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Swinburne’s oldest alumnus
helps launch centenary celebrations
One hundred and two year old Harold
Popple has helped kick off a year of celebrations to acknowledge
Swinburne’s centenary.
As Swinburne’s oldest alumnus,
Harold attended the book launch of Practical Measures: One
Hundred Years at Swinburne, written by Swinburne Historian
Peter Love.
Born in 1907 on a farm in Mernda,
about 25 kilometres north of Melbourne, Harold sat his mechanical
engineering entrance exam in 1919, a feat that involved his
father bringing him down to Hawthorn in a motorbike sidecar.
He distinctly remembers catching
sight of the college for the first time. The impression was
of an alarmingly huge brick wall, three-storeys high, with
no windows or doors: "The only feature I could see was
these huge letters running the full length of the building
spelling ‘Swinburne Technical College’ –
it was a shock," he says, laughing at the fright he received
in his youth. "I wanted to go home, but I didn’t
tell Dad."
Acceptance into the school meant
a daily commute from the farm, initially on steam trains.
"I observed the transfer to electric rail. I was fascinated
by it," he said.
According to Peter, in the early
1900s there were few opportunities for technical education
in Melbourne. Local politician George Swinburne pushed for
and sponsored the establishment of the technical college in
Hawthorn based on the idea that education is one of the surest
avenues to social advancement.
Peter hopes that his book will add
a new dimension to the Swinburne experience and “give
us a sense of where we have come from, steady our vision about
where we might go in the future and allow us to savour the
depth of experience that is behind us.”
Designed an illustrated by Swinburne
designers Peter Buchholz and Lisa Stanton, the book Practical
Measures: One Hundred Years at Swinburne, is now available
for purchase.
You can order a copy of the book using
this online
order form. The recommended retail price is $39.95 plus postage.
Contact: Angela Taaffe on (03) 9214 5134 or ataaffe@swin.edu.au
Eastern European graduates reunite
Swinburne alumni were part of a reunion
and congress held in Melbourne last month, for graduates of the
Australian Program of Training for Eur-Asia (APTEA).
APTEA was established as an aid program
by the Australian Government in 1990, shortly after the fall of
the Berlin Wall. It aimed to assist the countries of Eastern Europe
by educating young, ambitious managers aged 25 to 35, in the skills
of modern business.
Garry Watts, a retired Swinburne staff
member who was instrumental in developing the APTEA program was
part of the team that coordinated the three day congress. He was
extremely pleased with the event, as it gave participants a mix
of academic input and many occasions to mix socially.
“The congress was a great success
with about 70 APTEA graduates attending, along with family and friends.
It gave everyone the opportunity to strengthen and renew old ties
and share their professional and personal experiences,” he
said.
The three day event included a range of
guest speakers and workshops including sessions on emotional intelligence
by Professor Con Stough, director of Swinburne’s Brain Sciences
Institute, as well as foresight workshops lead by Dr. Joseph Voros
a senior lecturer from the university’s Faculty of Business
and Enterprise.
“The guest speakers and active sessions
were fantastic and really made the attendees think about themselves
and the future,” Garry said.
“Another highlight of the congress
was on the final day when we all travelled to Gippsland. A light
plane flew overhead and took our photo, while we were standing in
place to spell out the acronym APTEA.”
From 1991 to 1997, 424 APTEA Fellows completed
the program. They came to Australia for around eight months where
they participated in 16 weeks of intensive study at Swinburne to
complete the Graduate Certificate in Business Administration. This
was followed by a six week practicum in Australian industry before
returning to their home countries.
To be part of the program, participants
had to be flexible, ambitious and confident. Most have progressed
rapidly in their professions since returning from Australia and
now hold senior management positions.
Contact: Angela Taaffe on (03) 9214 5134 or ataaffe@swin.edu.au
Dancing with the stars: connecting astronomy and art
It’s not often that choreographers get to work with astronomers,
but in a unique fusion of dance and science, Frances d’Ath
has created a dance work inspired by 17th century science and 20th
century astrophysics.
Believed to be the first dance ‘artist in residence’
at an astronomy facility, Frances was absorbed in the creative process
for two months and recently revealed monadologie – the work
choreographed during her ‘residency’ at Swinburne’s
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.
As part of her ‘residency’, she watched 3D simulations
generated by the centre’s Virtual Reality theatre of the large
scale structure of the Universe, galaxy formations and interactions
between elements of the Universe – galaxies colliding, and
dusky material forming around stars.
She then mapped these visualisations of astronomical events to
create a series of choreographic phrases on the human body. These
have been put together using other research from the centre including
data simulations, research into nearby galaxies, solar spectrums
and the equations used to describe this research.
Frances described her work as very intense – both mentally
and physically. “We are not making an abstract portrayal or
representation inspired by the centre’s research,” she
said. “Rather, we are interested in understanding various
methods of mapping and describing the universe that can be applicable
to generating movement beyond the mere repetition of steps.”
“As a choreographer, when I’m working with technology
and research, I’m interested in transferring this onto human
dancers’ bodies.”
Frances’ Artist in Residence has been funded by the Australian
Network for Art Technology/Arts Victoria.
