Research 2011

RESEARCH CONNECTING RESEARCH AND COMMUNITY

2011

INSPIRING INNOVATORS

Fertile minds

Greener futures

Engineering excellence

Conquering cancer

Solar success

The human dimension

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CONTENTS 02 A message from the Vice-Chancellor

and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) 04 Joining forces to ease the wheeze 05 Leading the way 06 Man on a mission 08 Mining your genes 09 Gut instinct 10 Fertile mind 11 A good egg 12 Frontline mental health care 13 Agent of change 14 Winning the weight war 15 An active pursuit 16 Cultivating a cleaner future 17 Something new under the sun 18 Passion for change 19 Double act 20 Legacy of leadership 22 The human dimension 23 A foundation for success 24 A dynamic team 25 Nanoscale engineering 26 It all adds up 27 Delving into the unknown 28 Research at a glance

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A message from the Vice-Chancellor and Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

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The University of Newcastle continues to build its global reputation for delivering worldclass research and innovation. Our reputation has been built on high-quality performance in health and medicine, science and engineering, and energy and the environment. We are also delighted that our research in the arts and social sciences is on a rapid and upward trajectory. The University has actively recruited some of the very best researchers in the world in priority areas in recent years, providing an important platform for the development of critical mass and future growth of these key research fields.

Ranked in the top 10 universities in Australia for research, Newcastle takes pride of place as the most research-intensive regional university in the country. Our two research institutes – the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER) and the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) – are a clear demonstration of the University’s recognition of the needs of our communities and of partnerships with industry and business.

We have been fortunate that these institutes have attracted strong support from government and industry. Work on HMRI’s $90 million clinical research building is due for completion in the first half of 2012 and work has started on the $30 million expansion of NIER’s headquarters.

At our Central Coast campus we have recently opened the Central Coast Primary Industries Centre in partnership with the NSW Department of Primary Industries, as part of our strategy to carry out internationally significant research with clear local benefit. In the past 12 months we have launched three new Priority Research Centres (PRCs), bringing the number of these key research groupings to 15. The PRC for Chemical Biology brings together researchers in chemistry, biology and medicine focused on unravelling the causes of disease by identifying crucial biological targets. The findings of this Centre will inform the development of new drugs to fight disease. Featured on pages 14 and 15 of Research, the new PRC for Physical Activity and Nutrition takes a novel interdisciplinary approach to addressing chronic lifestyle disease prevention and treatment; and promoting healthy lifestyles and wellbeing. The PRC for Cancer, headed by Professor Stephen Ackland, combines our vast expertise in this area with the aim of delivering novel treatments and improved outcomes.

This edition of Research showcases Newcastle’s world leaders in their respective disciplines. Laureate Professor Paul Foster and Professor Peter Gibson are recognised globally for their groundbreaking respiratory research. Their work combines the latest advances in laboratory technology with patient-focused research to improve clinical outcomes for people suffering chronic asthma and airways conditions. Read more about their important work on page 4.

Our researchers are making significant advances in helping to reduce the impact of carbon-dense industry on the global environment by harnessing alternative energy sources. Led by NIER, the Hunter region is fast becoming a hub for research in energy and resources and continues to expand its influence on the sector. Professor Behdad Moghtaderi’s technologies are shaping government and industry efforts on new-generation clean and renewable energy production (page 18). Similarly, Professor Paul Dastoor’s work in solar energy technology (page 17) has the potential to turn every house into an electricity generator.

Researching the social dimension of energy and resources is an important groundbreaking area of study currently being undertaken by Professor Stephen Webb (see page 22).

Engineering has a long and prestigious history at the University of Newcastle, thanks in large part to the foundation laid by two of our longest serving researchers. The legacies of Laureate Professor Graeme Jameson and Emeritus Professor Alan Roberts have paved the way for several generations of researchers in the minerals processing field and forged collaborations with industry.

Their remarkable contribution and influence on the pioneering path charted by the engineering discipline features on page 20.

With the University positioned strongly to capitalise on our strengths, we are excited about the future for research in Newcastle. This edition of Research demonstrates why the University of Newcastle is an international leader in research and innovation, and showcases the work of our great researchers and their teams. We are proud that research from our University continues to address the key challenges of our time and seeks to shape the world for future generations.

Professor Caroline McMillen Vice-Chancellor and President

Professor Mike Calford Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research)

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JOINING FORCES TO EASE THE WHEEZE Australia’s two million sufferers of airway disease can breathe easier thanks to the work of the University’s groundbreaking respiratory researchers.

From the bench to the bedside, the University of Newcastle’s Priority Research Centre for Asthma and Respiratory Diseases is leading the way in the understanding, management and treatment of chronic airway conditions. Centre co-directors Laureate Professor Paul Foster (pictured left) and Professor Peter Gibson lead highly talented teams of scientists and doctors who integrate the latest advances in laboratory technology and methodology with innovative, patient-focused research.

Foster, the University’s Chair in Immunology, investigates the molecular and cellular mechanisms of disease in the laboratory.

Both have a keen interest in unravelling the critical role of inflammation in asthma and other respiratory conditions.

“We are constantly on the lookout for better treatments but with a disease like asthma, management is also important,” Gibson says.

“For some people, just understanding what is happening to them is enough to make a big difference to their condition and quality of life.”

Gibson’s clinically based team is involved in research projects with significant implications for future treatment and management of airway disease (see adjacent story).

The work of the Centre is internationally recognised, having contributed significantly to advancing both medical practice and policy through its discoveries. Its studies are regularly published in the most prestigious journals and it is a major training hub for respiratory medicine and immunology, attracting gifted PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from around the world to work and study in Newcastle.

Novel discoveries have also been made by the centre’s laboratorybased researchers. These discoveries have enhanced the understanding of processes associated with the development and progression of respiratory diseases.

These teams work under the umbrella of the Hunter Medical Research Institute, a partnership between the University of Newcastle and Hunter New England Health. They also collaborate with research groups in Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne and Perth as part of the Cooperative Research Centre for Asthma and Airways, a $55 million government-backed program.

A major breakthrough was their research into how microRNA molecules, which regulate protein production in human cells, can cause inflammation in the body that can manifest as asthma.

Working out how to control that inflammatory response has provided scientists with a therapeutic target, which could lead to new treatments.

Gibson is working at the clinical interface, using his role as a respiratory physician at the John Hunter Hospital in Newcastle to inform his research into treatments and management strategies for asthma and airway disease.

“Steroids are the conventional treatment, but they can have side effects and while they dampen response, they do not cure the disease,” Foster explains.

Foster says the Centre is at the forefront of interpreting how inflammation, which underpins airway disease, occurs and of developing new anti-inflammatory treatments.

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LEADING THE WAY Professor Peter Gibson’s clinical research team is leading three groundbreaking projects that could revolutionise the treatment of asthma. These specific projects involve better management of asthma in pregnancy, the development of a blood test to diagnose the disease and the treatment of non-eosinophilic asthma with macrolide antibiotics.

Published in the September edition of The Lancet, the team’s study into asthma in pregnancy was prompted by the reluctance of women to use treatments during gestation, even though severe asthmatic episodes can be harmful to both mother and child.

“Also, not everyone is responsive to steroids and within that non-responsive group there is a lot of morbidity.”

Foster says his team has made a significant contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms of steroid-resistant inflammatory pathways that may be relevant to asthma, bringing them closer to the goal of developing alternative treatments.

Other critical areas of laboratory research focus on allergies, viruses and infection as triggers for asthma.

While the two arms of research within the PRC are undertaken by different teams, Foster says it is the critical mass that contributes to its overall success.

“What we have is diversity and common interest,” he says.

“There are similar centres of excellence around the world but they primarily do either clinical-based research or basic immunology. The way the two are integrated here is what makes us unique and underpins our success.”

“People are willing to collaborate,” Gibson agrees, “and it is only by linking patient-focused research with laboratory discoveries and evidence-based medicine that we are able to get these broad insights into disease.”

Laureate Professor Paul Foster and Professor Peter Gibson are co-leaders of the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Viruses, Infections/Immunity, Vaccines and Asthma (VIVA) Program.

As part of this project, researchers measured nitric oxide, which is produced by inflamed airways, in the pregnant patient’s exhaled breath. They were then able to adjust the amount of medication according to the severity of the inflammation. In many cases this reduced the amount of steroid that needed to be administered, which made women more likely to take their medication as they were less apprehensive about the treatment and its effects on their unborn child. Another benefit was that the frequency of asthma exacerbations, or episodes, decreased because the condition was being better managed.

In another study, published this year in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the team used the emerging scientific field of proteomics (the study of proteins) to identify four blood-based biomarkers that when analysed together can distinguish between asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. The two diseases share common symptoms, so are difficult to distinguish, but require different therapeutic approaches. This finding could lead to the development of the first blood test for asthma, which would be a major diagnostic breakthrough.

The third project is the AMAZES study (Asthma and Macrolides: Azithromycin Efficacy and Safety). It will trial an alternative treatment, known as a macrolide antibiotic, for asthma that is not responsive to conventional steroid medication.

Steroids treat a particular cell, called an eosinophil, which is thought to provoke inflammation when present in increased levels.

But research has established that up to half of adults with asthma symptoms have normal levels of eosinophils and respond poorly to conventional treatment.

The five-year, $2.9 million study is trialling the antibiotic on approximately 400 asthmatics in four cities and is the biggest study into non-eosinophilic asthma in the world. It is funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

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MAN ON A MISSION Professor John Forbes believes a cure for breast cancer is not only possible, it is inevitable.

