7 | s 2009 Germ-killing bush medicine P3 Emotional ... · so too do the red tubal flowers of the...

Germ-killing bush medicine P3Emotional intelligence in the classroom P10

Research deal to put wings on local industry

www.swinburne.edu.au

Issue 7 | september 2009

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ContentsIssue 7 | september 2009

cover story04 Boeing–

Swinburne venture puts wind beneath industry wings

A new r&D centre will give AustrAliA’s AircrAft component mAnufActuring inDustry Access to improveD mAnufActuring techniques AnD ADvAnceD mAteriAls david horwood

mAnufActuring pArtnerships

Australia’s manufacturing sector is a significant employer and generates about one-tenth of our gDp. however, the sector must remain competitive to survive global market pressures. skill shortages and inadequate strategic alliances between industry and universities have been cited as major impediments to manufacturing innovation*. swinburne has the expertise and capacity to contribute to a resolution. As a dual-sector university we are developing graduates with a range of industry-ready technical and higher-education-based skills. swinburne also has world-class expertise in advanced manufacturing and technology transfer, and continues to develop industry partnerships to foster innovations needed for future competitiveness. recent initiatives include:n the Boeing Alliance – a groundbreaking partnership between

swinburne and Boeing to establish the Australian Advanced manufacturing research centre (see page 4);n thermal spray unit – our new thermal spray research training centre

located in swinburne tAfe, a major advancement for the coatings industry (see page 8);n the suntech power Alliance – a research and production alliance

between swinburne and the world’s largest photovoltaic module manufacturer, suntech power, to develop affordable solar power;n the green trades complex – funded by a $10 million Australian

government award, swinburne will lead initiatives for green training and help Australian industries make the transition to a low-carbon economy;n Advanced manufacturing cooperative research centre – based at

swinburne, this crc brings together universities, research organisations and the Australian advanced manufacturing industry to develop next-generation technology and knowledge-based manufacturing; andn Advanced technology centre – this $130 million infrastructure

development (due for completion in early 2011) will be a crucial step in expanding our commitment to training, teaching and research in advanced manufacturing technologies and related fields.

Swinburne University of Technology Vice-Chancellor Ian YoUng

* Engineering the Future of Australian Manufacturing, Engineers Australia, 2009

03 Bush meDicine for A germ-killing, heArt-sAving gArgle rebecca Thyer

06 i.t. tool gives trAumA teAms extrA eyes Keeping a severely injured person alive after an accident can be one of the most stressful circumstances in which complex decisions have to be made second-by-second. It makes sense to enlist the processing power of a computer

gio braidoTTi

08 hip joints AnD jet BlADes cop A hot sprAy The uses for thermal spray coatings, which, at their thickest, are the width of a human hair, are rapidly on the rise – everything from artificial bone coating for replacement joints or teeth to offshore oil platforms – and potentially water purification and solar energy collection david horwood

Published by SwinburnE univErSity of tEchnologyEditor: Dorothy Albrecht, Director, Marketing ServicesDeputy editor: Julianne camerotto, communications Manager

(research and industry), Marketing Services SwinburnE univErSity of tEchnology, Melbourne

written, edited, designed and produced on behalf of SwinburnE univErSity of tEchnology by corEtExt, www.coretext.com.au, 03 9670 1168

Enquiries: 1300 275 788website: www.swinburne.edu.au/magazineEmail: [email protected]

cover photo: photolibrary.com

feAtures

swinburne septemBer 2009

swinBurne university of technology collects and uses your information in accordance with our privacy statement, which can be found at: www.swinburne.edu.au/privacy.if you do not wish to receive communications from us, you can email [email protected], fax (03) 9214 8447, or write to swinBurne university of technology, privacy at swinburne, po Box 218, hawthorn vic 3122.

the information contained in this publication was correct at the time of going to press, september 2009.cricos provider code 00111Dissn 1835-6516 (print)issn 1835-6524 (online)

10 school’s in for smArter emotions Measures of emotional intelligence are being adapted for use in the classroom to help both students and teachers cope with modern stresses gio braidoTTi

12 whAt lifteD the universe’s veil of DArkness? Carbon is not just a modern atmospheric dilemma; it is also a galactic waste that reveals how the cosmos was changed from utter darkness by a mysterious event that allowed the stars to shine through julian cribb

15 new common softwArefor seAmless commerce david adams

16 leADership A culturAl cloth cut for the times Understanding the social and historical influences that shape leadership ideals could do much to help smooth country-to-country business relationships in our culturally diverse region

caTherine norwood

18 mite versus mite in DeADly numBers gAme Mathematicians are finding that equations for modelling interactions between predators and prey have a surprising array of applications in the human world, from biological control of crop pests to cancer research

gio braidoTTi

20 computing sees the light david adams

21 the Business founDer who Built structure into collApse

Tim Treadgold

22 finDing lost voices is A story to Be tolD By learning how to tell their story, at-risk young people are finding their voice and a path back to self-belief rebecca Thyer

Germ-killing bush medicine P3Emotional intelligence in the classroom P10

Research deal to put wings on local industry

www.swinburne.edu.au

Issue 7 | september 2009

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When spring Comes to Australia’s outback, so too do the red tubal flowers of the emu bush (Eremophila longifolia). Tolerant to the desert’s harsh environmental conditions, the plant has for many thousands of years been used by Australia’s Indigenous people in traditional medicines. Now, with ‘bio-discovery’ work showing it has promising antibacterial properties, it could one day find its way into more modern products, such as toothpaste or mouthwash.

Extracts from this native Australian plant can inhibit the growth of oral bacteria, reduce dental plaque development and stop bacteria from sticking to tooth surfaces, Swinburne University of Technology student Elisa Hayhoe has found.

Through the university’s Faculty of Life and Social Sciences’ Environment and Biotechnology Centre, Miss Hayhoe investigated the plant’s antibacterial potential for her biotechnology honours project.

Emu bush was chosen because the Eremophila genus to which it belongs has been shown to work well against Staphylococcus aureus. More commonly known as ‘golden staph’, this bacterium is related to some dental bacteria.

Although oral bacteria may sound more benign than golden staph, the tooth decay and loss it causes affects quality of life and has links to chronic conditions and systemic diseases. For example, periodontal diseases, where the tissue and bone supporting the teeth erode, have recently been linked to heart disease – several species of bacteria that cause periodontitis have been found in the plaque clogging up arteries in the heart.

Oral bacteria become problematic when exposed to sugar. When this occurs they produce acid, which starts to dissolve teeth. Yet like bacteria in the gut, there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ oral bacteria. So Miss Hayhoe set out to explore if emu bush could be used not to kill oral bacteria, but prevent these micro-organisms from producing acid.

Testing various concentrates of emu bush extract in isolation and in the presence of saliva, she found that this Australian native plant could stop the two main bacteria involved in tooth decay – Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus sobrinus – from producing acid. It could also prevent bacteria

from sticking to teeth to create plaque and cut through existing plaque to prevent further build up. “It works as well as commercial and medicated mouthwashes at removing bacteria,” she says.

Emu bush is found across inland Australia, which could explain why pharmaceutical research company Canopus BioPharma Inc. noticed it. The American company’s Australian base is pretty much at ‘the back of Bourke’ – in the small township of Byrock, just south of Bourke, and about 700 kilometres north-west of Sydney.

Having previously worked with Swinburne’s Environment and Biotechnology Centre director Associate Professor Enzo Palombo before – including on an existing project to study another natural product – the company again approached him, asking him to investigate the potential of the plant it had growing on its property.

Associate Professor Palombo says the centre has had a decade-long program investigating traditional Aboriginal medicines and the plants associated with them. “These medicines have been used for centuries, so we start out by thinking that they are most likely safe and they must have some activity against bacteria or micro-organisms.”

He says Swinburne’s program addresses two goals: the need to find new antibacterial

BUsh mediCine for a germ-killing, heart-saving garglestory by Rebecca Thyer

agents, given bacterial resistance to existing agents; and the desire for alternatives, or natural alternatives, to those agents.

In the fight against tooth decay, an alternative antibacterial agent could reduce existing medicines’ side-effects, such as vomiting and tooth staining, and provide a cost-effective option for developing countries.

Although the World Health Organization estimates that 60 to 90 per cent of school-aged children across the globe have dental cavities, Associate Professor Palombo says emu bush could have other medical uses, such as an antimicrobial coating agent for plastics used in hospital procedures.

