CAMS2022

The 7th conference of the Combined Australian Materials Societies; incorporating Materials Australia and the Australian Ceramic Society.

Australia’s leading materials scientists, engineers, technology trailblazers, and thought leaders recently gathered for the Combined Australian Materials Societies (CAMS) 2022 Conference.

The event is Australia’s largest interdisciplinary technical meeting of the year, and featured a wide range of speakers and delegates from around the world.

Held at The University of Melbourne from 1 to 3 June, the seventh annual conference brought CAMS, Materials Australia, and the Australian Ceramic Society’s delegates under the same roof to exchange ideas, technology and advances in research.

The conference covered a broad range of themes, including additive, advanced and future manufacturing; materials characterisation; surface coatings; biomaterials and nanomaterials for medicine; ceramics, glass and refractories; energy generation, conversion and storage materials; corrosion and wear resistant materials; nanostructured and nanoscale materials; and polymers and composites. CAMS2022 is one of the first major scheduled face-to-face Materials Australia events in 2022 and continued its strong tradition of promoting materials research. The CAMS2022 organising committee maintained a concerted effort to work towards a gender balance with an all-female line up of plenary speakers. The three-day conference started with a plenary session from Professor Amanda Barnard, who is one of Australia’s most experienced computational scientists. Professor Barnard addressed delegates about the inverse design of multi-functional materials. She drew on her experiences from the Centre for Nanoscale Materials at Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, and the University of Oxford. Dr Alex Shekhter also delivered a plenary session address, where she discussed air and space platform technologies, and shared an overview of the future challenges for Australia’s defence industry. Dr Shekhter has worked on the certification of modern technologies for military aircraft, and delivered technical risk assessments for advanced materials and technologies. Professor Caroline McMillen drew on her experiences as South Australia’s Chief Scientist, and as the ViceChancellor at the University of Newcastle during her plenary session. Delegates heard Professor McMillen reflect on South Australia’s 10-year plan to grow the economy through a suite of research and development projects, and the advancement of future industries.

The keynote speakers at CAMS2022 included: Professor Nikki Stanford (University of South Australia); Dr Andrew Breen (University of Sydney); Professor Baohua Jia (Swinburne University of Technology); Professor Craig Brice (Colorado School of Mines); Professor Cuie Wen (RMIT University); Professor Dong Ruan (Swinburne University of Technology); Dr Judy Hart (UNSW Sydney); Professor George Franks (University of Melbourne); Professor Martin Leary (RMIT);

Professor Huijun Li (University of Wollongong); Professor Zhenguo Huang (University of Technology Sydney); A/ Professor Bernd Gludovatz (UNSW Sydney); Professor Michael Preuss (Monash University); Professor Rui Yang (Chinese Academy of Science); Professor Yun Liu (Australian National University); Associate Professor Sophie Primig (UNSW Sydney); Dr Vladimir Luzin (ANSTO); and Ms Alex Kingsbury (RMIT University). In addition, a range of local and international speakers were invited to share their industry knowledge about a variety of topics including advanced duplex stainless steels; laser additive manufacturing; and pore-scale modelling in heterogeneous porous materials. Together, the CAMS2022 organising committee selected speakers who delivered a series of interactive keynotes, where they drew on their experiences to inspire, motivate and share knowledge with the broader sector.

The four-parallel symposia event was rescheduled to ensure a face-to-face meeting was possible. This allowed delegates to attend networking events and awards ceremonies, where they were encouraged to connect with likeminded peers. There were also conference posters, where PhD students and industry academics put their research on full display, answered questions and discussed the future scope of research. Special thanks to all the session chairs and student volunteers for helping in organising the breakout sessions. CAMS2022 is a proud supporter of WREN Research Engineers Network (WREN). CAMS2022 would like to acknowledge the organising committee for this event: Dr Andrew Ang; Professor Aijun Huang; Professor Xinhua Wu; Professor George Franks; Dr Michelle DeSilva; Ms Tanya Smith; Professor Gwenaelle Proust; Professor Nikki Stanford; Professor Nick Birbilis; Dr Roger Lumley; Mr Richard Bowman; Dr Robert Acres; and Ms Vesna Stefanovski. CAMS2022 was supported by The University of Melbourne, CSIRO, JEOL and Thermo Fisher.