The work of Professor John Forbes and his research colleagues has saved the lives of countless women over the past three decades. But the internationally renowned researcher is not ready to hang up his trademark white lab coat and rest on his laurels just yet.

A world without breast cancer is Forbes’ aim and as a founder and Director of Research for the Australian New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group (ANZ BCTG), he believes that this objective is achievable.

“Unquestionably, we are winning the war,” the University of Newcastle Professor of Surgical Oncology says. “The statistical evidence shows that.

“It is simply a matter of having good people, reliable information, paying attention to the quality of the science, interpreting carefully and being receptive to new ideas.”

Forbes is a decorated oncologist and academic who has been named one of the top 10 researchers in the world in all fields (Thomson Scientific, 2007), holds executive positions on breast cancer committees nationally and internationally and has overseen more than 750 publications from the ANZ BCTG. Breast cancer is still the most common cancer among Australian women but mortality rates have dropped by approximately 20 per cent over the past 20 years. The work of the ANZ BCTG, and the group’s international collaborators, has been instrumental in that result.

Now, Forbes believes new directions in research involving gene analysis could lead to even greater outcomes and completely change the accepted approach to cancer treatment.

“Over the past 30 years, we have been progressively refining the process of identifying types of cancers and specific treatments,” he says.

“Thirty years ago everyone received the same drug. Now, we can classify breast cancer into at least six different types and we have a range of drugs we can use, alone or in combination, to treat them.

“Increasingly we will be able to sample a tumour, do a whole genome analysis, find the abnormalities and deliver a specific therapy.”

The ANZ BCTG is part of a large international trial starting this year that will for the first time test neoadjuvant (or pre-surgical) drug therapies on women with newly diagnosed breast tumours that demonstrate particular gene abnormalities. Neoadjuvant drug treatment has in the past been used infrequently, and largely for the purpose of shrinking a particularly large tumour before surgery, but Forbes believes it also has the benefit of allowing doctors to ascertain whether a prescribed treatment is working before they remove a lump.

“Today, there are many women who will not know that their drug treatment has failed until they get a relapse,” he says.

“The paradigm, which hasn’t changed in 30 years, is to diagnose breast cancer, remove the lump, then treat the patient with drugs.

However, if we start with the drug treatment, there is an opportunity to learn whether or not that treatment is working before the lump is removed.”

Forbes says the neoadjuvant approach will also enhance the process of discovery, allowing scientists to observe how tumours respond to different drugs, which will lead to better targeted treatments.

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Forbes was a key instigator in the establishment of the clinical trials group in Melbourne in 1978. At the time, he had recently returned from the UK where he had been working with pioneering breast cancer researcher Professor Michael Baum, the creator of Britain’s first clinical trials group. Forbes recognised the need in Australia for a similar large-scale, internationally collaborative approach to testing the effects of drug treatments.

The ANZ BCTG was involved in early global breast cancer trials that established the benefits of chemotherapy and hormone treatments, in particular the drug tamoxifen, in post-operative care. It was breakthrough research that Forbes credits with saving “many thousands, if not millions, of lives” of breast cancer sufferers around the world.

When Forbes moved to Newcastle in 1987 to take up a Chair in Surgical Oncology, the first academic post of its kind in Australia, the ANZ BCTG operations office shifted with him. More than 50 people now work from the group’s operations base at the Calvary Mater Hospital, not far from the University’s Callaghan campus. It also has an administrative office in Darby Street, Newcastle. However, the group’s network spans approximately 500 researchers and support staff across Australia and collaborations with research groups in 15 countries.

More than 15,000 Australian women have participated in trials that the ANZ BCTG has led or participated in, including many from Newcastle.

Forbes and his team have contributed substantially over the past decade to major international trials that have established the benefits of drugs known as aromatase inhibitors (primarily Arimidex®) in reducing the risk of relapse in postmenopausal women with certain types of hormone-sensitive cancers.

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Forbes chaired the global IBIS-I (International Breast Cancer Intervention Study) trial, which showed that tamoxifen could prevent cancer in women at high risk of getting the disease, and is co-chairing the follow-up IBIS-II trial, which is investigating whether the drug anastrozole can have the same preventative effect.

But it is the success of his team, rather than individual accolades, in which he takes the greatest pride.

“Today, we have in Newcastle one of the premier breast cancer research groups in the world,” he says. “This is very good for women, it is very good for Australia and I personally value the impact it has had on my career.

“The support of the University has been vital, because there is a big management side to a research program so you need people who are behind you, supporting you, constantly informing you of the opportunities.

“This University does that. It is supportive of its researchers, from the top down, and that has been an important part of our growth.”

Professor John Forbes researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Cancer Program.

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MINING YOUR GENES A successful collaboration between two internationally renowned researchers is using medical science and computer analysis to unlock the mysteries of cancer and other diseases.

Geneticist Professor Rodney Scott (pictured right) and computer scientist Professor Pablo Moscato come from disparate academic backgrounds, but they share a common purpose. The leading researchers are blending their respective knowledge with the aim of making personalised medicine a reality.

Scott and Moscato are co-directors of the University of Newcastle’s forward-thinking Priority Research Centre for Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery and InformationBased Medicine. As one of only two research centres in Australia that directly link bioinformatics with clinical research practice, it is at the forefront of the emerging field of developing patient-tailored treatments based on genetic analysis.

Both researchers bring considerable expertise to the collaboration. Scott has been working in the field of hereditary diseases for 20 years, and has attracted global recognition for his genetic research, particularly in the areas of breast and bowel cancers.

Moscato began his influential work in computer science in the late 1980s as a member of the Caltech parallel computing group – supercomputing pioneers based at the California Institute of Technology. While there, he developed – in collaboration with another researcher – a computer optimisation strategy known as a memetic algorithm, now widely used in computationbased applications in many areas of science and technology.

What has drawn them together is the need for more efficient ways to process and appropriately interpret the mass of genetic research data being collected by medical researchers. Working alongside this is the tantalising prospect of being able to use computer profiling technology to customise treatments for individual patients.

“Since I have been working in genetics there has been an explosion of knowledge and major advances in the technology that can be used to identify risk factors associated with disease,” Scott says.

“Technology allows us to acquire a huge amount of data but a bottleneck is created by the analysis, because there is physically so much data to sift through.

“Bioinformatics is providing a mechanism whereby we can reduce the complexity of research data, manage it and interpret it.”

Scott and Moscato first collaborated in 2006 when Moscato applied his statistical and computational skills to analysing data associated with the rare genetic disorder xeroderma pigmentosum, a trigger for childhood skin cancer.

University medical and bioinformatics researchers have since successfully worked together on the interpretation of genetic data relating not only to cancer but to a range of conditions including stroke, multiple sclerosis, macular degeneration, Alzheimer’s Disease and lung disease.

“When I came to the University in 2002 there was a lot of strength on the clinical side of medical research but not a lot of work underway in bioinformatics,” Moscato says. “I established the Newcastle Bioinformatics Initiative in 2002 and Newcastle has been the only NSW node of the ARC Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics since 2003.

“Now, in some areas, particularly in supercomputing-based approaches to interrogate these datasets, we are clearly leading this research field in Australia.”

Moscato is pushing the boundaries of molecular interrogation techniques, looking for ways to provide more sophisticated information, including a

forensic analysis of data that seeks to explain, rather than dismiss, even minor statistical anomalies. He has developed a method based on information theory to track the progession of cancer and Alzheimer’s Disease in the brain.

“A medical researcher can come to us with data that contains a number of variables and our methods are able to highlight the possibilities,” he says. “We seek to open new working hypotheses, rather than just give a straightforward reading of the data.”

For example, detailed analysis of data over a number of years by his team has led to the identification of what they believe to be the ‘genetic signature’ of two new subtypes of breast cancer. If validated, the research could lead to new approaches to treatment.

The “final quest”, Moscato says, is personalising medicine.

“With cancer, for instance, we are moving away from the approach that there is a silver bullet,” he says.

“There are thousands of drugs that can be used to treat cancers. That presents a huge number of possible combinations for treatment. Only with sophisticated computer analysis can you screen all of the combinations according to a patient’s specific gene characteristics.”

Scott picks up the theme: “What we are aiming to achieve is user-friendly programs that can be applied at the clinical level; programs that will efficiently and effectively analyse the data and deliver meaningful information describing a person’s risk factors and suggesting optimal treatment.”

Professor Rodney Scott and Professor Pablo Moscato research in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Information Based Medicine Program.

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GUT INSTINCT Professor Nick Talley has made great inroads into the understanding of common but often mystifying gastrointestinal ailments.

For the one in three Australians who suffer from them, chronic stomach and bowel disorders are a source of great pain and frustration. For Professor Nick Talley, they are a scientific conundrum that he has devoted a large part of his esteemed medical career to researching and treating.

The University’s Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Health is a neurogastroenterologist, a specialist in unexplained gut disorders affecting nerves and muscles such as irritable bowel syndrome, functional dyspepsia (a form of severe indigestion) and slow stomach emptying (also called gastroparesis). These conditions, called functional gastrointestinal disorders, together affect millions of people but little is understood of their causes.

“There are many different disorders where the gut fails to work properly. At their most severe they seriously affect a patient’s health and quality of life,” Talley says.

“In the past these conditions were poorly diagnosed, poorly recognised and therefore poorly managed. Over the past 25 years I have worked very hard, with collaborators all over the world, to help classify these diseases more effectively so that we can better manage them.

“What that work has done has confirmed that these are real disorders, that they can be identified biologically – and that is a major advance. We have proven they are not just conditions that are imagined or purely psychologically driven.”