He says Miss Hayhoe’s work, which wrapped up in June giving her some time to rest before starting her PhD, is the first step in the bio-discovery process necessary to develop new antibacterial alternatives.

For Canopus BioPharma, the work has answered its initial questions about the red-flowered plant growing on and near its facility. The company will now carry out chemical and clinical evaluations before seeking commercial partners. nn

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the emu bush (Eremophila longifolia): this australian native plant’s antibacterial properties could one day help prevent tooth decay.

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Boeing–SwinBurne ventureputS wind BeneathinduStry wingS

Boeing Research and Technology Australia general manager Al Bryant (left) with Swinburne’s Professor John Beynon.

PhoTo: Boeing AeRoSTRucTuReS AuSTRAliA

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september 2009 swinburneaviation m

anufacturing

A new research and development centre will give Australia’s aircraft component manufacturing industry access to improved manufacturing techniques and advanced materials by dAvid horwood

sheffield centre slashes machining timesr&d at sheffield’s Advanced manufacturing research Centre (AmrC) has led to a step-change in the machining capability of many of its industrial sponsors. this is illustrated by work with titanium alloys, which has reduced machining time by a factor of 5, and helped landing gear specialist messier–dowty win the contract for the boeing 787 undercarriage, worth about Us$2 billion (A$2.38 billion). recent projects have reduced the machining time for engine casings at rolls–royce by a factor of 20, and the machining time for titanium fan disks by a factor of 40. technology transfer to regional companies has boosted sales by more than £55 million (A$113 million). AusAmrC will introduce some of these new machining techniques to Australian manufacturers, assisted by experts from sheffield.

A$800 million in its Australian activities, which produce annual sales of about A$900 million. The company has operations in every mainland state and territory, employing more than 3300 staff. Added to this is a large number of Australian suppliers. In 2008, for example, 3620 suppliers provided more than A$300 million worth of goods and services to Boeing operations. The new research centre is intended to keep Boeing’s Australian supply chain globally competitive.

Boeing also generates about A$400 million in export revenue by producing components for various commercial and military aircraft, software products and services, defence-related equipment and services, and specialist consulting services.

Boeing Aerostructures Australia at Fishermans Bend in Melbourne (formerly Hawker de Havilland) is well regarded for its expertise with advanced composite carbon fibre technology for commercial aircraft. This world-class capability allowed the company to become the sole manufacturer of the wholly composite rudder for the Boeing 777. Moreover, the company designed and is now building the moveable trailing edges for the wings of one of the world’s most advanced new aircraft, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.

Mr Bryant says AusAMRC will allow Boeing to improve the capability of its suppliers to deliver higher-quality, lower-cost components. “Associated with the advanced composite components made by Boeing Aerostructures Australia are a number of metal sub-components, such as titanium fittings, and also the metal tooling for manufacture of the composite structures. Separately, we are also looking at the next generation of resins to allow us to build more complex parts than we do today, using resin-infusion technology.”

The centre’s inaugural head, Professor Beynon, says it is modelled on Boeing’s productive collaboration with the University of Sheffield, where he was involved as Sheffield’s Head of Mechanical Engineering. However, he says most of the effort of getting the Sheffield centre up and running fell to his former colleague Professor Keith Ridgway.

Professor Beynon says the centre at Sheffield has flourished and is now larger


than the department that spawned it. One of the keys to this success, to be repeated at AusAMRC, is that the centre works with the entire supply chain, upstream and downstream, of a target process.

“By involving a line of companies at the beginning of a project, the technology developed is optimised for application along the whole supply chain. This speeds up adoption. Industry knows the technology is coming and can more easily adapt and prepare. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon in research to produce a technology that the industry is not ready for, does not know how to handle, and may cause problems downstream.”

Professor Beynon’s confidence in rapid adoption of AusAMRC technologies also rests on Swinburne’s dual-sector structure, which includes a TAFE division. “As our technologies go commercial, we will train manufacturing staff on the shop floor. Some of the centre’s equipment is housed at Swinburne TAFE for this purpose,” he says.

Company participation in AusAMRC occurs at two levels, depending on the level of financial support. Level one partners have a representative on the board and can influence the direction of the centre’s research. Level two partners have immediate access to the R&D benefits. Membership is not restricted to Boeing’s suppliers. Professor Beynon says participation is intended to assist companies preparing to join Boeing’s supply chain.

AusAMRC researchers are studying metal tooling used in manufacturing advanced composite parts, which will contribute to the 787 program at Fishermans Bend. They are also exploring the use of metals in hybrid composites to create strong, load-bearing surfaces, capable of connecting to another part – such as a hinge.

The centre will be located in Swinburne’s new Advanced Technology Centre, which is presently under construction with a budget of A$120 million. Professor Beynon sees Swinburne’s Hawthorn campus, in inner Melbourne, as another advantage for the AusAMRC. “We are just 20 minutes’ drive from Boeing Aerostructures Australia at Fishermans Bend, where some of our technologies will be introduced.” nn

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Swinburne university of Technology1300 275 [email protected]

Boeing–SwinBurne ventureputS wind BeneathinduStry wingS

Just as British companies have been benefiting from work spinning off from a research relationship between Boeing and the University of Sheffield, Australian aircraft component manufacturers are anticipating similar gains from Boeing’s recent decision to increase its Australian research collaborations.

Boeing has teamed up with Swinburne University of Technology to establish the Australian Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AusAMRC). AusAMRC’s mission is to investigate improved manufacturing techniques, particularly for components containing titanium, aluminium or magnesium, in support of the companies forming Boeing’s Australian supply chains, and other companies eager to supply the global aircraft and aerospace manufacturer.

Al Bryant, Boeing Research and Technology Australia general manager, says Australia already hosts Boeing’s largest operation outside of America, so it made sense to create a similar research partnership here. “Swinburne was our choice because of its world-class capability in metals research.”

Swinburne’s Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young says Swinburne has the highest proportion of engineering, science and technology students of any Australian university – approaching 50 per cent. He is enthusiastic about the new partnership and the opportunity to improve the technologies used by Boeing’s Australian suppliers.

Professor Young says the university has committed to recruit staff for the centre and has appointed Professor John Beynon, Swinburne’s Dean of Engineering and Industrial Sciences, to lead the new centre. Because both federal and state governments are vigorously promoting innovation in the manufacturing sector, he is confident AusAMRC will get strong government backing and research funding.

Boeing has a significant presence in Australia, particularly in Victoria, where a third of Australia’s aerospace manufacturing is located. Boeing’s Australian workforce is its largest outside the US and the Australian operations cover the entire Boeing company; its commercial, defence and R&D units.

Boeing has invested more than

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Keeping a severely injured person alive after an accident can be one of the most stressful circumstances in which complex decisions have to be made second-by-second. It makes sense to enlist the processing power of a computer By GIo BraIdottI


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Photo: Paul JonesKon Mouzakis (left), director of swinburne’s Information technology Innovation Group (ItIG), with Professor Mark Fitzgerald, director of the alfred’s trauma Centre.

iT tool gives trauma teams extra eyes

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Through one-way glass, a team of software engineers from Swinburne University of Technology watch a medical team from the Trauma Centre at the Alfred Hospital attempt to resuscitate a severely injured road accident victim.

Faced with multiple injuries – fractures, head injuries, extensive bleeding – a critical decision has to be made by the medical team about every 70 seconds. The potential for error – especially an error of omission – is real. Their greatest enemy is what they call ‘fixation error’, when absorption in one task prevents a vital intervention, such as the speedy application of a pressure dressing to stem blood loss.

Dominating their attention is a large screen displaying patient information – vital signs, diagnoses and all the procedures being performed. The screen looks deceptively simple: a mere data recorder, until a flashing red flag appears. This monitor is doing something no monitor has ever done previously – it actively prompts the team to take a particular action.

Underlying this prompt is new decision-support software created at the request of Professor Mark Fitzgerald, the director of the Alfred’s Trauma Centre. Its development was financed by a $1.8 million grant from the Transport Accident Commission (TAC) plus funding from Alfred Health, and with it Professor Fitzgerald aims to eliminate the last few remaining sources of human error from his trauma bays.

The software engineers monitor the trauma team’s reactions as the clock counts down the critical first 30 minutes and then call a halt. In this instance the emergency surgery is a simulation to test the user-interface system the engineers have developed – touch screens that link the medical team, the patient and the data processing built into this ‘decision-support tool’.