Contact: Chris Fluke on (03) 9214 5828 or cfluke@swin.edu.au
Raising the benchmark for green
design
Swinburne has become the first educational institution in the world
and the first organisation in Australia to adopt an international
Designers Accord that aims to set a new standard for sustainability
in design and innovation.
Signing the accord commits organisations and individuals to adopting
ten guidelines that focus on creating a positive environmental and
social impact.
The Designers Accord began more than a year ago when US product
designer Valerie Casey wrote a ‘Kyoto Treaty of design’
as a call to arms for designers to engage in the environmental movement.
Since then, it has gathered more than 3,500 signees, including several
multinationals, major designers and leading consultancies such as
IDEO, SmartDesign and Continuum. It has also been endorsed by the
AIGA and the Industrial Designers Society of America.
“The signing of the Designers Accord is an opportunity for
Swinburne to lead the way nationally,” said Deputy Dean of
the Faculty of Design Professor Lyndon Anderson.
He said that in joining the accord, the Faculty of Design was committed
to:
 publicly
declaring its participation in the movement
educating
Faculty of Design staff and students about sustainable design
providing
strategic and material alternatives for sustainable design
measuring
the carbon/greenhouse gas footprint of Swinburne Design
reducing
the faculty’s carbon/greenhouse gas footprint annually
initiating
discussion about environmental impact and sustainable alternatives
with the Swinburne community and members of the faculty’s
external network
publicly
sharing exemplary practices and case studies
advancing
the understanding of environmental issues from a design perspective
reworking
projects to favour environmentally responsible design and processes
contributing
actively to the communal knowledge base for sustainable design
Professor Frank Fisher from the National Centre for Sustainability
at Swinburne has also joined the faculty as an adjunct professor
to help with sustainability issues.
 More
information about the Designers Accord visit
Contact: Caroline Buckle on (03) 9214 6090 or cbuckle@swin.edu.au
Double vision: twins pave identical
pathways to Swinburne
For identical twins, Swarna and Raji Vaduganathan,
it was a natural progression for both to commence their research
careers in the same field at the same overseas university.
The sisters, from Madurai, arrived in Australia
late last year having completed a Bachelor of Biochemistry and a
Master of Biochemistry at the same universities in India.
“Only our friends and family can
really tell us apart, and then only by our body language and the
way we speak,” they said.
“Sometimes I will think something
and my sister will say it out loud. When one of us gets sick we
know that the other will get it too, and always for the same amount
of time.”
Swarna and Raji will complete their PhDs
on a full-time basis over three and a half years, where a major
thesis is the sole form of assessment.
“I am researching wheat plants, especially
a protein called aquaporin, which is responsible for water transport
in plants. My aim is to find out the genes of the various wheat
plants, which are tolerant to drought, stress as well as salt,”
said Swarna.
“I would like to contribute something
to make the wheat plants grow even under stress and saline conditions,
so that there will not be any shortage of wheat for the growing
population.”
Swarna and Raji will be working at Swinburne’s
Hawthorn campus under the supervision of Dr. Mrinal Bhave and Dr.
Tony Barton and will carry out extensive research, paperwork and
literature review.
“We will be doing experiments everyday
to find out our aim and will submit our thesis at the end of the
course which will contain the results of the experiments and the
protocols of all the experiments.”
“When we finish our course we would
like to continue living in Australia to complete a post doctorate
or get a job here. We are both interested in teaching as a career.
“
Contact:
Lauren Roden on (03) 9214 5123 or lroden@swin.edu.au
Robotics and mechatronics
students give industry a hand
By designing a unique robotic hand as part
of their final year project, a group of engineering students from
Swinburne TAFE have addressed an industry need.
The students designed the hand for Kockums
Bulk Systems, a company that specalises in packaging and palletising
equipment, as there were no other designs available that met the
company’s specific requirements.
“There is no one in the world that
has done anything quite like this, which is why Kockums asked our
students to design something. I think the students surprised them
when they were able to come up with something that was quite viable,”
Swinburne mechatronics teacher Ian Black said.
Engineers from the company briefed the
students on their requirements. They needed a robotic hand that
was able to pick up plastic bags between two and 20 kilograms and
stack them on a pallet at a rate of one bag every three seconds.
The hand also had to be able to rotate 360 degrees and be able to
interface mechanically with an existing robot.
“The robot hand could be used to
stack things such as soil or fertiliser bags on to pallets before
they are delivered to retailers such as Bunnings or Mitre 10,”
Ian said.
The students went through the process of developing drawings, costings
and a production schedule for the fully automated design. This certainly
impressed Kockums project manager, Sam Lirosi.
“Designing something that can pick
up a bag is extremely difficult. Bags are much harder to pick up
than a box, because they are fluid, flexible and variable.”
Craig Johnson, one of the students involved
in the project, admits designing the hand wasn’t easy, however
working in a group helped the process.
“The most challenging part was using
your imagination to try and come up with a design that hadn’t
been done before and was a bit out of the box. Working together
as a team really helped to overcome this challenge,” he said.
“It was also really good to see examples
of robotics in the real world. Working in conjunction with Kockums
gave me a really good insight and will hopefully give me a headstart
in my career.”
Contact: Ian Black on (03) 9214 8876 or iblack@swin.edu.au
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