A former Professor of Medicine and medical department Chair at the prestigious Mayo Clinic in the United States, Talley came to the University of Newcastle in 2010 with impeccable credentials as a researcher, teacher, administrator and clinician.

Talley is one of the most highly cited researchers in his field and, working with his teams of collaborators in Australia and internationally, has been credited with significant advances in our understanding of the underlying causes of functional gastrointestinal diseases.

His self-confessed “career of reinvention” has encompassed two periods at Mayo, both in research and administration, interspersed with a nine-year period as Foundation Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney’s Nepean-based medical school.

He holds adjunct research appointments with Mayo, the University of North Carolina and Sweden’s Karolinska Institute. He is an author of several major medical textbooks and has published more than 700 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Talley says his team’s work in verifying the presence of eosinophils (inflammatory white blood cells) in the small intestine in functional dyspepsia is a critical breakthrough because it offers new treatment options that could ultimately lead to a cure.

“One of the things we’ve been able to ascertain is that there is inflammation in the gut that appears to be an important driver, a fact that is now becoming well accepted but certainly was not when we started this work,” he says.

Talley has maintained his commitment to clinical work throughout his academic career and is a Visiting Medical Officer at Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital.

He is an advocate for introducing all students to research early, starting from undergraduate level, because he believes it enhances their proficiency regardless of which career path they choose. In his new role, he is keen to promote research training for practitioners too, so they have the opportunity to directly translate research into practice.

“Research builds new knowledge that when done well is robust and can make a real difference in patients’ lives,” he says. “Apart from that, research is fun. It is also fascinating and challenging and, when tied in with clinical practice, it becomes highly relevant to what you are doing every day.”

To that end, Talley has practised what he preaches. In 2001, when he was offered the chance to return to Mayo to research genetic aspects of functional gastrointestinal disorders, he enrolled in a Masters degree course in genetic epidemiology through Newcastle’s GradSchool.com to upgrade his skills.

As to why he chose Newcastle and a Chair in Health for the latest phase of his career reinvention, Talley is unequivocal.

“I see enormous potential here, and I want to contribute.

Newcastle has a tremendous cadre of researchers and educationalists, and many health research programs that are world-standard. The national and international rankings of the Faculty of Health are excellent, but I think we can do even better.”

Professor Nick Talley researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI).

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FERTILE MIND Finding better ways to regulate fertility has been a career crusade for Laureate Professor John Aitken.

It may have been the promise of better weather that first lured Laureate Professor John Aitken to Newcastle, but it is the intellectual challenge that has kept him here.

Aitken, a global authority on reproductive biology, arrived from the University of Edinburgh to take up a Chair in Biological Sciences in 1999. He is now a leader of a 150-strong research team studying fertility and contraception, which has attracted nearly $50 million in funding.

“On a world scale, a team of 150 people working solely on reproductive science is significant. It is an enormous commitment by the University to the area,” says Aitken, a co-director of the University’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Reproductive Science.

Reproduction has always fascinated Aitken.

As an undergraduate in London studying zoology, he was intrigued by the “amazing process of how we start from a single cell and develop into an entire organism”.

Postgraduate studies in reproductive biology followed and by the age of 25 he was working with the World Health Organisation (WHO), overseeing a multi-million-dollar series of research projects into fertility regulation. It was a defining period in his career.

“The problems ailing our species – poverty, pestilence, war, famine – all have their root cause in unsustainable population growth,” the widely cited academic says.

“I concluded that the most pressing challenge for biologists is to determine how to control population growth.”

While the WHO experience gave him an insight into the need for more accessible and effective forms of contraception, some of Aitken’s most notable achievements have been at the opposite end of the reproductive spectrum: assisting those who have problems with fertility. His speciality is the largely neglected field of male reproduction.

“Our research found that the best sperm also carry the highest net negative charge. In our process, the sperm cells are placed in an electric field and those that move towards the anode (the positively charged electrode) are the ‘good guys’.

“This separating process achieves in approximately five minutes a task that takes conventional technology about 45 minutes to complete.”

“Our understanding of the male reproductive system is approximately 20 years behind our understanding of the female system. One in 20 men is infertile, yet we do not have a medical specialty in male reproduction,” he says.

The research led to the development of a separating device called the CS10, manufactured in conjunction with life sciences company NuSep. It is set for a commercial launch in 2012, following clinical trials, and has the potential to snare a substantial share of a world market estimated to be worth $100 million annually.

Aitken, a recent inductee to the select group of Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science, has made some significant breakthroughs in the understanding of male fertility with his team at the PRC.

In another research project, he collaborated with PRC colleague Associate Professor Brett Nixon to discover that sterility in some men could be related to the absence of a ‘chaperone’ protein which is needed to allow sperm to recognise an egg cell.

He has developed a method of selecting the best sperm from ejaculate, which makes the process of sperm separation for in vitro fertilisation faster and more accurate.

“Biologically, sperm-egg union is a miracle; 200 million sperm cells are released into the female tract and they have to find one other cell in the body,” Aitken says.

“In assisted conception, the best sperm needs to be selected because it will impact the development potential of the embryo,” he explains.

“The sperm-egg recognition process is akin to a gunslinger in the wild west – the sperm keep their receptors for the egg in their ‘holster’ and only transport them to the surface as they hone in on the egg.”

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A GOOD EGG The mysteries of conception are this researcher’s passion.

The process is orchestrated by the chaperone proteins. Among infertile men, the corralling of the receptors and their presentation on the surface of the cell does not occur due to the absence of chaperone proteins.

As a young biologist, Professor Eileen McLaughlin was fortunate to work in assisted reproduction during the pioneering years of in vitro fertilisation, around the time that British baby Louise Brown was heralded as the world’s first IVF birth.

“Our research is trying to find out why these molecular proteins are missing, which will hopefully lead us back to the origins of the infertility.”

It was a case of ‘right time, right place’ for McLaughlin, who graduated from the University of Glasgow when Britain was the international hot spot in this emerging field, before moving into research positions involving assisted reproduction at the universities of Birmingham and Bristol.

In the area of fertility control, Aitken has received a donation from The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to research the development of a novel drug for use in developing countries that would both provide both contraception and protection against sexually transmitted diseases.

“I think better methods of fertility regulation and curing infertility are the two single most important issues facing the world,” Aitken says.

“Every year the reproductive needs of 400 million couples go unmet. It is up to scientists working in public sector institutions such as the University of Newcastle to make the breakthroughs that will lead to those new methods.”

Laureate Professor John Aitken researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Pregnancy and Reproduction Program.

That experience was the foundation for what has become a distinguished research career in reproductive science. McLaughlin’s work has been recognised with awards from the British Fertility Society and the Society for Reproductive Biology in Australia, and has been published in esteemed medical journals including Cell and The Lancet.

Since joining the University’s reproductive science group in 2001, a focus of McLaughlin’s research has been the fertility prospects of older women.

She says her research has reinforced the theory that declining egg quality, rather than quantity, is the major hindrance to conception in women in their late 30s and older.

While science has not delivered a magic formula to improve the quality of mature eggs, McLaughlin is researching the way oocytes, or immature egg cells, are ‘woken’ to be released from the ovary. The aim is that better understanding this process could lead to new ways of harvesting or prolonging the life of good eggs.

“The attrition rate of eggs is very high,” she says. “A female has about one million eggs at birth but by the time she is in her mid 30s she is down to about 20,000. By the age of 40, she will have a few thousand.

“She will only ovulate 400 eggs in her life, so the vast majority of them are wasted.

The challenge is to find a way to hold on to some of those good eggs longer.”

McLaughlin’s work has established that many chemicals used in everyday items, such as glues, dyes and pesticides, are potentially toxic to eggs, which can further frustrate the efforts of older mothers to conceive.

“There are increasing numbers of women in their 30s who are having difficulty producing a sufficient number of good eggs to conceive. The evidence suggests that this may be influenced by lifetime exposure, probably at very low levels, to environmental toxicants,” she says.

Exposure to these chemicals is a consequence of living in the modern world and McLaughlin says little can be done to reduce women’s susceptibility. But the research underpins the importance of her work in trying to extend the life of healthy oocytes and improve outcomes for couples trying to conceive later in life.

Professor Eileen McLaughlin researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Pregnancy and Reproduction Program.

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An internationally-respected mental health authority who is consistently one of the University’s highest recipients of external research grants, Kelly has held a career-long interest in the psychosocial aspects of palliative care, particularly within an oncology setting.

FRONTLINE MENTAL HEALTH CARE Leading research is delivering a better response to depression when it is needed most.

He says it is often nurses and allied health care providers in regular contact with patients who are in the best position initially to detect when a patient needs help.

Kelly advocates that mental health should be monitored as a ‘vital sign’ in people with cancer and other serious illnesses, assessed in the same way as a patient’s physical symptoms such as pain, pulse and blood pressure.

“This focus is rooted in very interesting and rewarding training I had as an undergraduate medical student at Newcastle,” Kelly explains.

“It was a strong philosophy of the medical school here that the behavioural, psychological, social and physical aspects of a patient’s condition were all linked and this thinking has flowed on to my clinical and research work today.

“It is a common misconception that when someone is suffering from depression and also has a severe illness, like advanced cancer, their mental health is beyond help.

“In fact, when people do receive this assistance they are often able to maintain a remarkable level of confidence and optimism, and are better equipped to deal with their illness.”

Kelly is collaborating with researchers in four other centres in Brisbane and Melbourne on the PROMPT study (Promoting Optimal Outcomes in Mood through Tailored Psychosocial Therapies). It provides training and mentorship to frontline health professionals, such as oncology nurses, to help them confidently address common mental health problems among their patients.