Since that particular trial, the support tool (which has not yet been given a name) has been installed in two of the Alfred’s four Emergency Room trauma bays. The entire system has been through a 13-month trial, which culminates in a study about to be published internationally.

The trial has involved nearly 1200 patients who presented the trauma team with the potential for 30,000 errors. Some 2700 were documented during the trial and the least number of errors occurred in the bays fitted with the decision-support system.

“It’s like air transport systems that provide computer-aided decision support to pilots (who are also at risk of making fixation errors) … we wanted to do the same for trauma resuscitation,” Professor

major trauma statistics major trauma is the term used to describe complex injuries caused by an external force. about 65 per cent of injuries are due to car accidents. the next most frequent causes are falls from high places, industrial and farming accidents, and then assaults.

major trauma is a significant health issue in australia. In Victoria it is the leading cause of death in people aged under 45. For every death, there are 31 hospital admissions and 144 hospital emergency department visits.

although the injury may occur close to a small, less specialised hospital, patients in Victoria are taken by ambulance, helicopter or plane to one of three specialist trauma services. For adults, these are the alfred and the royal melbourne Hospital, while infants, children and adolescents are treated at the royal Children’s Hospital.

Fitzgerald says. “And in fact it did prove possible to significantly reduce errors of omission, commission and mis-prioritisation with the system that Swinburne built for us.”

For patients, this translates into a number of subsequent benefits, including reduced lengths of stay in intensive care – from an average of 110 hours per patient to 70 hours. The trial also found a reduced requirement for blood products. Professor Fitzgerald says this in itself amounts to a demonstration of improved resuscitation as it means that bleeding and shock are being reversed sooner. Then there was a reduced incidence of pneumonia, an increase in diagnoses made and a 26 per cent reduction in shock management errors.

“In the study, about 170 of the 1200 patients were bleeding and had blood pressure readings less than 100, so they were in shock,” he says. “Now the best way to immediately intervene is to stop the bleeding by applying pressure dressing. This was occurring about 92 per cent of the time in the patients in the unsupported bays. With the decision-support system in place, it occurred 100 per cent of the time.”

Heading the software side of the partnership is Kon Mouzakis, director of Swinburne’s Information Technology Innovation Group (ITIG). ITIG has developed software for the Department of Defence and the NSW Road Traffic Authority, and wrote CrashStats, a road crash accident database system for VicRoads. The Swinburne team was selected after a tender process that included some of the biggest players in the corporate world.

“This was a tender that I really wanted,” Mr Mouzakis says. “People were telling Mark that it could not be done, but he was determined to get a trial happening and he knew exactly what he wanted. We translated his vision into software specifications and once we got a sign-off, we used a method called RAD (rapid application development) to prototype the system.”

In all, it took ITIG just nine months to design, build, test and implement the system. Occupying pride of place is its user-interface system. This is an area of expertise that ITIG especially cultivates.

“From previous R&D projects, we have a fair idea of what works best when developing a user-interface,” Mr Mouzakis says. “The key is simplicity. We want the simplest system that ensures data is not corrupted by input errors. If we are using a touch screen, then we like to make sure that users are not confused but can approach it intuitively and with confidence.”

To get the design right, Mr Mouzakis www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

brought 20 different members of the trauma team to the Usability Laboratory where they worked through various resuscitation scenarios on the touch screens, while engineers captured their interactions with the software. Ultimately that design process meant the interface was built with the active involvement of the trauma team, and thus the interface was modified several times during the design phase.

The end result is a completely novel support tool that has drawn visits from specialist resuscitation experts from interstate, Canada and the US. “No one else in the world has a system like it and a lot of people are interested in looking at what we have done,” Mr Mouzakis says.

As it stands, the technology is becoming an attractive showcase, yet Professor Fitzgerald and Mr Mouzakis are already planning to expand the system. They want to extend it to the first hour of resuscitation, incorporate voice recognition into the interface system and translate it into other languages, especially Chinese, making it available to the resuscitation training program that the Alfred Hospital runs in China.

In the meantime the display screens are being installed in the Alfred’s two remaining trauma bays. From here Professor Fitzgerald plans to roll out the technology to other emergency rooms and to less specialised medical facilities – a gift from the specialist trauma team that yearly treats about half of Victoria’s 1855 major trauma patients. nn

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swinburne university of technology1300 275 [email protected]

,,no one else in the world has a system like it and a lot of people are interested in looking at what we have done.”Kon mouzakis

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The uses for thermal spray coatings, which, at their thinnest, are the width of a human hair, are rapidly on the rise – everything from artificial bone coatings for replacement joints to offshore oil platforms and, potentially, water purification and solar energy collection applications By david horwood

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Thermal Spray coaTingS end up in some unexpectedly intimate places. On artificial hip and knee joints they can help people play a determined game of tennis. On tooth implants they give us extra bite. And in the fiery world of jet propulsion, when applied to turbine blades, thermal spray coatings improve fuel efficiency and extend engine life.

Research by Professor Chris Berndt was pivotal in the development of these joint and jet engine products, and remains a continuing interest of his. He is Professor of Surface Science and Interface Engineering at Swinburne University of Technology, where he is also director of the Industrial Research Institute Swinburne (IRIS).

Now, the science having been done, comes the task of equipping industry with people skilled in this constantly evolving technology. Professor Berndt’s research team is moving to a new unit in Swinburne’s TAFE division, signalling that the research will now also include training TAFE and higher education students in thermal spray technology to produce manufacturing

engineers and technicians with coatings technology expertise.

The new facility will be the only university-based thermal spray lab in Australia. It will also simplify the steps needed by TAFE’s industrial partners to bring thermal spray problems to Professor Berndt’s group for solving.

For Australia’s still-developing coatings industry it means direct access to emerging technology. Richard Moore, CEO of United Surface Technologies, a Melbourne-based coatings company, says a lot of time is currently spent overseas keeping up with technical advances. “Having a world-class research and problem-solving group here in Melbourne is obviously a major advance for the industry,” he says.

Mr Moore’s company provides thermal spraying services for sectors including oil and gas, pulp and paper, cardboard products, printing, pumps and valves, mineral processing, automotive, medical, rail, and power generation. He says new coating technologies emerge each year, making it

essential for the local industry to have access to developments, problem-solving expertise and trained graduates.

While many of today’s thermal spray applications are at the cutting edge of new manufacturing and materials processes, the world’s thermal spray research community actually celebrated the technology’s 100th anniversary in 2004.

Thermal spray is a coating process in which melted (or heated) materials are sprayed on to a surface. The heated particles strike the surface to be coated, and repeated overlaying builds up a coating of millions of now-solidified particles. Unlike some coating methods, thermal spray does not require a vacuum, which makes it cheaper.

swinburne sepTemBer 2009

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It is also faster than electroplating and vapour deposition. Many materials can be treated: metals, alloys, ceramics, plastics and composites. The typical coating thickness is 100 to 500 micrometres, the former being about the diameter of a human hair.

The main uses of thermal spray coatings are to control corrosion and provide protection from high temperatures.

For example, they are used routinely on car components and in the large control valves on offshore oil platforms. Even concrete bridge structures can be protected from corrosion with thermal spray coatings of zinc.

Professor Berndt’s coatings for turbine blades allow them to run 100˚C hotter, lifting


essential in geothermal energy production.“We can now design surface structures

at the molecular scale for specific purposes. And we are experimenting with extremely thin surface spray coatings of only five micrometres. Our success will enable many new applications. For ultra-thin coatings, thermal spray could soon displace vapour deposition methods. I expect thermal spray to be a major solution for creating special surfaces, optimised for particular functions. The future is exciting.” nn

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engine efficiency and saving fuel. “Even 0.5 per cent improvement in efficiency can save billions of dollars for commercial and defence organisations,” he says.

In his orthopaedic research, Professor Berndt developed an artificial bone coating for replacement joints and teeth. He says this bone-friendly ceramic material invites the creation of a “lovely sweet interface, as the natural bone knits with the coating, improving the body’s grip on the prosthesis”.

He expects thermal spray uses to increase. “I envisage an abundance of real-world applications,” he says. “These are likely to include water purification and solar energy collection. Solid oxide fuel cells are re-emerging, and long-life coatings will be

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Professor Chris Berndt’s swinburne research unit will now train students in thermal spray technology.

