Achievements
The School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering has a long list of achievements as a result of its close co-operation with industry, organisations and individuals throughout the world. Below are just some of the more notable achievements gained by the School.
Gambler's Ruin Overturned - Losing Strategies combine to Win
Dr. Derek Abbott and Greg Harmer have recently attracted world-wide publicity with experiments that demonstrate Parrondo's Paradox, a law put forward by Dr. Juan Parrondo of Complutense University in Madrid, Spain. This law states that two games guaranteed to make a player lose all his money can generate a winning streak if played alternately. Dr. Abbott received a grant of $100,000 from the SA Lotteries Commission to investigate this paradox. The results were reported in Nature, Volume 402, page 864 (1999), as well as various popular press articles including the New York Times Science Supplement (January 25, 2000) and the Melbourne Age (January 6,2000).
The Electronics Industry Association's
Individual Award for Excellence in Innovation
The EIA 1999 Excellence awards were established by the Electronics Industry Association to recognise innovativeness and commercialisation in the South Australian Electronics Industry. One of the three awards was set aside to recognise the efforts of individual engineers who generated and developed the new ideas necessary for the growth of the Electronics Industry, but who were often overlooked when their ideas become a successful product or service.
In November 1999, the award for individual excellence in innovation was won by Mr. Andrew Beaumont-Smith of the VLSI centre CHiPTec which forms part of the department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Andrew developing a CMOS VLSI chip for Avalon Systems Pty Ltd, for measuring very small time differences. This device has been used successfully by the company in a number of their products.
Sun Microsystems Sponsorship Agreement
Sun Microsytems has recently concluded an agreement via CHiPTeC, to sponsor the computing facilities for undergraduate and research students within the Department. This agreement will provide high performance Sun workstation hardware at half the price of the already discounted educational price.
Book: "Vision Chips" by Dr. Ali Moini
Dr. Alireza Moini has recently published a scholarly reference work entitled "Vision Chips", Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000, ISBN 0-7923-8664-7. The book is based on his Ph.D. thesis which he completed at the University of Adelaide. Dr. Moini describes the development of Analogue VLSI techniques for integrated circuits used in artificial vision sensing and processing.
CIGRE Task Force Activities
Associate Professor Mike Gibbard has recently completed major contributions to a report "Impact of Interactions among Power Systems Controls" for Task Force 38.02.16 of CIGRE, an international organization that addresses problems relating to large power system networks. The Department received a letter of commendation for the high level of comittment and expertise which Dr. Mike Gibbard brought to the task force activities. Mike has been involved in Power System Stability research for many years, and has seen his software package MUDPACK accepted nationally as a valuable tool for designing stable power system networks.
Prestigious Scholarships won by Postgraduate Students
Sam Mickan received a Fulbright scholarship this year, for studies of T-rays as part of his Ph.D. research. He will be able to use the scholarship to travel to an existing T-ray research centre in New York for six months to collaborate with researchers there.
Brad Ferguson received one of three Premier's scholarships that will fund his research for three years also in T-ray technology. He has also received a Fulbright scholarship.
Peter Celinski received a Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith scholarship to support his studies in Insect Vision applications to the Aerospace Industry.
Australian Research Grant for T-Ray Imaging
Dr. Derek Abbott received a large ARC grant of $197,000 to investigate T-Ray imaging. T-Rays are electromagnetic radiation at frequencies above microwave and millimeter wave frequencies, but below infrared frequencies. Potential uses exist for biomedical imaging purposes, partly as a replacement for X-rays, and avoiding the ionizing disadvantages of the latter.
Insect Vision
To support research activities on Insect Vision, Dr. Abbott also received a grant of $210,000 from the Sir Ross and Sir Keith Smith Fund, and $100,000 from the Adelaide-based company Beonics.