“The challenge is to get these things into everyday practice and to see them embedded in people’s work,” Kelly says.

The project has parallels with research that Kelly completed as a former director of the University’s Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health in Orange, where he received significant NSW government funding to develop a state-wide policy for emergency mental health care in rural areas. There, Kelly worked not only with frontline health workers such as GPs but other community members who could be the first point of contact for people with depression.

Professor Brian Kelly believes mental illness is not the sole domain of psychiatrists and psychologists but the responsibility of many in the health system.

“In many of those rural and farming communities the person they are most likely to speak to is not a health professional but the local stock and station agent or the bank manager, so we held forums where we got these people together and provided them with first aid training for mental health,” he says.

“Some of the most critical moments for improving the wellbeing of people who need mental health care occur in their day-to-day contact with frontline health professionals,” the University of Newcastle Professor of Psychiatry says.

Kelly was hailed for the contributions he and his team made to government rural health policy and he continues to work in the field. He is currently a lead investigator on a five-year follow-up of the Australian Rural Mental Health Study, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council.

“As mental health experts we need to be working more closely with people on the frontline to help them be confident and capable in responding to those day-to-day needs.”

“What I enjoy about my work in the PRC is that we have a tremendous team, with some very accomplished clinicians and researchers working across a broad range of fields,” he says.

Empowering people to respond appropriately when they sense that a patient is in emotional distress is a common thread in Kelly’s research. As a practising clinician and program convenor in the University’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Brain and Mental Health Research, he has a keen interest in seeing research translated into clinical practice.

“As well as in my own fields, we have achieved international acknowledgement in areas such as schizophrenia and drug and alcohol research. There is a genuine collegial atmosphere and willingness to work together that makes this Centre quite unique.”

Professor Brian Kelly researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Brain and Mental Health Program.

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AGENT OF CHANGE The stroke treatments pioneered by Professor Chris Levi and his team have transformed lives and medical practice.

As a clinician, Conjoint Professor Chris Levi sees evidence of the benefits of his research every time he sends a healthy patient home.

stroke unit at the John Hunter Hospital.

There is narrow four-and-a-half-hour window of opportunity for effective clot-busting therapy.

The internationally recognised stroke neurologist and researcher, together with the stroke research team at John Hunter Hospital, has driven breakthroughs in treatments and developed protocols that have vastly improved the outcomes for hundreds of stroke sufferers in the Hunter region. These approaches are now being adopted across Australia.

“By combining the treatments with our triage protocol we have improved our implementation of clot-busting therapy at John Hunter Hospital from four per cent of patients to over 20 per cent, which means more than 100 patients a year are receiving this therapy,’’ Levi says.

“For the right candidate, our treatment is dramatic – it is a cure for stroke,” Levi says.

“Twenty years ago, I would have said that was impossible.”

Levi is the director of Acute Stroke Services at John Hunter Hospital and a co-director of the University’s Centre for Brain and Mental Health Research.

The groundbreaking model of care developed by his team of medical researchers and clinicians combines the use of thrombolytic therapy, or ‘clotbusting’ drugs, with CT imaging of the brain. In suitable patients the clot-busting drug tPA can dissolve the blockage in their brain that has caused the stroke and prevent further damage. CT imaging is undertaken first to identify that there are areas of temporary damage.

Another integral part of the care model is a triage protocol that arms frontline health workers with the skills to identify stroke sufferers eligible for the treatment and fast-track their passage to the acute

“When successful, the treatment has great benefits for the patient – it can mean the difference between living dependently or independently.

“From a community perspective, it is also highly beneficial. With an estimated cost of up to $500,000 for a stroke patient with high care needs, the effective use of tPA is significantly reducing pressure on the health care budget.”

Levi’s stroke research group has attracted National Health and Medical Research Council grants to implement in hospitals across three states the combination of thrombolytic therapy and brain imaging.

Only about one third of stroke sufferers are suitable for tPA, and to receive it they must arrive at a hospital that is equipped to deliver the treatment within four and a half hours.

The other two thirds of patients may be ineligible for a variety of reasons, including risk of excessive bleeding, past illnesses or contradictory drug treatments.

Because of this, Levi and his team are also leading research into treatments for those not eligible for thrombolytic therapy. One

project is a joint study with Harbin Medical University in China into methods of cooling the brain after a stroke. The brain is put into hibernation, which ‘buys’ time for the clot to break up by itself. Researchers at Harbin are developing a helmet that works locally to cool the brain, while members of the team in Newcastle are experimenting with whole body cooling.

Newcastle researchers are also leading an international multi-centre trial of a newgeneration clot-busting drug called tenecteplase or TNK, which they have shown in early trials to be more effective than alteplase or tPA. Another exciting project is the Australian Stroke Genetics Initiative, led by Newcastle stroke researchers in collaboration with the University’s Priority Research Centre for Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery and Information-Based Medicine. Its first study, published this year in Nature Genetics, established a previously undiscovered genetic signal associated with a particular type of stroke.

“The wide range of research and the significant improvements to patient outcomes across all facets of stroke treatment verifies Newcastle’s leadership role in this area,” Levi says. “Working at the nexus of stroke research and treatment, working with patients every day, spurs us on to keep moving developments from the lab and into clinical practice.”

Professor Levi researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Brain and Mental Health Program.

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WINNING THE WEIGHT WAR Arming people with good information is the most effective way to fight obesity.

“At that stage I had been at the John Hunter Hospital for about five years, working with children who had cystic fibrosis,” she says. “I loved my job but I started to wonder if my work was making a long-term difference. Learning how to research was a path to lift my qualifications and make a far greater contribution.”

Collins completed a PhD in optimising nutritional status in cystic fibrosis sufferers, she accepted a conjoint lecturing role at the University and then a tenured half-time position from 2000.

She converted to a full-time research role in 2010 after being awarded a National Health and Medical Research Council Career Development Award fellowship. She is also a co-director of the University’s new Priority Research Centre in Physical Activity and Nutrition.

Collins describes her research focus as “optimising dietary intake” by helping people make good food choices.

“A significant number of research studies are targeting specific sectors within the population,” she says. “Accordingly, rather than focusing on homogenous messages to the population as a whole, we are targeting our activities to those most in need: working with parents who have schoolchildren, with mums who have recently had a baby, or with men in the workplace, and families.”

Collins says supporting and educating parents on how to encourage the family to eat healthy food is emerging as a key strategy in the weight war.

With professional credibility, a solid research background and a high public profile, Professor Clare Collins is a convincing advocate for the benefits of a better diet.

Collins is a highly regarded academic who has published more than 70 papers in the past five years and attracted more than 50 research grants, all while juggling teaching and clinical practice.

She is in demand as a conference presenter and has helped steer government policy as an executive member of the Australian and New Zealand Obesity Society.

Collins is equally well-known as a national media commentator, whose commonsense explanations are widely sought, and the author of six mainstream books on health and nutrition.

She has also lent her expertise to the popular television show ‘The Biggest Loser’ as an off-camera nutritional advisor.

“It is extremely important to get messages across through the popular media,” Collins says of her largely voluntary extra-curricular roles.

“I consider it as complementary to my work as a researcher and I think I would be remiss if I did not try to translate findings into changing the items people put into their shopping trolleys, the food they prepare for dinner and the contents of their kids’ lunchboxes.

“The more you can translate those messages for the general public, the less difficult it becomes for them to change their eating habits.”

Getting the message across has been a constant theme during Collins’ 30-year career. As a working mother of three children, she decided to go back to university at Newcastle when her youngest was still an infant because she believed applying a research focus to her clinical work would make her more effective professionally.

The success of this approach was demonstrated by the recent Hunter Illawarra Kids Challenge Using Parent Support (HIKCUPS) study, which illustrated the importance of parental influence.

Undertaken jointly with the University of Wollongong, the study was published in 2011 in the leading US journal Pediatrics.

The study involved a sample of 165 families who had a child with a weight problem. The families were divided into three groups: group one received a program of healthy lifestyle and dietary advice delivered to only the parents; group two received a physical activity skill development program involving the children only; and the third group received both programs simultaneously delivered to parents and children.

All groups had positive outcomes but, interestingly, the most marked improvement in the children’s weight after two years occurred in group one, where the team had worked only with the parents. The results of HIKCUPS have informed two other projects involving PRC researchers: the father-focused child obesity prevention program Healthy Dads, Healthy Kids and an afterschool cooking club called ‘Back to Basics’ being trialled at a Lake Macquarie primary school.

“People do not realise how hard it is for parents these days,” Collins says. “They are bombarded by advertisements for foods that they know deep down are not ideal for their kids, but it is hard when your children come home and say, ‘Everyone else is having this’.

“I think it is important to help parents and empower them to realise that they can be the boss and set up the sort of food environment at home they really want their child to live with.”

Professor Clare Collins researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Public Health Program.

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AN ACTIVE PURSUIT A new research centre promoting healthier lifestyles combines the expertise of the University in a range of fields.

Professor Ron Plotnikoff is on a mission to get Australians moving.

The University of Newcastle’s first Chair in Physical Education and Population Health, and founding director of its newly established Priority Research Centre (PRC) in Physical Activity and Nutrition, believes inactivity is one of the greatest health challenges facing our society.

“Research demonstrates that more than half of our population do not meet recommended physical activity guidelines,” he says.

“Australians love their sport but there is a significant disconnect between spectator interest and participation levels. The nation’s health would be a vastly different story if Australia’s passion for sport translated into more people being active.”

