Staff Appointments
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Dr Rayya Hassan rejoined Swinburne in June 2008 as a Senior Lecturer in Civil Engineering. She holds a PhD in Civil Engineering and a Master of Engineering in Construction Management, both from Swinburne. She obtained her BSc in Civil from the Baghdad University, Iraq. Rayya started her career in 1982 as a graduate engineer with the Municipality of Baghdad, Iraq working in the area of traffic engineering and management. Between 1997 and 2005, she worked as an academic at Swinburne responsible for teaching undergraduate and postgraduate civil engineering courses and conducting research in the area of pavement asset management. In 2005 Rayya joined ARRB Group Ltd as a Senior then as a Principal Research Engineer in the area of Asset Management. While working at ARRB, she was responsible for managing a number of Austroads research projects with a total value in excess of $900K.
Her research areas include: road roughness and rideability; whole body vibration, analysis and interpretation; roadvehicle interaction and dynamic wheel loading; heavy vehicle dynamics; pavement design and performance; life cycle cost analysis; multi-objective analysis; transport economics; and traffic engineering and management.
Her recent work on Austroads projects resulted in developing the Freight Axle Mass Limits Investigation Tool (FAMLIT). FAMLIT is an analytical tool developed to support road authorities in addressing the challenges associated with the changes in heavy vehicle fleet, axle mass limits and freight task. Other research outcomes include the development of a preliminary set of pavement load-wear-cost relationships for use in informing incremental and mass-distance-location pricing policies.
Dr Shirley Gato-Trinidad joined the Civil Engineering group as Lecturer. Shirley obtained her PhD in Civil Engineering from RMIT University in 2006. Prior to that, she finished her Master Degree in Engineering from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand in 1988 and her Bachelor of Science in Engineering from the G. Araneta University Foundation, Philippines in 1980.
Shirley brings with her a wealth of knowledge from industry. Before joining Swinburne, Shirley was with Melbourne Water for two years. Prior to undertaking her PhD, Shirley worked in various Victorian government and consulting organisations. She migrated to Australia in 1989 and worked with the then Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the Rural Water Corporation/HydroTechnology, the Department of Natural Resources and Environment and the Australian Water Technologies (AWT). She has been involved in water supply/ sewerage systems investigation, planning and design, water resource modelling, preparation of salinity and catchment management plans and in urban water demand modelling. She has written a number of papers that were published in local and international journals as well as conference papers and technical reports.
David Ostler commenced at Swinburne this week as Lecturer in the Aviation discipline. David has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) as well as a Master of Science (Flight Dynamics) and an MBA.
David has over 19 years of Aviation experience, both fixed and rotary wing, within the Australian Defence Force.
He has an extensive operational and management background as well as being a graduate of the Empire Test Pilot's School. As an experimental test pilot, David has been involved in a wide range of developmental testing including systems evaluation, simulator assessment, ship/helicopter interface testing and was the Navy's Seasprite program test pilot. David held the position of Chief of Flight Test with the Navy prior to commencing at Swinburne.