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In an IncreasIngly stressful world it can be a familiar scenario: a minor irritant, a ‘2’ on the stress scale, triggers an explosive over-reaction that hijacks reason, equanimity and perspective. The damage done can be awkward to heal, produce unintended consequences, and in the corporate human resources arena can even see the perpetrator marched off to anger management classes. However, research across cultures is proving that the issue of sudden anger is better framed in terms of emotional intelligence (EI).

That feelings can be ascribed ‘intelligence’ is a comparatively new principle, first proposed in the early 1990s by American researchers John Mayer and Peter Salovey. By EI they meant the ability to understand emotions and the use of that understanding to guide appropriate actions. The concept proved a best-seller when it was popularised by Daniel Goleman in his 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ.

school’s in for smarter emotions

Measures of emotional intelligence are being adapted for use in the classroom to help both students and teachers cope with modern stresses By Gio Braidotti

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Like its better-known IQ cousin, EI can be measured using a quiz-style test and once again, scores tend to vary among people. An increasing body of evidence is finding that these differences can have powerful effects on quality-of-life outcomes, including physical and mental health.

For instance, a study dealing with happiness in relation to brain plaques and dementia found that while emotional outlook had no impact on plaque formation, people with more positive emotions proved less likely to develop the associated dementias.

At Swinburne University of Technology, where one international measure of EI was developed, researcher Dr Karen Hansen says these studies have an important, but hard-to-spot implication. “Unlike our IQ, which appears to be difficult to improve relative to our standing with others, EI is a trait that can develop and grow,” she says. “That means people can improve core competencies and acquire new EI capabilities over a lifetime … if they are provided with the right tools.”

Developing those tools has become something of a crusade with the Swinburne EI team. Ultimately, their aim is to develop a suite of EI products and services for all age groups. Using collaborative relationships, the team is also actively engaging organisations that stand to benefit from advances in EI.

Overseeing those efforts is the Brain Science Institute’s Professor Con Stough. Along with Dr Ben Palmer, he was involved in creating the original SUEIT – the Swinburne University Emotional Intelligence Test.

“The first version of the test was designed for adults,” Professor Stough says. “Through the university we then set up Genos EI, a company now headed by Dr Palmer that uses the adult SUEIT to help businesses and organisations tackle EI issues in the workplace. It has since grown into an international network of specialists who deliver EI products, services and consultants to businesses and researchers worldwide.”

With adults taken care of, the researchers’ focus has since shifted to adolescents and children, a move that entails dealing with EI issues in the classroom. That is where Dr Hansen comes in. She is supervising a number of projects targeting EI tools to students and teachers.

With a large campus in their own backyard, Swinburne’s tertiary students were the first recruited to the new EI efforts. That project hopes to discover some of the reasons behind the high student dropout rates at Australian universities, a problem Dr Hansen says costs the nation about $100 million a year. However, given the nature of existing measures, that was as far as EI could go into classrooms.

Uncomfortable with that limitation, Professor Stough and Dr Hansen set about applying an EI measure adapted for adolescents in secondary school settings.

Financial support from the Australian Research Council, the Trust Company and the William Buckland Foundation will see the new test applied in a long-term study, which started in 2008, that tracks EI scores and scholastic performance at schools around Australia. Participants include the Anglican Church Grammar School in Brisbane, Girton Grammar School in Bendigo and, in Melbourne, Presentation College, Balwyn High School and Eltham College.

“Scholastic performance, disruptive behaviour, underachievement and the relationship with the teacher are all likely to have an EI aspect,” Dr Hansen says. “Ultimately, the project aims to spot at-risk children and work with them using EI tools appropriate for their age group.”

The next and final frontier is children and primary schools. It is early days yet and Dr Hansen says this test needs to be different. Nonetheless, the team is looking for schools interested in participating.

In the meantime, teachers have already tested an EI course designed to help staff better cope with classroom stress. This program was initially developed by one of Professor Stough’s PhD students, Dr Lisa Gardner, and has subsequently been amended for use in the general workplace by Professor Stough and Dr Hansen.

Virginia Mitchell of Balwyn High was in the third group of volunteers to test the course and describes the experience as life changing, although she is aware just how dramatic that might sound. “The course was not just about stress relief,” she says. “We also learnt about EI theory and how to apply it to our individual situations. It forced me to take control of emotions, without suppressing how I feel. It also made me reprioritise how I approach my life. That’s why it had a huge impact.”

With one EI alumni reporting that life has acquired more balance, Professor Stough says this is the goal of EI tools. “EI is not about telling people what feelings they should have,” he says. “It is more about how effectively we behave in the presence of emotions. In fact, when we are working with organisations, we do not identify EI as ‘therapy’ but as coaching.”

Schools or organisations interested in research on EI can contact Swinburne. nn

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www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine* Good Universities Guide 2007, 2008 & 2009. CRICOS Provider: 00111D

Textbooks and classrooms can only take you so far.Swinburne’s Professional Learning Model focuseson giving students a hands-on educational experience, so they’re learning relevant skills whilst being taught to deal with real-world scenarios.

Courses emphasise close interaction and dialoguewith professionals within industry so that questionsare answered by those who know.

It’s why Swinburne is rated amongst the best in Australia for graduate satisfaction.*

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SUT1212_300x124.indd 1 10/8/09 1:27:03 PM

During a mysterious era, about a billion years after it is estimated to have formed, the universe was flooded with light. A veil of neutral hydrogen gas tore apart and the brilliance of starlight shone through.

Swinburne University of Technology astronomer Dr Emma Ryan-Weber is fascinated by this epic time, the ending of the so-called ‘dark ages’ of the cosmos, and is determined to unravel one of the enduring mysteries of modern astronomy: what brought it about?

In her latest investigations with Professor Max Pettini and Berkeley Zych of Cambridge University, UK, and Professor Piero Madau at the University of California, Santa Cruz, the team has already uncovered part of the explanation – and is now in hot pursuit of the remainder.

The answer has to do with carbon, which, besides being the curse of the 21st century for humans, is also the burnt fuel of the stars, reaching right back to their first generation which formed after the Big Bang. In carbon lurks the secret of universal illumination.

By studying the amount of carbon in the cosmos, astronomers can infer how much starlight there has ever been. But seeing loose carbon atoms floating around in the

What lifteD the universe’s

veil of Darkness?

Carbon is not just a modern atmospheric dilemma; it is also a galactic waste that reveals how the cosmos was changed from utter darkness by a mysterious event that allowed the stars to shine through By Julian CriBB

swinburne SeptemBer 2009

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Photo: Paul Jones

swinburne astronomer Dr emma Ryan-Weber is

planning to use the world’s largest telescope, the

Keck, to track the source of missing carbon.

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immensity of space 12 billion years ago or more is not easy. To begin with it requires two of the greatest instruments ever built: the Very Large Telescope of the European Southern Observatory atop a desert mountain in Chile; and the immense 10-metre eye of the Keck telescope in Hawaii. Astronomers queue up for years for a few hours on either.

Coupled with a spectrograph, which reads the elements that comprise the universe like the lines in a barcode, carbon can be seen – but only with difficulty because hydroxyl, a substance in Earth’s atmosphere, obscures it in the spectrum. Dr Ryan-Weber and Professor Pettini must, literally, peer between the bars of earthly hydroxyl to glimpse the distant carbon in the heavens.

“Carbon is normally shed into space when a very large star goes supernova, blasting its contents across the universe. After that, it never goes away. Our idea was that if we measured the amount of carbon visible in this very early era, we could maybe work out whether there was enough energy being shed by the early stars to turn the fog of hydrogen obscuring the early universe transparent and end the darkness,” Dr Ryan-Weber explains. The idea is that at some point sufficient stellar energy was generated to turn the

neutral hydrogen into an excited (ionised) state, causing its atoms to shed an electron – and allow light to pass through.

“A very great deal of starlight is needed to lift the fog. It’s like going from a visibility of one metre to being able to see a kilometre down the road,” she adds. The carbon is an indicator of how much light was being generated.

The answer the team has recently found has only caused the mystery of what lit up the early universe to deepen. In observations earlier this year they measured about one-fifth of the carbon reckoned necessary for the ‘dark ages’ to end and light to shine out everywhere. Where was the rest of the carbon?

“We concluded there must be a large, unseen carbon source accounting for as much as 80 per cent of the energy necessary to clarify the hydrogen ‘fog’,” she says. Some of this carbon may exist in a state or states still undetected by telescopes, or additional energy may come from quasars – compact, ultra-energetic objects at the heart of certain galaxies probably powered by black holes – which do not produce carbon.

