News

Emerging leaders and innovators recognised in national honours

A DMTC-supported PhD candidate and young Australian innovator has been awarded a High Commendation in the Land Forces 2021 Innovation Awards.

Harry Veivers has been a driving force in the lightweighting work package of the Thales Australia Networked Future Augmented Small-Arms Technologies (N-FAST) project, successfully manufacturing prototypes using a novel design to achieve a 40% mass reduction.

The N-FAST project is part of sector-wide innovations that provide advances in the lethality, situational awareness and survivability of the Solider Combat System. A key element to and enabler to this work is to remove non-functional weight carried by soldiers in battle.

Harry Veivers (centre) receives his High Commendation from Lieutenant General (Ret) Ken Gillespie AC, DSC, CSM (left) and Dr David Kershaw of DSTG (right). credit: Stefan Daniljchenko

The N-FAST project consists of a series of parallel technical investigations and activities led by Thales Australia to explore and take advantage of breakthroughs in digitisation, lightweighting and advanced manufacturing. DMTC’s contribution is principally through collaboration partners at the University of Queensland and RMIT.

A PhD candidate at the University of Queensland, Harry has made an outstanding contribution to the project through the provision of technical and design improvements to small arms technology, making it lighter, stronger and cost-effective, and ensuring that Defence is able to utilise the best possible equipment for Defence personnel.

The work of Thales, DMTC and partners is ensuring that Defence is able to provide leading-edge equipment for Defence personnel and is also contributing significantly to establishing a sovereign industrial capability for munitions and small arms research, design, development and manufacture.

The winner of the Young Innovator prize was Dr Brodie McDonald, a researcher with the Department of Defence’s Defence Science & Technology Group. Dr McDonald’s PhD studies were supported by DMTC.

The LAND FORCES 2021 Innovation Awards attracted a record 45 entries from Australian companies and young researchers.