period. More than 85 per cent engendered a savings habit in their children. Commandeur believes the calibre of research was instrumental in influencing the Federal Government to provide about $40 million over six years to expand the program’s reach. – Fiona Marsden
PUNT STORY BY yvonne pecujac
For Professor Gary Rosengarten, sustainable energy is a passion. So it’s not surprising that the Melbourne researcher is at the forefront of solar energy research in Australia. But he admits that when it comes to alternative technology, he’s not prepared to back one horse. “I’m technology agnostic,” he says. “I’m not going to just go: ‘This is the technology that’s going to solve the world’.
Recently appointed to RMIT as Professor of Sustainable Engineering Systems and a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Fellow, Rosengarten is also developing a rooftop solar collector to provide electricity, heat and cooling.
“I’m not going to put all my money on one technology. I’m working on different things that I think are interesting and have potential, but I don’t know what’s going to win out. Imagine if all those years ago I had gone for the Beta video recording system!”
Internal mirrors track the sun throughout the day, focusing only certain wavelengths on to a photovoltaic cell, which doubles its efficiency. The remaining wavelengths are used to heat water, some of which drives a cooling system. Funded by the Australian Solar Institute, the project also involves Australia-US company Chromasun and NEP Solar, along with the Australian National University, the University of NSW and CSIRO.
One of the projects Rosengarten is working on, in conjunction with Sydney-based start-up Vast Solar, involves harnessing the sun to run conventional power stations. “A normal power station burns coal or gas to create heat to make steam to drive a turbine,” he says. “This heat source is the sun, which is used to run the steam in a conventional turbine for making power.” They are looking at increasing the efficiency of these power plants using liquid sodium to transport and store the heat.
“At the moment it’s really only useful for industry and large facilities like universities and hospitals that require heating and cooling,” he says. About 10 years ago Rosengarten turned his attention to micro/nanotechnology, punting that it was likely to be where the next big breakthrough in science would come from. He began investigating how it could be applied to solar energy in his post-doctoral work and
travelled to the US and Switzerland to see the latest developments in the field, courtesy of Victoria and Churchill Fellowships. These days Rosengarten is looking at how nanostructured surfaces interact with liquids. With the University of Melbourne’s Professor Rob Lamb, he is investigating applications of nanocoatings that can either attract or repel water – small structures that can have big effects on materials used in many different industries. “We’re trying to understand the fundamentals of how we can tailor these surfaces to increase the efficiency of the heat transfer processes of everything from air conditioning, refrigeration, chemical processing, solar water heating to computer chip cooling, you name it,” he says. Rosengarten is also turning his attention to the sea, studying single-cell algae called diatoms with a glass shell the diameter of a human hair full of nanopores that allow nutrients in from the sea while filtering out viruses and bacteria. He’s hoping that unlocking the mysteries of the tiny shell’s filtering system can lead to designing a more efficient and low-energy filter for water purification.
making connections september 2012
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crowning glory Artist, goldsmith, historian, archaeometallurgist, writer, contemporary jeweller. Robert Baines’ varied titles reveal a depth and diversity that has naturally led to another honorific, that of “Living Treasure”. Professor of Gold and Silversmithing at RMIT, Baines is recognised not only for his exquisite craftsmanship but also his extensive research on historical jewellery, unveiling the methods, thinking and character of the ancient goldsmith. His “fictitious jewellery” pieces are created with such detailed historical accuracy they appear to be taken straight from a museum – until you look closer and discover his playful modern references. The blend of ancient and modern is evident in the intricate filigree technique used to create Entropy of Red: Crown (left), which is influenced by historical wire work dating back to classical Greece. Baines’ work features in prestigious public collections around the world, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Gerard Vaughan, Director of the National Gallery of Victoria (which holds a number of his pieces), says viewers are invited to “unlock the code” to understand both the serious intent of Baines’ work and its playfulness. “Robert poses his jewels as riddles – always brilliantly crafted – and in doing so asks some big questions about authenticity, about the idea of the bogus, and what after all is really real.” – Gosia Kaszubska Find out more: watch the video at www.rmit.edu.au/news/makingconnections
Entropy of Red: Crown (1995). Robert Baines. Silver-gilt, glass, plastic, 33.5cm x 19.2cm diameter. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
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