Thanks to the Swinburne Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing’s special


,,our idea was … we could maybe work out whether there was enough energy being shed by the early stars to turn the fog of hydrogen obscuring the early universe transparent and end the darkness.” Dr emma ryan-Weber

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CAN YOU SQUEEZE 4,000,000 COPIES OF THIS MAGAZINE ONTO DISC?Swinburne can.

And now the team at our Centre for Micro Photonics are working on their next challenge; technology that will allow the contents of as many as 200,000 DVDs to be stored on a single disc. You can read all about it, and many more fascinating breakthroughs, when you subscribe to the online version of this magazine. It’s a mere 2.5 megabytes in size, and free to subscribe.

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access to the world’s largest telescope, the Keck, Dr Ryan-Weber is booked for three nights’ observing around the time of the New Year, when she hopes to track the missing carbon to its source and throw new light on what ended the ‘dark ages’. “We’ll be looking for carbon in another state,” she says.

The detail of what happened during the ‘dark ages’ is one of the remaining frontiers of modern astronomy still to be explored but, with luck and skill, her team’s research will help roll back the curtain and let us see into our remotest past.

Dr Ryan-Weber is one of the rising generation of young astronomers being nurtured at Swinburne. “I adore it,” she says. “I’ve been in love with astronomy ever since my dad took me to see Halley’s Comet when I was 10 years old.” Although she has since witnessed many more astonishing celestial phenomena, she has never lost the enduring thrill that a new insight into our wondrous universe bestows. nn

ContaCt. .



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You’ll fi nd that Swinburne only accepts the best.

That’s why our research is recognised internationally. Our citation rates have grown 250% over the last ten years.

We make sure we invest in the best. Over the next four years, our facilities will receive $250 million in extra funding.

We’re the only Australian member of the ECIU – a consortium that sees our top researchers collaborating with their European counterparts, to improve our innovative teaching and learning.

And when you make a breakthrough in your research, we’ll publish it. Swinburne’s research magazine is circulated nationally via The Australian.

So if you’ve got what it takes, you’ll fi nd the best place to start researching is here. Applications close 31st October.

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When Julie, who runs an inner-city homewares store, electronically places an order for the latest model coffee machine, what may seem a simple transaction is actually part of a complex network of interactions between several businesses, including the manufacturer, parts suppliers and shipping companies.

This growing ‘connectedness’ between businesses has led to a rising demand for new software systems that enable better integration of routine processes, such as inventory checks, orders and sales, between businesses without the need to operate different and unconnected computer programs.

Yet, to date, these systems have been limited in the way they share data between businesses, with systems either allowing each company full access to the other’s systems or placing such tight restrictions upon access that cooperation is unduly hampered.

Now, a research collaboration between Swinburne University of Technology and global business software company SAP is close to developing a software platform that overcomes this, providing businesses with a customisable interface where they can determine the level of access given to another company.

Dr Marek Kowalkiewicz, a Brisbane-based senior researcher at SAP, says that an organisation either exposes its full processes to each company involved in a collaboration (for instance, suppliers exposing their processes to their customer) or it only exposes ‘communication points’ – links where messages are exchanged.

“We wanted to investigate all states in between, giving full flexibility to organisations that want to share their processes with others and that want to differentiate the level of detail shared,” he says.

Professor Chengfei Liu, a program leader in the Web and Data Technology Research Program at Swinburne’s Centre for Complex Software Systems and Services, says it is important that any solution that facilitates business process management (BPM) across more than one organisation must also be flexible enough to allow organisations

story by David Adams

September 2009 swinburne


to move in and out of the collaborative process without the need for a major system restructure. It also needs to address data privacy and security concerns.

“Those kinds of issues are serious and haven’t been addressed by previous BPM systems,” Professor Liu says. “So, in our work we have proposed a workflow model (BPM system) that gives the organisation a view of the whole collaborative business process, but also allows each organisation to see the collaborative business process from a different view.”

The researchers – who also include Dr Xiaohui Zhao, a postdoctoral fellow at Swinburne, Professor Yun Yang and PhD students Sira Yongchareon and Shangfeng Hu – have dubbed the project ‘Kaleidoscope’ because, like the tube of mirrors which creates different views as it is turned, the system will give a different view of a business process depending on who is accessing it.

As a simple example, Company A supplies parts to Company B. Both want access to supply chain information but, understandably, want to keep other company information private, so open access is not an option. What the researchers are hoping to do is enable each company to have the access needed to fulfil their role while, at the same time, ensuring other data is kept secure and private.

The project has already led to the creation of two prototype software solutions, known as FlexView4BPEL and FlexView4BPMN, which Professor Liu says should be suitable

for use within large-scale enterprises as well as small and

medium-sized businesses. While the three-year project was officially

launched in April 2007, work had already started following discussions between Professor Liu and SAP vice-president Dr Karsten Schultz, who has completed a PhD on the subject. The idea for the project also received support from SAP Research Centre director Dr Wasim Sadiq and Dr Kowalkiewicz.

SAP released its first BPM solution a few years ago. It now has a strong research presence and actively participates in efforts to ensure standardisation, so that any software created can ‘plug in’ to other existing systems.

Dr Kowalkiewicz says SAP aims to be a leading vendor in the BPM field and opted to work with Swinburne because of its past experiences with the university and the university’s expertise in the area. “The Swinburne researchers involved in the project are among the top researchers in that area in the world.”

SAP is already looking at incorporating new features into its solutions based on the work done so far. “However it will still take some time and the cooperation of our Swinburne colleagues will be crucial,” Dr Kowalkiewicz says. nn

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Swinburne University of Technology1300 275 [email protected]

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new common softwareFor seamless commerce

ILLUSTraTIon: JUSTIn garnSworThy

,,in our work we have proposed a workflow model (Bpm system) that gives the organisation a view of the whole collaborative business process, but also allows each organisation to see the collaborative business process from a different view.”professor chengfei liu

Leadership a cuLturaLcLoth cut for the times

Lead

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Understanding the social and historical influences that shape leadership ideals could do much to help smooth country-to-country business relationships in our culturally diverse region By Catherine norwood


16

mahatma Gandhi is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s most influential leaders; a social justice campaigner who inspired generations of civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jnr in the US and Nelson Mandela in South Africa.

But a leader such as Gandhi can only emerge when particular cultural and social conditions converge, says Swinburne University of Technology’s Professor Chris Selvarajah.

In different circumstances Gandhi may well have remained just another expatriate lawyer. The leadership style and values that Gandhi drew on would not be effective in modern India because the environment today is vastly different to India of the 1930s and

1940s, Professor Selvarajah says.“Leadership is a topical subject, but it is

also an elusive concept. To define a leader, or the characteristics of a leader, is really only appropriate for a particular moment in time.”

Professor Selvarajah believes that cultural and environmental factors strongly influence what we perceive as excellence in leadership, and he has launched an international study to investigate the extent of these influences. The study, Asian Perspectives in Excellence in Leadership (APEL), is a collaboration with colleagues in 20 Asia–Pacific countries. He hopes it will improve understanding between nations about the way cultural, political and religious influences have shaped

their leaders and, in turn, help smooth trade and business relations.

By way of example, Professor Selvarajah says many westernised countries such as Australia have labelled management values and styles across Asia in general as ‘Confucian’ – a supposed reflection of the Chinese style of strict hierarchical relationships. People have based their business approaches on this view. However, Professor Selvarajah says that although China has been a major influence on many of its neighbours, this is a superficial view and far from the reality in many Asian countries.

The APEL project was initially launched in 1995 with a pilot study in five ASEAN

ILLustratIon: JustIn garnsworthy

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cLoth cut for the times

septemBer 2009 swinburneLeadership

countries. Individual Asian nation profiling started in 2004, with profiles completed on leadership values in Cambodia, China, Malaysia and Thailand. Similar data collection is now under way in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Laos, New Zealand, Singapore, the Philippines and Vietnam.

In his survey of managers, Professor Selvarajah asks people to rate a number of characteristics they believe demonstrate leadership excellence in four categories: personal qualities, managerial behaviours, organisational demand and consideration of business environment influences.

Surveys in China and Cambodia have already identified generational differences in perceptions of leadership excellence. Older generation Chinese managers consider personal qualities, such as morality, good communication, trustworthiness, and respect for tradition and the social order, to be of high importance. However, managers with less than five years’ experience are more individualistic and attach less importance to personal qualities.