The stakes are high. Plotnikoff cites a 2008 report commissioned by a major health insurer that estimated the cost of physical inactivity to the Australian economy was $14 billion a year and found it contributed to approximately 16,000 fatalities annually.

“Inactivity is a major national issue given the benefits of physical activity in the prevention and treatment of a wide range of health conditions and the prevalence of people in our community who are inactive,” Plotnikoff says.

An internationally recognised researcher with an extensive background working in public health in his native Canada, Plotnikoff believes the new PRC will be the perfect vehicle for promoting better health and quality of life. He says drawing on the expertise in the University across a number of disciplines will add significant value to the Centre’s research capability.

A joint initiative between the Faculty of Health and Faculty of Education and Arts, the Centre’s researchers are drawn from the schools of Education, Health Sciences, Biomedical Sciences and Pharmacy, and Medicine and Public Health.

“My own background encompasses kinesiology, education and physical education, epidemiology and community medicine.

It makes very good sense to establish this PRC with a genuine interdisciplinary approach to these complex problems,” Plotnikoff says.

“Through designing new research interventions for physical activity and nutrition that are evidence-based, sustainable and cost-effective, we aim to shift the statistical population curve in the right direction.”

Professor Ron Plotnikoff researches in collaboration with the Hunter Medical Research Institute’s (HMRI) Cardiovascular Health Program.

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CULTIVATING A CLEANER FUTURE A desire to provide Australia with a viable plant-based fuel drives the work of Professor Chris Grof.

As a child, Professor Chris Grof idled hours away with his siblings in the family car while his father disappeared into fields to investigate a rare plant he had spotted while driving.

While Grof did not inherit his father’s habit for impromptu roadside stops, the third-generation biologist says a love of plant science has been carried through the generations. In Grof, that passion for plants has developed into a quest to engineer a viable biofuel that could reduce Australians’ reliance on fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels account for 98 per cent of Australia’s transport energy needs but pioneering countries such as Brazil, which uses ethanol derived from sugarcane for about one quarter of its transport, have proved that a more substantial biofuels industry is feasible.

Australia’s main source of ethanol for biofuel is sugarcane, a crop Grof studied extensively as a research scientist with the CSIRO for 13 years. His work into carbohydrate metabolism and genetic manipulation in sugarcane has drawn international recognition, resulting in a prestigious Underwood Fellowship from the British Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Council and invitations to address forums in Australia and overseas.

Grof is supported by a strong team at the University. Their area of research, plant biology, achieved an Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) rating of five, the highest score possible, rating their research well above world standard.

An emphasis of his research is developing second-generation biofuels. Second-generation technologies derive fuel from the whole of the plant, including the woody or fibrous parts known as the lignocellulosic matter, rather than extracting just the juice or oil, the traditional method of producing ethanol or other biofuels.

The advantages of second-generation fuels are that they increase the yield of fuel from the plant and can be derived either from crops that are not part of the food cycle or from the waste material of food crops, such as the stems, leaves and husks.

By manipulating the genetic make-up of the plant, Grof aims to elevate both the sugar content and biomass in order to maximise its use as a biofuel feedstock.

Since arriving in Newcastle three years ago to head up the Plant Science Group, Grof has taken a lead role in a research project to develop sorghum as a biofuel. Sorghum and sugarcane share the same photosynthetic properties.

He has partnered with researchers from the University of Queensland under a project funded by the Australian Research Council and industry partner Pacific Seeds to produce cultivars of sweet sorghum with increased sugar concentration. He and his team also collaborate with research groups at Texas A&M University and India’s ICRISAT (International Crops Research institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics).

“Sugarcane is a recalcitrant plant and quite difficult to work with genetically, but with sorghum there is an incredible amount of genetic variability that can be used to introduce a whole host of different traits to the plant,” he explains.

To facilitate Grof’s work, the University of Newcastle has committed to building a super-sized greenhouse, supported by a $500,000 Australian Research Council grant, to accommodate sorghum plants, which can grow to five metres in height.

“Sorghum is already widely planted in Australia, so farmers know how to grow it, and it has limited use as a human food source, so there is no conflict with the supply of edible crops.

“This is long-term research but it is very important for Australia,” Grof says.

“It is quite drought-resistant and able to grow on marginal soils, so that means we may be able to produce a fuel crop that does not compete for arable land being used to grow food.”

“Environmentally it is a priority because we need to move away from fossil fuels, but it also offers the prospect of a sustainable domestic industry in fuel production with the potential to deliver major benefits for rural communities and the country as a whole.”

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SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN Professor Paul Dastoor’s solar paint technology could turn every residential roof into an electricity generator.

The idea of a photovoltaic paint seemed like pure science fiction when Professor Paul Dastoor began investigating alternative solar energy technology 15 years ago.

Yet the physicist is now on the threshold of bringing to fruition a commercial-scale energy system based on solar cells that can be printed, and ultimately painted, onto surfaces.

Dastoor began experimenting with a class of plastics known as semiconducting polymers in the mid 1990s. While most polymers are electrical insulators, the conductive properties of this group of materials posed the prospect that they could be used in electricity generation.

“Traditional silicon cell solar technology was very expensive then, and still is now, so the idea was to develop an alternative material that would be more costeffective,” Dastoor explains.

“I had read papers about semiconducting polymers and thought, naïvely, ‘How hard can it be to build a polymer solar cell?’

“The answer: bloody difficult! Working out how to handle these materials and make them perform the way we wanted them to was a steep learning curve.”

By breaking the semiconducting materials down to tiny particles, Dastoor developed a method of suspending them in water, which led to the concept of producing a solar paint or ink that could be applied to surfaces, such as plastic.

Dastoor then moved to the stage of fabricating solar cells onto a substrate, or base. The first rudimentary prototypes measured just two millimetres by two millimetres and could be produced with a common inkjet printer.

Now, a project that Dastoor started with one vacation student hosts a team of 25 researchers and was the catalyst for the formation of the University’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Organic Electronics, the field of study into conductive polymers.

The next step in Dastoor’s solar paint research is building a customised printing machine capable of coating solar paint onto hundreds of metres of plastic sheeting. The plastic sheeting could be installed onto roofs of residential houses then wired to

inverter boxes to produce electricity in the same way that conventional silicon solar panels operate.

“Our research indicates that a roll of this sheeting on a typical-sized roof of about 150 square metres will provide enough electricity for an average household,” Dastoor says.

“However, the installation cost could be approximately one-tenth of installing a silicon solar system that produces the same amount of electricity.”

Dastoor likens the basic construction of the solar sheeting – a metal coating on a plastic substrate with coloured ink printed on it – to that of a simple chip packet.

“And we make chip packets so cheaply that we throw them away when we are finished with them,” he says. “This gives you an indication of how inexpensively we could manufacture this product.”

Coating the solar cells onto plastic sheeting is the first step in realising the technology. Dastoor believes ultimately it will be possible to paint the conductive liquid directly onto a roof or wall, or even apply it as a window tint.

The new large-scale printing facility, funded by a $1 million grant from the Australian National Fabrication Facility, will begin operating later this year at the University’s Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER) site on the University campus and Dastoor believes he will be producing a commercially viable product within three years.

The solar project will also benefit from collaboration between the PRC, of which Dastoor is the director, and the CSIRO Energy Centre in Newcastle. The two entities have joined forces to establish a joint Research Centre for Organic Photovoltaics.

“One of the many exciting things about this technology is that it opens up the prospect of a new industry for Newcastle,” Dastoor says.

“We sit at the head of the largest coal export port on the planet and yet we know we are not going to be able to mine this coal forever.

“What we are offering is low-cost, environmentally sustainable technology, developed right here in this University, that could help this region and Australia make the transition to a more diverse, progressive economy.”

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passion for change Energy expert Professor Behdad Moghtaderi is leading the way towards a cleaner future.

“I am driven by a desire to develop technologies that will help reduce greenhouse emissions,” Professor Behdad Moghtaderi says. “It is a moral imperative.

The future of our planet relies on it.”

It is this passion that has equipped the chemical engineer to take a leading role in the University of Newcastle’s Priority Centre (PRC) for Energy, a national leader in the research field of new-generation clean and renewable energy production.

The PRC is a key component of the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER), a world-class interdisciplinary research facility on the University campus.

Moghtaderi’s core research projects span low-emission coal technologies, renewable energy systems, energy efficiency in buildings, and the development of hydrogen-fuelled units to replace lithium batteries in laptops and mobile phones.

Arriving in Newcastle in 1999 after studying in Iran and the University of Sydney, he was attracted by the strong research culture and the opportunity to work with engineering luminaries such as Emeritus Professor Terry Wall and Laureate Professor Graeme Jameson.

With a strong work ethic and sharp intellect, the prolific academic was quick to make an impression, moving up the ranks from junior lecturer to professor within eight years.

A consultant to government and industry, Moghtaderi has his finger on the pulse when it comes to anticipating priorities for change and development in the field of energy. As a result, he has attracted more than $17 million in research funding in the past 12 years.

“We have recognised the research opportunities, and we are delivering results that are shaping government and industry agendas.”

Moghtaderi’s work in biomass and coal utilisation is a good example of the influence of his team’s work. One of his first projects at Newcastle proved that biomass, such as woodchips, could be mixed with coal fuel to reduce emissions.

A decade later, the research is being applied in coal-fired power stations across Australia.

Similarly, his ongoing collaborative research with Emeritus Professor Adrian Page and the Masonry Research Group into energy efficiency in buildings has prompted revisions to the Building Code of Australia.

Using data collected from sensors attached to four small, purpose-built cottages on University grounds, the research team has collected a vast amount of information on how factors such as different roofing and walling systems influence a building’s thermal performance.

