News

High honour for DMTC Program Leader

DMTC Medical Countermeasures Program leader, Felicia Pradera, has been presented with the prestigious DMTC Research Collaboration Award for her leadership of the program.

The DMTC Awards for Excellence were presented at this year’s DMTC Annual Conference Dinner at the National Gallery in Canberra.

The Awards for Excellence recognise significant contributions made by individuals and teams that have resulted in successful outcomes for DMTC and its partners.

The Research Collaboration Award presented to Dr Pradera goes to an individual who embodies the spirit of collaboration that is integral to DMTC’s strategic intent.

Seconded to the DMTC from the Defence Science and Technology (DST) Group, Dr Pradera oversees a portfolio of projects that leverage funding from CSIRO and DST Group, as well as contributions from a number of highly capable and innovative research and industry partners.

DMTC CEO, Dr Mark Hodge, said Dr Pradera was a worthy recipient of the honour.

“Felicia has made a massive contribution to the success of this program,” Dr Hodge said. “In fact, it’s not over-stating it to suggest that the program may not have even been running today without her leadership and expert oversight.

“Felicia is a valued member of the DMTC team and really has exemplified our commitment to achieving the very best outcomes for the Australian Defence Force, while also facilitating industry and supply chain development in this country.”

Dr Pradera received her award from Corporal Dan Keighran VC, who was the guest speaker at the gala dinner. After telling the remarkable story of his life and the circumstances of the battle for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross, Corporal Keighran had a simple but powerful message for the DMTC community.

“What you do, makes a difference to the safety and security of our soldiers and the ADF,” he said.

DMTC congratulates Dr Pradera and all the other award winners.

Award Winners

The Industry Partnership Award is awarded to individual researchers whose efforts contribute significantly to the capability of a DMTC Industry partner. This year’s award was awarded jointly to Gui Wang and Juan Torres from the University of Queensland for their efforts in helping Thales’ Protected Vehicles division transition research outcomes from DMTC Project 3.19 into their vehicle development program.

The Project Leadership Award is awarded to leaders of a project team who have contributed significantly to achieving project outcomes. This year’s award was awarded jointly to Ali Daliri and Lihong Su for their leadership of DMTC Project 6.04 “Land vehicle alternative material characterisation” and Yen Truong for her leadership of DMTC Project 7.33 “Advanced nanostructured fabrics”. Yen’s project involves five research and industry partners including CSIRO and DST Group.

The Early Career Award recognises the contribution of early career technical officers, engineers and scientists to DMTC projects, rewarding efforts ‘above and beyond’. It is open to technical officers, engineers and scientists, including PhD students, who are working on DMTC research projects and are aged under 35. This year’s award went to Andrew Ang from Swinburne University of Technology who has been a highly-valued team member and contributor to no fewer than four DMTC projects in the Maritime domain.

The Capability Improvement Award is awarded to the project team who achieves a significant improvement in technical capability in the area of materials and/or manufacturing technology. This year’s award winner was the High Strength Fabrics project team who have developed fragmentation resistant fabric to prototype stage. Industry partner Bruck Textiles has since adopted the technology and is marketing the fabric globally. Tony Pierlot (Project Leader – CSIRO), Ahmed Bhoyro, Ben Eu, Bin Lee, Doug Dower, Horace Billon, Liberty Wagner, Lyndon Arnold, Peter Herwig, Rajiv Padhye, Sandip Ranjan, Tim Head and Vlad Libeson.

Further details on the DMTC Medical Countermeasures program are available at https://dmtc.com.au/our-activities/medical-countermeasures/

Corporal Dan Keighran VC presents Dr Felicia Pradera with the Research Collaboration Award.

Research expertise acknowledged

DMTC welcomes the recent promotions of Matt Dargusch at the University of Queensland, Stephen van Duin at the University of Wollongong and Suresh Palanisamy at Swinburne University of Technology.

• DMTC’s Chief Technology Officer, Matt Dargusch, has been promoted to Professor of the School of Mechanical and Mining Engineering, within the Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology faculty at The University of Queensland;
• DMTC’s Maritime Program Leader, Stephen van Duin, has been promoted to Associate Professor within the Engineering & Information Sciences faculty at the University of Wollongong; and
• DMTC’s Air Program Leader, Suresh Palanisamy, has been promoted to Associate Professor within the Science, Engineering & Technology faculty at Swinburne University of Technology and was recently appointed Director of the Transport Innovation Centre.

Matt, Stephen and Suresh have served in technical leadership roles within the DMTC since its establishment in 2008. Their promotions reflect the credibility that the DMTC enjoys in the Australian research community.

CEO of DMTC, Dr Mark Hodge, said “We are delighted for Matt, Stephen and Suresh. We want DMTC to be seen as an ‘organisation of choice’ for Australia’s best researchers, and these promotions clearly support this objective”.

2016 Student Conference

Held on 9 November in Melbourne, DMTC’s annual Student Conference was conducted in collaboration with the Research Training Centre for Naval Design and Manufacturing (RTCNDM) and the Defence Science Institute (DSI).

A total of 19 students provided 300 word abstracts of their research work and a 15 minute presentation.

Students represented a wide range of universities including Swinburne University, RMIT, University of Queensland, University of Wollongong, Flinders University, University of Tasmania (Australian Maritime College), Monash University and the University of Melbourne.

The audience consisted of 40 people from across DMTC’s research, industry and defence community. Topics ranged from materials and manufacturing, motion planning and mapping – robotics, shock and CFD modelling, sustainment and through-life assessment models to simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) algorithms.

The conference proved to be a great opportunity for students who had attended workshops on clear science writing and dynamic presentation skills to put their new skills to practice.  Just as importantly, the conference and conference dinner gave students the opportunity to network with each other and with their academic supervisors. An encouraging outcome was the number of students already discussing the links between their individual research topics and future potential collaboration opportunities.