“This suggests that the cultural, political and economic changes that China has endured have resulted in small but significant generational differences. People who grew up in the period before modernisation began 25 years ago think very differently to younger managers,” he says.

In Cambodia the generational differences are more marked, with the younger generation of managers attaching more importance to a clear and logical approach to work and ‘getting the job done’ and less to maintaining hierarchies and supporting the ‘good of the organisation’.

Professor Selvarajah says this indicates that change and developmental growth will play a greater role in that country’s future. He says given the country’s bleak history – namely the four years under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime during which 1.7 million people, or almost a quarter of the population, are estimated to have been murdered – there is a growing desire to engage honestly and to motivate and recognise both the individual and collective performance of employees. These characteristics also rated highly on the leadership scale for younger managers.

A reflection of this attitude can be seen when Australians visit Cambodia and are surprised there is no outward bitterness among locals about the Khmer Rouge. The Cambodian approach to life is based on tolerance, respect and living a virtuous life, with a strong Hindu and Theravada Buddhism influence on the culture.

Professor Selvarajah says that in www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

also allow nations to encourage different aspects of leadership that may not have rated highly among current managers, but which are emerging as national priorities, such as the ability to monitor external influences, adopt new technologies, and identify and develop competitive advantages.

The need for these kinds of skills is behind the high demand for graduates from Australian business and management courses in Bangladesh, where Associate Professor Mohammed Bakhtiar Rana, from Jagannath University, is assisting Professor Selvarajah in collecting data for the study.

It is the first research of this kind to be undertaken in Bangladesh and Associate Professor Rana expects the findings will prove valuable in allowing Bangladesh to compare its own leadership values with those of other countries. It will help to identify gaps in the country’s corporate training programs and generate a better understanding of different management styles between nations.

“There is a scarcity of leadership here; in politics, in bureaucracy, and society as well as in business,” he says of his country, which is still establishing itself after political upheaval and a bloody fight for independence from Pakistan in 1971.

He says management graduates with qualifications from overseas countries, particularly Australia, are highly sought-after by Bangladeshi businesses, although there is some concern about the management values and behaviours these graduates bring home. Values inherent in Australian culture, such as democracy, equality and transparency of behaviour, do not necessarily translate well to other countries.

“Our employers are keen to ensure that executives understand and respect local value systems and strategies, although there is recognition that overseas training is producing graduates with higher skill levels than local programs.” He hopes this greater understanding and appreciation of local values will emerge from the APEL project.

Professor Selvarajah says a profile of Australian leadership values will be included in the project, although it is last on his list of countries to survey. In addition to work completed and under way, he is still to collect data from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Brunei. nn

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Cambodia, and also in Thailand which has a similar religious background, there is support for individual performance and this comes through in attitudes to business and performance at work. He says Australian managers working in these countries can benefit from understanding these influences.

His research in Thailand has found that learning for continuous improvement is among the most highly valued characteristics of leadership excellence. Work-related values – gaining a competitive edge and managing time effectively – are also highly regarded, along with confidence in dealing with work and people, providing recognition for good work, and acting with honesty and respect for others.

Professor Selvarajah says in Thailand, as in Cambodia, there is a single, cohesive cultural identity, unlike his birth country, Malaysia, where there are three distinct ethnic cultures, each with its own management style and perspectives on leadership.

“Malaysia was under colonial rule for 150 years and that has influenced the development of its culture, and the tolerance for different immigrant groups in maintaining their own identities. Chinese and Indian immigrants have lived beside native Malays in relative harmony for many years. However, the preservation of different cultures has created a kind of silo mentality within the country, with the potential for conflict.”

He says understanding differences between the subcultures can help Australians doing business in Malaysia, but it can also help Malaysia in the process of integrating its different subcultures to develop more of a national leadership and identity.

Professor Selvarajah hopes findings from the study might be used to create new approaches in management and business programs for participating countries and for Australia, which is training an increasing number of international students – effectively the next generation of business and social leaders throughout the Asia–Pacific region.

In 2008 there were more than half a million international students studying in Australia. Among the top 10 nations represented were China, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and Sri Lanka, and more than 54 per cent of all international students chose management or commerce-related courses.

Professor Selvarajah says the research results could allow businesses to more effectively select employees who have the characteristics or skills identified as representing leadership excellence. It could

,,Leadership is a topical subject, but it is also an elusive concept. to define a leader, or the characteristics of a leader, is really only appropriate for a particular moment in time.”professor chris selvarajah

It Is the defInIng Image of the African savannah: a feline predator making the final leap after an electrifying chase to drag down its prey. But that basic predator/prey relationship – in which the survival of one species is dependent on the ‘supply’ of another – has a mathematical underside with applications far beyond the ecology of a savannah.

The stock exchange, biological pest

control, energy policy and cancer – these are all instances where equations that capture predator/prey dynamics are finding applications. Solving these equations is the task of a little-known field of academia, mathematical biology.

The classic – and the simplest – solution is described by the Lotka–Volterra system of differential equations that were first proposed

in the mid-1920s. Represented graphically, the solution appears as two wavy lines that predict oscillating numbers of predators and prey. As the prey population increases, predator numbers follow suit until the prey declines and drives down the ability of predators to survive.

While there is a satisfying supply/demand simplicity to these dynamics, mathematical


mIte versus mIte In

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mathematicians are finding that equations for modelling interactions between predators and prey have a surprising array of applications in the human world, from biological control of crop pests to cancer research by Gio braidotti

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athematIcal bIology

biology since the 1970s has been on a quest to produce mathematical models that are more life-like and the dynamics more realistically complex.

For a young Indian mathematician, Dr Aspriha Chakraborty, the quest for human-world relevance resonated deeply. It saw her abandon the study of pure mathematics at a large Indian university in

favour of moving to Swinburne University of Technology to work with Dr Manmohan Singh at the Faculty of Engineering and Industrial Sciences.

In just five years at Swinburne, she has managed the extraordinary feat of completing both a master’s degree and a doctorate. Her master’s thesis, Numerical Study of Biological Problems in a Predator and Prey System, has been published in book form by Germany’s VDM Verlag, while her doctorate produced four peer-reviewed articles. Her supervisor, Dr Singh, simply calls her “brilliant”.

One of Dr Chakraborty’s widely acclaimed achievements relates to the concept of ‘prey taxis’ – the natural tendency of predators to follow the greatest concentration of prey. This tendency affects predator and prey movement, their spatial distribution in an environment, and consequentially, the possible outcomes of predation.

To capture the impact of prey taxis, Dr Chakraborty succeeded in adding a third equation to the standard model (in addition to the two wavy predator/prey lines mentioned above).

She says prey taxis helps shift the models from simplistic assumptions (that ignore everything but the predator and prey) to more biologically realistic, complex and dynamic capabilities – which provides useful modelling tools beyond basic biology and ecology.

Crucial to her work was the opportunity provided by Dr Singh to apply ‘numerical methods’ (that require real data) to mathematical biology rather than restrict the discipline to theory. It is this dual approach that distinguishes the Swinburne mathematicians from more traditional approaches.

Dr Singh explains that the theoretical approach involves creating theorems and then examining stability – whether predator and prey populations stabilise. “In numerical methods what we do is use field data generated by experimental biologists and show graphically what a stable equilibrium involves in a particular environment, what is unstable, and why there are changes in the system,” he says.

The requirement for field data anchors the mathematicians to a real situation where the predator/prey equations can find pragmatic applications. In Dr Chakraborty’s case, the application involves biological control of agricultural pests.

For her doctorate at Swinburne, the field data was provided by Dr Peter Ridland, formerly of the Victorian Department of Primary Industries (DPI), and involves the two-spotted spider mite and its predator, a mite called Phytoseiulus persimilis.

Dr Ridland says this predator is routinely www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

introduced into European glasshouses and fruit orchards to protect a broad range of fruits, vegetables and flower crops. Uses are increasingly being found for the predator in Australia, especially in Queensland in the cultivation of strawberries in glasshouses.

However, the two-spotted spider mite is a so-called ‘secondary pest’ – a normally harmless species that becomes a pest for farmers only subsequent to the intensive use of insecticides – because, over time, insecticides kill off the two-spotted spider mite’s natural predators while the pest acquires pesticide-resistance and flourishes.

“The ideal situation is to maintain stable predator and prey population at low numbers for long periods of time,” Dr Ridland says. “That makes ‘balance’ the overwhelming idea for biological pest management and the goal is to avoid a boom in pest numbers because then it is extremely difficult to control the pest and prevent damage to crops.”