“About 40 per cent of electricity used in Australia and 20 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions are due to space heating and cooling in buildings,” Moghtaderi says.

“Therefore anything we can do to lower the energy footprint of residential houses in particular will improve the environment and reduce electricity use.”

Moghtaderi’s research into chemical looping combustion, a carbon capture and storage technology, is also pioneering and has gathered momentum as industry recognises its potential applications. He has attracted approximately $5 million in grants for six related projects since 2004.

“The exciting aspect of chemical looping is that it is enabling technology that will allow other low-emission coal technologies to become economically and technically more attractive,” he says. “So it has huge potential for further research and development.”

Moghtaderi and his colleague Dr Elham Doroodchi gained popular attention last year when his GRANEX® power platform featured as a finalist on ABC TV’s ‘The New Inventors’. GRANEX®, developed in conjunction with Granite Power Ltd, is an emission-free engine that turns heat from low-grade sources into electricity.

It is revolutionary because it is capable of using heat sources that might not otherwise be viably recycled – such

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DOUBLE ACT When it comes to research, Professors Bogdan ‘Bodzio’ Dlugogorski and Eric Kennedy believe two minds are better than one. as the flue gas from a coal-fired power station, exhaust from a diesel engine or heat from a geothermal source.

With GRANEX® now being launched commercially, Moghtaderi has entered into another interesting collaboration with Granite Power Ltd, researching a low-energy, small-scale desalination plant suitable, for example, for use on remote farms.

“Like GRANEX®, the desalination plant is designed to be run on waste heat, such as diesel fuel exhaust.

However, it will also address wateruse issues by allowing farmers to turn brackish water on their properties into drinking water,” he says.

Moghtaderi firmly believes the University is at the international forefront of research into clean and sustainable energy sources.

“The University’s engineering area has always been a leader and now, with our PRC and the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources on campus, Newcastle really is Australia’s hub in energy research.”

The pair started at the University of Newcastle within two weeks of each other in 1994 and immediately forged what has become not only a firm friendship but a highly successful professional partnership.

Dlugogorski (pictured right) and Kennedy are leading researchers and directors of the University’s Priority Research Centre for Energy, and jointly supervise a team of 20 research students. Dlugogorksi is a chemical engineer and Kennedy a chemist.

It was a shared interest in the science of fire that first brought them together.

Ironically, Dlugogorski’s research focus was in suppressing fire while Kennedy’s was in starting it, specifically through catalytic combustion.

At that time there was a national imperative to replace ozone-depleting halon compounds as the commonly used fire suppressant. The two teamed up on a project researching alternative chemicals for fire mitigation and ways to convert stockpiles of halons into useful, less dangerous chemicals.

They have since joined forces on numerous projects, including groundbreaking research on dioxins released during combustion.

Their work in this field began in the mid 1990s with a BHP Billiton funded project to minimise the formation of dioxins in the sinter plant at the now

closed Newcastle steelworks. That research led to the pair establishing a state-of-the-art laboratory capable of the highly intricate task of measuring and analysing dioxins.

As Dlugogorski explains, it is the scientific equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.

“It is one of the most difficult and sophisticated analyses in chemistry,” he says. “Dioxins are highly toxic and the concentrations are extremely small. You can have one molecule of that pollutant in a billion or a trillion other molecules.”

Currently, they use this technology to analyse the potentially toxic pollutants formed when biomass that has been contaminated with pesticides is burnt.

The project, spanning both energy and fire safety research, is funded by the Australian Research Council.

What makes their partnership work is deep mutual respect for each other’s research. Kennedy credits Dlugogorski with outstanding analytical and mathematical skills and a sponge-like ability to absorb highly technical information. Dlugogorski, in turn, describes his colleague as an intuitive quick thinker and a first-class chemist.

“Bodzio and I don’t always approach a problem from the same perspective,” says Kennedy, “but by combining our specialist expertise we produce a better outcome.”

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LEGACY OF LEADERSHIP The University’s strength in engineering owes much to the work ethic and reputation of its trailblazers.

One need look no further than the University of Newcastle’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Advanced Particle Processing and Transport for proof of the adage ‘success breeds success’.

Roberts was responsible for the University developing what has become an important and lucrative niche in bulk materials handling, a little-explored area of research back in the 1970s.

The PRC is renowned for world-leading research into the processing, storage and transport of minerals and industrial products and boasts an outstanding record of commercial and academic achievement. Its research has led to technological advances that have produced multi-million dollar savings for industry, and it is at the forefront of developing new-generation processes that reduce water and energy use.

He established TUNRA Bulk Solids Handling as a research group and commercial consultancy in 1975. Since then it has completed more than 4000 projects for clients in 40 countries and made an invaluable contribution to research in the field.

Much of that success is due to the foundation laid by two of the University’s elder statesmen and principal researchers in engineering, Laureate Professor Graeme Jameson and Emeritus Professor Alan Roberts. Both have had long and esteemed careers with the University, Roberts arriving as Professor of Industrial Engineering in 1974 and Jameson as Professor of Chemical Engineering in 1977.

Both have been recognised with Order of Australia awards and have received the prestigious Peter Nicol Russell Memorial Medal from the Institution of Engineers Australia for outstanding service to their profession. Both have also been elected to learned scientific and engineering academies.

“It has become one of the flagships of the University and has certainly validated the decision to go down that path,” says Roberts, who is officially retired but still works from his office at the University’s Newcastle Institute for Energy Resources (NIER) most days.

“Our work has spanned everything from fine pharmaceutical powders, to plastic powders, agricultural grains, domestic waste and minerals such as iron ore, bauxite and coal. Bulk solids handling is a complex aspect of the industrial process that applies to anything that is transported in powdered or granular form.”

Jameson was already a respected expert in fluid mechanics when he came to prominence in the 1980s with his invention of the Jameson Cell. A froth flotation device for recovering fine mineral particles from mine waste and low-yield

sources, it was smaller, faster and more precise than existing technology and was quickly taken up by industry.

These days there are more than 300 Jameson Cells in operation in 21 countries around the world. As well as recovering billions of dollars worth of fine coal and minerals a year, they are being put to new industrial applications including extracting oil from tar sands in Canada and removing blue-green algae from waterways in central Australia.

“It was one of those ‘Eureka!’ moments when all the work you have done beforehand comes together in one realisation,” Jameson says of the moment he conceived the Cell.

“I was with some students at a mine in Mount Isa and I looked at the equipment they were using and thought, ‘I could build something better than that’.”

In their early years at the University, both Jameson and Roberts were committed to lifting the research profile of the engineering group, along with another long-time departmental leader Professor Terry Wall.

Their establishment of research centres in multiphase processing, bulk solids handling and black coal utilisation was important both in facilitating the expansion of research and enhancing the status of the University as a leader in those fields.

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The University has long been a magnet for talented engineering students, researchers and academics and this is due in no small part to the reputations of Jameson and Roberts.

Professor Kevin Galvin (pictured), a former BHP Billiton researcher who now heads the PRC, said his decision to take an appointment at the University in 1993 was strongly influenced by Jameson.

“His professional standing at the time was second to none, he was riding a wave of success with the Jameson Cell and he provided leadership by example,” he says.

Professor Mark Jones, Head of the School of Engineering and Director of TUNRA Bulk Solids, says he was equally inspired by the reputation of Roberts when he moved from England to take up a position as Professor of Bulk Solids Handling in 1999.

“The University of Newcastle research group was considered the premier group in the field of bulk solids handling and Alan Roberts was regarded as the grandfather of the subject,” Jones says.

Like their predecessors, Galvin and Jones have both achieved personal success in their fields and overseen significant institutional advancement in their roles as leaders.

A major achievement of Galvin’s is the development of the Reflux Classifier, an industrial machine used in mining and mineral processing that separates fine particles on the basis of either density or size. The award-winning technology, developed in collaboration with commercial partner Ludowici, improved the efficiency of the separation process with its unique tilted design and is used in seven countries.

Jones has spearheaded many research projects that have improved the performance of technologies in pneumatic conveying (the transportation of powdered materials through pipelines) and oversees one of the largest and most active research groups in bulk materials handling in the world.

TUNRA Bulk Solids has grown considerably over the past five years under his leadership. The increase in business from coal and iron ore has lifted its annual turnover to approximately $3.5 million. It also funds about $1 million in student research each year and supports a staff of 50.

“It is a great vehicle for working with industry and getting our research out into the field,” Jones says.

“It is a unique group with particular expertise. We are often brought in as

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‘consultants to the consultants’, working alongside other engineers to bring our specialty knowledge to a project.”

The opening this year of the Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER) will further enhance the strong tradition of collaboration between the University’s engineering experts and industry.

The most comprehensive energy research institute of its kind in Australia, it will ultimately support 300 research staff, encouraging a cross-fertilisation of ideas between energy and resources researchers in collaboration with industry partners.

“The development of NIER is a fantastic example of the ability of this University to punch above its weight in energy and engineering research,” Galvin says.

“That is something it has always done and something for which it is recognised internationally.”

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THE HUMAN DIMENSION Professor Stephen Webb is driving a unique study that could change the debate on technologies for reducing carbon emissions.

Climate change is widely accepted as one of the major challenges facing today’s world. The science and the solutions are argued across the globe from Fortune 500 boardrooms to dinner tables in the outback.

For most, the discussion centres on issues such as global warming, carbon emissions and our reliance on fossil fuels. However, Professor Stephen Webb believes there is a significant aspect of the debate – the people factor – that is being neglected.