Balance among natural enemies – or a ‘stable equilibrium’, as Dr Chakraborty would say – is precisely what her innovation to the predator/prey equations can help to model and predict.

“What we have proven theoretically is that if we can introduce prey taxis, we can keep the equilibrium between predator and prey going for far longer,” Dr Singh says. “However, to prove it numerically requires a new round of glasshouse experiments and we would definitely like to pursue the experimental work with the DPI if funds are available.”

For the ecologist, Dr Ridland, the beauty of mathematical biology lies in the gain in understanding of what affects predator/prey stability. “The interaction with natural enemies is an important part of the ecology of insects, so anything that can help us better understand how to achieve balance is valuable.”

As to Dr Chakraborty herself, she would like to see the power of the predator/prey equations applied in a new direction. “I want to apply it either to cancer modelling or evolutionary biology. In both fields we use the same equations – it is still about the movement of populations as they interact. So in cancer research you are looking at cancer cells (the predator) invading normal tissue (the prey).”

Both her chosen areas are even more biologically complex, providing the perfect stepping-stone in Dr Chakraborty’s quest to infuse the mathematical models with some of the vital dynamics typical of living systems. nn

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PhoTo: PaUl JoneS

Dr aspriha Chakraborty moved to Swinburne to explore

applying numerical methods to mathematical biology.

20 known as spontaneous emissions from the photonic crystal – the process in which an excited material relaxes to a more stable state by emitting a photon of light without any external stimulus – could have effects on a range of other fields including in solar cells used to capture solar energy, where performance could be significantly enhanced by controlling the spontaneous emissions.

Professor Gu says that by changing the way in which the active material interacts with sunlight, the efficiency of solar cells should be able to be dramatically increased.

The team is now investigating the possibility of completely shutting off spontaneous emissions.

Meanwhile, Professor Eggleton says that the development of the photonic chip will represent a platform for new technologies in areas such as healthcare, but notes that it is still “early days” in this development.

While noting that breakthrough technologies such as this can take as long as 15 years to cycle from a research concept through to application, Professor Eggleton says the project has already achieved “many important milestones” and adds that the team is now starting to work with end-users and industry. nn

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It Is about 50 years since the first microchip or integrated circuit was developed. Although it has served us well over the past half-century, the ongoing development of faster and more efficient computers means that the capacity and speed of electronic chips are nearing their limits.

In a bid to overcome the limitations of existing chips, researchers are now working on developing the next generation of integrated circuits. These chips will not rely on sending electrons along copper wires at speeds of up to one gigabyte per second; instead they will use fibre optic technology to transfer information at the speed of light.

More than 100 researchers from six Australian universities – Swinburne University of Technology, the University of Sydney, Macquarie University, the University of Technology, Sydney, the Australian National University and RMIT University – are involved in the project. It is being carried out under the auspices of the Centre for Ultra-High Bandwidth in Optical Systems (CUDOS), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence. The project, which is funded by the ARC, began in 2003 and is funded until 2010.

Professor Ben Eggleton, the director of CUDOS, says the research is aimed at developing what is known as a ‘photonic chip’.

“The photonic chip has the potential to replace many electronic processing functions in optical communications systems and also underpins important applications in defence, healthcare and astronomy,” he says.

As part of the research program, scientists at Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics have been working on extending the photonic chip platform into the third dimension – a move that would give the chips more functionality and the ability to transfer more data.

The centre’s director, Professor Min Gu, says this process involves creating an artificial three-dimensional crystal – known as a ‘photonic crystal’ – out of polymer.

“It’s the equivalent of a semi-conductor for photons,” Professor Gu says of the photonic crystal.

Professor Gu and his colleague Dr Jesper Serbin pioneered the technique to create the crystal in 2003.

The technique involves focusing a high-powered laser into a liquid polymer, thereby turning it into a solid. The crystal has refraction qualities roughly 100 times greater than those of glass, which makes it suitable for high-precision technologies such as the optical chip.

To create a photonic crystal that acts in the same way as a semi-conductor in conventional microchips it must be made ‘active’. The active material acts as a source of photons.

“The ‘active’ semi-conductor is actually very important for the circuit,” Professor Gu says.

Dr Michael James Ventura, who, along with Dr Baohua Jia and Dr Jiafang Li at Swinburne, is part of the team working on the project at the Centre for Micro-Photonics, says the photonic crystal can be made active by embedding active material, such as quantum dots.

“Active material embedded within photonic crystals allows for a tailorable source of photons which can be switched on and off (modulated in an electronic circuit) or directed into particular directions (into another photonic crystal or another part of the optical chip),” he says.

As well as aiding the creation of the optical chip, the ability to control what are

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computIng sees the light

swinburne September 2009


When the (micro) chips are down, researchers turn to three-dimensional photonic crystals to improve the speed and capacity of the next generation of integrated circuits.,,the photonic chip has the potential to replace many electronic processing functions in optical communications systems and also underpins important applications in defence, healthcare and astronomy.”professor ben eggleton

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that Swinburne gave me what I wanted.” From Swinburne, Mr Korda joined

Arthur Andersen and stayed for 24 years. He progressed through a number of divisions, including audit and corporate finance, and enjoyed postings to the firm’s Los Angeles and London offices. Specialisation in insolvency work, for which he has become best known, grew from his corporate finance experience. “I was working in M&A (mergers and acquisitions) and we needed to develop a restructuring team. That was in 1998. Mark Mentha was already in restructuring. I guess I was a bit of an unusual beast in that I was a partner before I started insolvency and restructuring work.”

Today, KordaMentha ranks as one of Australia’s biggest accounting firms, taking on some of the country’s major insolvency jobs. The most recent high-profile appointment is administration of the Timbercorp group of companies, a complex job but not in the same league as Ansett.

Mr Korda’s advice for the latest crop of Swinburne accounting students is to get ready for a more regimented life. “Contact time as a student is considerably less than what you’ll find in business. Life is relaxed as a student. Full-time work is more disciplined.” nn

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Like many Swinburne University of Technology accounting students, Mark Korda saw his studies as a first step into managing a business, but perhaps not the national accounting business that has made him a household name.

His push to prominence as a co-founder of KordaMentha started with the collapse in 2001 of Ansett Australia and his appointment with Mark Mentha as joint administrator of Ansett.

What followed remains Australia’s most complex corporate insolvency, leading to 21 separate legal actions and ensnaring the lives of 15,000 employees working for 42 separate companies with $1 billion in assets – including 133 passenger aircraft.

Despite the disappearance of the Ansett name after 66 years in the air, both Mark Korda and Mark Mentha achieved the near-impossible: a 95-cent-in-the-dollar return for all employees. It was a job they started while both were employed by the international accounting firm, Arthur Andersen, and continued when they formed KordaMentha in 2002.

“Ansett was the biggest and most difficult assignment we’ve handled, so far,” Mr Korda says. “In fact, it isn’t quite finished because we still have aviation spare parts to sell.

“We’ve settled all the litigation. We’ve sold all the planes, but now we have six or seven million spare parts for sale. It’s a specialised market because of the safety aspects associated with aviation.”

Attention to detail, right down to the last piece of equipment in a multi-million-dollar insolvency, is one of the key attributes of a good accountant, something that Mr Korda learnt as a Swinburne undergraduate between 1975 and 1977.

“I didn’t study accounting at high school, but I saw it as a well-rounded course for a step into business,” he says. “I didn’t make it into business as such … I ended up in the business of accounting.”

Oddly enough, KordaMentha is possibly bigger than any business he might have joined. From a start-up complement of 60, many moving across from Arthur Andersen, KordaMentha now has more than 330 staff working in nine offices in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, plus international affiliations.

story by Tim Treadgold

The business founder who buiLT sTrucTure inTo coLLapse

September 2009 swinburne

Best known for its corporate recovery and restructuring work, KordaMentha also has a real estate advisory division servicing clients in the property sector – a business second-closest to Mr Korda’s heart because if he had not followed a pure accounting course, life might have taken a different turn.

“If not accounting then I might have been a builder,” Mr Korda says. “I like building. My father-in-law was a builder, as was my brother. I thought I’d do accounting, but maybe I have ended up with one foot in building.”

KordaMentha’s 20-member real estate division is effectively in the building trade because one of its tasks is to finish projects for clients such as banks, a function that sets KordaMentha apart from other accounting firms.

One of its biggest jobs this year is completing a 39-storey building on Queensland’s Gold Coast. The owners hit trouble at level 30, but an incomplete building has no value. “I guess, in a round-about way I ended up in building, but it’s only part of what we do,” Mr Korda says.

Flexibility, and an ability to tackle complex issues, is a valuable attribute Mr Korda has learnt in his accounting career – but why did it start at Swinburne? “I looked around and found that Swinburne offered a very practical course, much more practical than some of the other universities. I better not be critical of the others … let’s just say


aLumni profiLe

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The ansett collapse

propelled this accountant

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eight years after australia’s

most complex corporate

insolvency, it is a job showing

no signs of slowing down

From Swinburne accounting student to co-founder of a national accounting business, Mark Korda now specialises in tackling major insolvencies.

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speaking to a camera, a teenager talks about her favourite music. The music comes to life, a purposeful audio background to an unfolding story about personal hopes, family and life in general. It’s a short film, little more than a minute, and although it may seem simple, it provides a potent introduction to the art and power of storytelling.

Creating a digital story is one of the first ‘assignments’ for young people attending a youth media-training studio in inner-Melbourne. It is a task that has many roles,

says Jon Staley, who manages Youthworx Media, a program of Youth Development Australia that works primarily with young people from marginalised backgrounds at risk of homelessness or educational disadvantage.

He says it is a practical way for students to learn about the equipment needed in film production, and also provides a way for young people to be self-reflective and learn to find their voice. “Film-making is a form of storytelling, so these monologues are a way of getting into that,” Mr Staley says.

“And it is a process that also provides a springboard to looking at how to tell other stories, helping young people to engage in a broader community dialogue.”

Giving people an articulate voice is something Mr Staley is passionate about. He has helped do this in his former role as performing arts coordinator at Northland Secondary College – which has a long-standing relationship with Victoria’s Indigenous community – and in work with Aboriginal filmmaker Richard Frankland,


22

by learning how to tell their story, at-risk young people are finding their voice and a path back to self-belief by rebecca thyer

Findinglost voicesis a storyto be told

Photo: Paul Jones

Jon staley of Youthworx Media uses film-making to teach

self awareness and skills to at-risk teens.

23

social sciencesseptember 2009 swinburne

in which they told the stories of people in Victoria’s jails. Today he is giving at-risk teenagers a voice through Youthworx.

Youthworx was established in 2008 and its first intake began this year. Its partner organisations are radio station SYN (Student Youth Network) FM, Brunswick Youth Services (part of the Salvation Army’s Crossroads Youth and Family Services), Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE (NMIT) and Swinburne University of Technology.

“For one reason or another these young people have been marginalised from accessing education and the tools and skills associated with that,” he says. “Circumstances have meant they are not used to engaging with education, they may not have the capacity to attend mainstream education, or they have had a negative educational experience. We try to break that down and re-establish the learning experience.

“Youthworx is about giving young people the opportunity to develop the tools and critical awareness to use their voice and recognise their ability.”

The idea of using the media to give marginalised people a voice is not new. Similar projects have been shown to help people express themselves. However, what differentiates Youthworx is the opportunity it provides its participants to be listened to, via its partnership with SYN FM. As such, it encourages a shift from an individualised ‘reflective’ self expression to a socially-produced voice, which creates empowerment and responsibility. The project’s associated research is studying these intended social transformations and outcomes.

The first question is how to define and measure Youthworx? Is its success marked by a job, a bed, a career, or just the confidence to be heard? These are the questions that Dr Aneta Podkalicka, a Swinburne University of Technology research fellow in the Faculty of Life and Social Sciences’ Institute for Social Research, is pursuing. She is undertaking a longitudinal study of the Youthworx program, documenting its progress and what it means for the young people involved. She has been following the program since June 2008.

“One of the big questions is how do you measure the value of the project, its actual effects,” she says. “It is complicated because Youthworx is not the only influence in young people’s lives.”

Dr Podkalicka has decided to use elements of ethnography, a strategy for describing human societies borrowed from anthropology, to measure the project’s value. “It is an approach that intends to

be more comprehensive, systematic and contextualised. As such it’s become a helpful and important methodology in studying the media and their role in people’s lives.”

Her ethnographic research comprises regular participant observations, focus groups with Youthworx participants, one-on-one interviews and informal conversations with young people and Youthworx staff.

Like Mr Staley, Dr Podkalicka believes the use of media is a powerful tool, which gives young people who feel disenfranchised the chance to learn, to express themselves and also to learn to listen – to “listen to yourself, listen to others and, most importantly, learn to be listened to”.

For Youth Development Australia founder and Swinburne Associate Professor David MacKenzie the research will help answer the questions that governments and other funding organisations invariably ask about these sorts of projects – essentially, how effective is it? The research component of the program will try to find that answer.

It is also hoped the research will provide a ‘youth work model’ of a media-training studio that can be replicated across the country.

Swinburne’s involvement in Youthworx and the associated research project was initiated by Associate Professor MacKenzie. This year’s student intake is the culmination of a decade-long effort to realise his goal.

Associate Professor MacKenzie has had a long involvement with at-risk young people. During his previous role at RMIT and work with a former colleague, Leigh Burton, he conducted a trial of the Youthworx concept in 1999 and 2000. The initial trials, in collaboration with SYN FM, were successful and marked the beginning of the Youthworx journey. The project took off after Associate Professor MacKenzie moved to Swinburne in 2003, although the development of Youthworx was not simple.

“It took a few years,” he recalls. “Funding for at-risk young people normally goes to food, shelter and clothing, and finding money for other projects can be difficult.”

However, through connections with the Salvation Army, Youthworx got off the ground. The research is funded through the Australian Research Council.

With funding in place, it fell to Mr Staley to get the ‘nuts and bolts’ of the program together, a task that has involved everything from designing the program and its philosophies to physically setting up the studio and buying equipment. “We wanted to create the feel of an industry studio with equipment that you’d find in the real world,” he says. It means Youthworx has a proper sound recording studio, nine


computers with editing programs and other associated equipment.

Youthworx has three ‘access points’ for its radio and film training, structured on a 50 per cent accredited and 50 per cent non-accredited base. These are an accredited, six-month Certificate II in Creative Industries; open access radio and film workshops; and independent media support for individual projects.

“Some young people can access us and walk away with a certificate, but we didn’t want to limit ourselves to that,” he says. “Some young people will not necessarily pursue a career in the media – for them, it’s about finding a way back to engaging with society and education.”

That said, Youthworx has recently introduced a Film Mentorship Project in partnership with Multicultural Arts Victoria. The five young people participating in it get paid a small amount for their work. But with that reward comes responsibilities. “We have different expectations of them,” Mr Staley says. “We want Youthworx to be a flexible and fluid environment for people to engage at their own levels, but we also want to create opportunities where we ask more of them and expect more of them, pushing them out of their comfort zone.”

The mentorship is also a reflection of where he sees Youthworx heading. “I’d like us to become a community enterprise, a youth media production company that employs people and works on a project basis.” Mr Staley is working on that concept now, as well as undertaking his PhD at Swinburne, which will see him create a low-budget fictional film.

One of Youthworx’s students is also destined to continue studying film. An 18-year-old living in residential care, he has been somewhat of a dark horse for those involved in Youthworx. A quiet, reflective young man, he is always armed with a wealth of film scripts, some of which have been produced at Youthworx. “He’s going on to pursue a screen-writing course at university. We’re helping him build a portfolio for that,” Mr Staley says.

This young man exemplifies the Youthworx philosophy, he says. “We aim to continually develop, have strong production values, ties with the community, and to teach critical self awareness. People get the confidence to tell their own stories and through that create their own stories,” Mr Staley says. nn

contact. .


,,For one reason or another these young people have been marginalised from accessing education … We try to break that down and re-establish the learning experience.”Jon staley

HOW DOES BEING HELP US GET BIGGER RESULTS?

CRICOS Provider: 00111D* ISI Thomson 2009

RESEARCH AT SWINBURNE

1300 275 788swinburne.edu.au/research

Some call us small. We call it fat-free. It’s research focus,coupled with research agility. As such, our ability to turn ideasinto commercial partnership opportunities is exceptional. Just ask Boeing, Ford and Cisco Systems.

And despite our size, citations of Swinburne’s researchhave grown 250 per cent since 1999, a rate of growth that outstrips all the Go8 universities.*

Combine this with a major investment of $250 millionover the next four years, and our quest for researchexcellence is unparalleled.

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