Webb, the director of the University’s Research Institute for Social Inclusion and Wellbeing (RISIW), says people’s awareness and acceptance of new carbon abatement technologies are crucial pieces of the climate change jigsaw.

“We all know that public perception has a huge impact on government policy and industry direction,” Webb says. “Public protest can make or break any new carbon reduction initiative.”

“Technology alone cannot change energy behaviour unless it is accepted by society. It is often the case that innovations are technologically rich but socially poor.”

With world-recognised research expertise in science and technology studies, the University of Newcastle is uniquely placed to spearhead this new area of study into the social dimension of energy and resources. Webb, a leading international authority in human sciences, is directing a groundbreaking interdisciplinary study on public response to clean coal technologies, which draws on expertise of researchers from both the University’s Newcastle Institute for Energy and Resources (NIER) and RISIW. The NSW government-funded project is evaluating how much people in Upper Hunter mining communities understand about the process of carbon capture and storage and their level of acceptance of this emerging technology.

In an Australian first, the project employs a research methodology known as Actor-Network Theory. This European-influenced approach looks at how ‘science is made’ and how individual perceptions and trust are shaped by people’s networks.

The project also encompasses a methodology called ethnography, which involves first-hand observation and requires researchers to live and work among the communities they are studying.

Webb says Coal Innovation NSW, which is funding the project, was impressed that the University research team offered a new approach to an old problem.

“We know that surveys and focus groups, with their 30-minute interview format, do not tell the real story. By living and working with communities and by immersing ourselves in their day-to-day lives, we gain their confidence and acquire a much more accurate picture of the rich and dynamic nature of social relationships,” Webb says.

“This is social science that is at the cutting edge, both theoretically and methodologically.”

Pushing the boundaries is a characteristic of the Institute where a progressive approach is encouraged across all of its research programs, which cover themes as diverse as postindustrial cities, urban futures, Indigenous entrepreneurship and social justice.

Webb has always rejected the idea of cookie cutter templates for policy-driven research, believing the best results to be derived from a combination of evidence and deep interpretation. He has penned many influential articles and several textbooks on the merits of evidence-based practice, including a 2001 article in the British Journal of Social Work, which is the world’s highest cited article in the field and ranked as the most influential journal article in the discipline over the last decade. (Hodges et.al. 2001) The University of Newcastle this year attained an Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) rating of four for social work, a result that rates its performance above world standard and one of the highest in Australia. Webb attributes the outcome to a highly credentialed group of committed researchers with a prolific output of articles in A-rated scholarly journals and highly cited publications.

“We have a world-class professoriate here in social sciences and a team of top quality researchers with innovative ideas and a power of international reach across many different areas.”

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A FOUNDATION FOR SUCCESS With revered researchers such as Laureate Professor Scott Sloan and Professor John Carter leading the way, geotechnical engineering at the University of Newcastle is on solid ground.

Most drivers on the Pacific Highway would give little thought to the towering embankments that line the newly upgraded sections of the road along the NSW North Coast, but to engineers they represent a significant accomplishment.

As University of Newcastle Laureate Professor Scott Sloan explains, some of the embankments stand on soil that is very unstable and poses major engineering problems.

“Stepping onto coastal soft soils, you can sometimes sink to your knees,” says Sloan, a geotechnical engineer and internationally recognised expert in soil stability analysis.

“It is a massive engineering challenge to build major infrastructure on this type of foundation, in reasonable time and at reasonable cost.”

The problem is typical of the troubleshooting nature of geotechnical engineering, which focuses on predicting the behaviour of earth materials to ensure stability for buildings and infrastructure.

Under Sloan’s leadership, the University has long been a leader in computational modelling in the field. His development of faster and more efficient methods of calculating the load capacity for buildings and structures has drawn acclaim from around the world. User-friendly software developed by Sloan is set for international commercial release next year through Newcastle Innovation, the University’s commercial arm.

Sloan is the director of the University’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Geotechnical and Materials Modelling and also leads the new Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Geotechnical Science and Engineering.

With funding of $14.4 million over seven years, the collaborative Centre for Excellence will specialise in developing new and improved tools for designing energy and transport infrastructure in a cost-effective manner.

The centre combines the theoretical and computational strengths of the Newcastle PRC; the University of Wollongong’s knowledge in below-track rail infrastructure; and the offshore expertise and experimental capabilities of the University of Western Australia, which has Australia’s only geotechnical centrifuge modelling facility.

The collaboration represents a professional reunion of sorts for Sloan and his colleagues Professor John Carter, Newcastle’s Pro Vice-Chancellor of Engineering and Built Environment, and Professor Mark Randolph, the former head of the University of Western Australia’s Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems.

All were researchers at Cambridge 30 years ago and each has gone on to build a distinguished academic and research career. The three are among the select few engineers who have been made Fellows of the Australian Academy of Science.

One of the initial joint projects under the ARC Centre of Excellence program will be the establishment of Australia’s first national soft soil test site, near Ballina, on the NSW North Coast. Working with the Roads and Traffic Authority and industry partners, researchers will explore stability problems that have been experienced during the $5 billion Pacific Highway upgrade.

The ARC Centre of Excellence will also direct its research to safety analysis of offshore oil and gas developments on soft sea floors, an area in which Carter and colleagues from the University of Western Australia have significant expertise. For example, Carter has worked across the globe, from the oil platforms in the North Sea to those on Australia’s North West Shelf, and has consulted for BHP, Esso, Woodside Wapet, Bond Oil, Amoco and Exxon.

Some of his most challenging work was on the North Rankin A and Goodwyn platforms off Western Australia in the 1980s. Those early offshore projects in Australia were problematic, Carter explains, largely because the properties of the soft carbonate soils on the seabed

were not well understood. Remediation work on the platforms ended up costing more than $500 million. However, as with most first-time projects, it proved to be a great learning ground for researchers and project engineers.

Carter and Sloan are accomplished computational engineers whose mathematical models have been widely adopted into engineering practice. Both have received broad recognition from within their profession and beyond.

Carter, named last year one of Australia’s 100 most influential engineers, was particularly proud and humbled when he received an Order of Australia in 2006.

Sloan nominates being invited to give this year’s Rankine Lecture in England, one of the most prestigious honours in geotechnics, as a career highlight.

Both Sloan and Carter are enthusiastic advocates of the cross-disciplinary nature of research groups such as the PRC and Centre of Excellence.

“On any research project you will have a lot of people who work on the fringes,” Carter says. “These centres encourage researchers from different disciplines to come together and allow for the better exchange of ideas and expertise between departments and institutions.”

Sloan says the ARC Centre of Excellence adds to the already solid reputation of the University of Newcastle in geotechnical engineering.

“The geotechnical research group at this University is arguably the strongest in the country and one of the strongest internationally,” he says.

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RESEARCH

A DYNAMIC TEAM Esteemed electrical engineer Laureate Professor Graham Goodwin and his research group are masters of control.

Complex systems are central to the way we live. They control energy generation and distribution, safety and security systems, telecommunications, transport, manufacturing processes and many things a contemporary community needs to function.

The University’s Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Complex Dynamic Systems and Control is an internationally recognised research group that brings together more than 100 staff and students. It is at the forefront of developing optimisation and signal processing techniques that improve the performance of industrial processes.

Since its establishment in 2003, the Centre has given life to a host of fundamental research achievements and forged significant industry collaborations around the world.

Some of its high-profile projects have included: devising signal processing techniques and software for electromagnetic mineral exploration for BHP Billiton; developing a roll stabilisation system

used in Australian Customs vessels; improving the efficiency of mobile broadband telecommunications; and cutting-edge work in computer storage for IBM Zurich (see adjacent story).

PRC director Laureate Professor Graham Goodwin says the Centre is rated among the top control and automation research groups in the world, with research projects across Asia, North and South America, Europe, the UK and Scandinavia. Its researchers are highly cited and have achieved more than 1000 publications in the past seven years.

His own reputation is as esteemed as any in the field. The unassuming Professor in Electrical Engineering, who has been at the University for 37 years, has been honoured with the highest professional awards. In the past 18 months alone he has received the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Control Systems Field Award (the top award in this field in the world), the 2010 Nordic Process Control Award and the 2011 Asian Control Education Award.

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NANOSCALE ENGINEERING The PRC is a multidisciplinary environment, which has fostered highly productive collaborations between researchers from diverse fields, including electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, mathematics and statistics. Projects run the gamut from pure research to applied.

While the scope of research undertaken in the PRC is wide, Goodwin says telecommunications provides a good case study, illustrating the complex concepts of control in a scenario most people can comprehend.

He is working with the Swedish company Ericsson AB, under an Australian Research Council Linkage Project, to improve the performance of the mobile broadband system, a growing imperative with more than four billion mobile phones worldwide and nearly 300 billion emails sent each day.

Mobile phone networks consist of adjoining cells, each with a radius of several kilometres.

“In a given cell at any time there might be between 10 and 100 people with phones or computers trying to send data and make calls. If you let them all go at once it would be a babble, and nothing would get through,” Goodwin explains.

“The system has a scheduler that determines which of the users can send data at any one time. The optimisation problem we are working on is how to maximise the amount of data that is transmitted but still ensure that the system is equitable – you can’t allow one person to miss out because they are sitting on the outskirts of the cell.”

In most cases, users of the system are unaware that this priority allocation is taking place because delays are splitsecond. Where it becomes obvious is when the system is not working efficiently – such as when a user unsuccessfully attempts to send a large data file.

“If the system is overcrowded, it becomes inefficient to the point where things don’t go through at all,” Goodwin says. “So we are developing an improved system that will prevent a collapse and better regulate the flow of data.”

Goodwin and his team have been working with Ericsson AB for three years on the project, researching algorithmic optimisation to be used in software that improves the efficiency of the control system.

It is typical, he says, of the big-picture research that has enhanced the reputation of the PRC, and the University, around the world.

“We have many large, internationally visible projects that are of global importance, which is what makes our PRC stand out,” Goodwin says.

With mobile devices, everyone wants maximum memory on the smallest possible device. So scientists are locked in a constant battle to find the most efficient methods of storing data.

In 2009 Professor Reza Moheimani collaborated with researchers at IBM Zurich Research Labs using a unique nanotechnology approach to create what was then hailed as a world record for data storage: 840 gigabits of information on just one tiny computer chip measuring one square inch.

The achievement won the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Control Systems Technology Award, the most prestigious international prize in the field, and gained a world record for nanopositioning accuracy. The team designed a control system with an accuracy of one quarter of a nanometre — approximately the diameter of an atom.

“This technology can potentially allow people to carry huge amounts of information on a tiny portable device,” Moheimani says. “So an engineer or architect, for instance, could carry all of their drawings in the finest detail around on a pocket-sized device.”

For those more interested in using mobile devices for recreational purposes, Moheimani says the extremely dense data storage capacity could hold the contents of 25 DVDs on a computer chip the size of a postage stamp.

Moheimani continues to collaborate with the IBM team on the project and received a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship for his work in the field. Within the Priority Research Centre for Dynamic Complex Systems and Control, he heads the program in mechatronics, a field that combines mechanical, electronics and computer engineering disciplines with control theory.

26 | RESEARCH

IT ALL ADDS UP A chance to work in the airline industry propelled Professor Natashia Boland’s research career.

Every time you step onto a plane, approximately 10 different mathematical models have been solved to ensure your flight schedule proceeds smoothly and cost-effectively, involving everything from organising the crew roster to deciding the ticket price.

Airline planning has remained a career interest for Boland, who is now passing her expertise onto emerging researchers. One Newcastle-based PhD student she supervises is working on methods to improve the optimisation models Boland helped devise two decades ago.

It is a perfect example of mathematics at work, says Professor Natashia Boland, whose experience in computer modelling for airlines as a young PhD student opened her eyes to the scope of real-world applications for her tertiary maths and computer science qualifications.

“Most planning in airlines is completed in a highly sequential way: you determine a flight schedule, then select the aircraft for the schedule, next a crew is assigned, relief crews are added and so on.

At each stage, planners try to find a minimum-cost and maximumutilisation solution,” she explains.

A world-leading operations researcher, Boland is one of Australia’s foremost authorities on integer programming, the field of mathematical optimisation and feasibility.

“It is easy to optimise each stage individually, but evidence demonstrates that if you look at one stage at a time you achieve, overall, less than the optimum solution. We are researching integrated planning – trying to simultaneously plan the actions of aircraft, crew and maintenance to achieve those cost and utilisation benefits.”

She has turned her considerable skills to solving logistical problems and optimising performance in fields as diverse as robotics, telecommunications, radiotherapy, mining, military deployment and supply chain management.

Boland joined the University of Newcastle’s School of Mathematics and Physical Sciences as a professor in 2008, a valuable appointment that has already paid dividends.

Newcastle was ranked the top university in the country in the field of Applied Mathematics this year by the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) assessment. Boland describes the achievement as a team effort, with schools from across the University contributing to the successful submission.

“I hope it signals to potential students, both local and international, that this is a great place to be a researcher in applied maths,” Boland says.

She is also an associate director of the groundbreaking Priority Research Centre (PRC) for Computer-Assisted Research Mathematics and its Applications (CARMA), a group unique to Australia and one of only a few in the world that explore computer applications to enhance the understanding of high-end maths.

Boland’s interest in applying mathematics in industry began as a PhD student when she had the opportunity to design a program to automate the complicated task of airline crew scheduling.

This was pioneering work in the early 1990s that ultimately brought her under the wing of one of the founding fathers of integer programming, George Nemhauser, and led to a stint at the prestigious American research university Georgia Tech.

In another industrial application of her algorithmic research, Boland is working with the Hunter Valley Coal Chain Coordinator to optimise the annual movement of more than 100 million tonnes of coal from 35 mines along rail lines and through the Port of Newcastle.

“It is a massive planning challenge,” she says. “The coal chain involves many providers who share infrastructure. In addition, they need to factor in maintenance and other users of the infrastructure, such as passenger trains.

“Our challenge is to help them build models that will assess alternative options and automatically find the most efficient way to address planning challenges. We conduct the mathematical research behind the software.”

Boland considers the University’s relationship with the local community to be one of its strengths.

“In Newcastle, everybody you meet in business or anywhere in the community knows the University, they have a friend or relative who is involved with the University and when we talk to business people the response is, ‘How can we help, how can we be involved?’

“I have been bowled over by the support we get from industry for our research projects. I have never experienced anything like it anywhere else in Australia.”

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DELVING INTO THE UNKNOWN When people ask world-renowned mathematician Laureate Professor Jon Borwein what brought him to Newcastle, he tells them it was CARMA. “It was once said that the only things a mathematician needed for research were a pad, pencil and a wastepaper basket,” Laureate Professor Jon Borwein says.

“That was never completely true – but it is even less so now.”

Borwein has come a long way from using notepads and blackboards in the 40-plus years that he has grappled with complex mathematical equations. These days the director of the University’s Priority Research Centre for Computer-Assisted Research Mathematics and its Applications (CARMA) works with vivid digital images that can portray at a glance information that would take many pages of figures to set out in written form.

“I have not found a piece of mathematics that I cannot learn more effectively and quickly with computer assistance,” he says.

Mathematical visualisation through the use of graphics is one of the focuses of CARMA, which seeks to harness developments in information and communication technology to further the exploration of maths and undertake ever more challenging calculations.

Borwein is a pioneer in what is known as experimental maths, in which computers are used to run computations to look for patterns, identify sequences and gather evidence in support of specific mathematical assertions. His work at Newcastle has put the University at the cutting edge of this field.

His textbooks, papers and blogs are widely read and discussed by the international mathematics community. In recognition of his contributions to research, he was recently awarded a Fellowship of the Australian Academy of Science, the country’s most elite group of scientists.

Borwein has had a lifelong fascination with Pi, the irrational number calculated by dividing a circle’s circumference by its diameter. This fascination led to the development of the famous Borwein Algorithm, a formula he devised with his brother Peter for calculating the value of 1/Pi. To celebrate Pi Day on March 14 (3.14), Borwein demonstrated his mathematical prowess by teaming with several other masterminds to complete what he believes is the largest single dedicated computation ever done: calculating digits of Pi squared beginning at the 10 trillionth place.

Borwein estimates it would have taken more than 1,380 years to calculate on a single PC what he and the team achieved with exclusive access to IBM’s Blue Gene/P computer system, one of the world’s most powerful platforms.

Where does this sort of research lead?

Borwein says there are abundant applications– from the burgeoning field of random number generation widely used in banking, to testing the integrity of computer programs. For example, a 29 million digit calculation of Pi at NASA just after the 1986 shuttle disaster uncovered hardware and software faults in the space agency’s supercomputer.

But to a large extent experimental maths is an exhilarating journey towards new frontiers.

“In one minute we can now achieve calculations that would have been the subject of an applied maths PhD 40 years ago,” Borwein says. “At the same time, I am conducting intensive computerassisted research on work I once thought I had completed 15 years ago.

“One of the greatest attractions of science is that you do not know how ignorant you are until you acquire more knowledge.”

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RESEARCH

RESEARCH AT A GLANCE Research and study opportunities are available for all stages of your career.

To find out more about joining the University of Newcastle’s world-leading team visit: www.newcastle.edu.au/research Our track record: Australian top 10 for research funding and outcomes Ranked in the top 4 per cent (301-400) of world universities Shanghai Jiao Tong University Academic Rankings 2011 Received $16.5 million in Australian Research Council funding Received $14.8 million in National Health and Medical Research Council funding QS Stars overall maximum rating of 5 stars Newcastle Innovation annual turnover $12.6 million in 2010 Research Higher Degree completions of 137 in 2010

We have 15 Priority Research Centres: Advanced Particle Processing Asthma and Respiratory Diseases Bioinformatics, Biomarker Discovery and Information-Based Medicine Brain and Mental Health Research Cancer Centre of Excellence for Complex Dynamic Systems and Control Chemical Biology Computer-Assisted Research Mathematics and its Applications Energy Gender, Health and Ageing Geotechnical and Materials Modelling Health Behaviour Research Centre Organic Electronics Physical Activity and Nutrition Reproductive Science

Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence: Newcastle is the lead site for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Geotechnical Science and Engineering With partner organisations we host: Hunter Medical Research Institute (HMRI) Newcastle Institute of Energy and Resources (NIER) We host large national and international research projects including: Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health Australia New Zealand Breast Cancer Trials Group Enterprise Connect Clean Energy Innovation Centre

Research is printed on Mohawk Options 100% PC White, which is made from recycled fibre and manufactured using non-polluting, wind-generated energy. This paper has been independently third party certified as being 100% Post Consumer Recycled.

The University of Newcastle For more information about the articles in this publication please visit www.newcastle.edu.au/research Writer Amy De Lore Media and Public Relations Project coordination Media and Public Relations Design Bounce Design Photography Murray McKean

Research Division

UoN 2011/1304

The Chancellery The University of Newcastle Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia T +61 2 4921 7733 F +61 2 4921 7164 W www.newcastle.edu.au/research CRICOS Provider 00109J

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