AUSTRALIA
INNOVATES
VOLUME 3
Welcome to our latest
Australia InnovateS magazine
A year ago, we launched this new initiative at IMEX Frankfurt to
bring to light Australia’s strengths in science, business, the environment,
design and innovation. I’m pleased to say that the magazine has been
a success, providing readers with inspiring and engaging stories about
some of our brightest people, who are breaking new ground across a
variety of fields.
Australia is a place where big landscapes inspire big thinking, and the
stories we bring you in this edition of Australia Innovates will give you a
deeper understanding of how our country delivers big ideas of benefit to
the world.
Read about Australian ecologist and ecotoxicologist Professor Emma
Johnston for example, whose love of the ocean developed as a child living
in Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay. She is now Dean of Science and head of
the Applied Marine and Estuarine Ecology Lab at the University of New
South Wales, working to ensure the health of marine environments
world-wide.
We also bring you a story about Professor David Fidock, who is at the
forefront of the work to eliminate malaria. 400,000 lives are lost each
year to this terrible disease, and the race to find a vaccine is getting closer
to the finish line thanks to Professor Fidock’s work to genetically modify
malaria parasites.
There’s more to discover inside on Australia’s innovative people, and
the skills and expertise they hold. It’s one of the key reasons so many
associations are choosing Australia for their events, so we hope you enjoy
reading all the stories in this edition of Australia Innovates, and that we’ll
get the chance to welcome you to our country soon so you can see for
yourself why there’s nothing like Australia.
JOHN O’SULLIVAN
MANAGING DIRECTOR, TOURISM AUSTRALIA
CONTENTS
06
SCIENCE
12
BUSINESS
18
ENVIRONMENT
26
DESIGN &
I N N O VAT I O N
Australian scientists are taking their expertise to the world stage, including
Professor David Fidock of Columbia University, who’s working to eradicate malaria,
and Australian biotechnology company Vaxine, which has teamed up with partners
in the US to develop a vaccine that could revolutionise the treatment of
Alzheimer’s disease and dementia.
IMAGES: TOP LEFT PROFESSOR DAVID FIDOCK AT THE ADVANCE GLOBAL AUSTRALIANS AWARDS. CREDIT: ADVANCE GLOBAL AUSTRALIANS AWARDS; TOP RIGHT: PROFESSOR DAVID FIDOCK WITH HIS ADVANCE
GLOBAL AUSTRALIANS AWARD FOR LIFE SCIENCES. CREDIT: ADVANCE GLOBAL AUSTRALIANS; BOTTOM LEFT: NIKOLAI PETROVSKY. CREDIT: VAXINE; BOTTOM RIGHT: NIKOLAI PETROVSKY. CREDIT: VAXINE
science
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
IMAGE: PROFESSOR DAVID FIDOCK. CREDIT: ADVANCE GLOBAL AUSTRALIANS
On the path to eliminating Malaria
Malaria kills more than 400,000 people each year, many of them children in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Australian scientist David Fidock, who works at Columbia University, has uncovered the genetic basis
for drug resistance in deadly malaria parasites, and is working on new drugs aiding the global effort
to eradicate malaria.
Chloroquine was used to fight malaria shortly
after World War II, becoming one of the most
successful drugs ever deployed against an
infectious disease.
In areas where malaria had nearly been
eradicated, it re-emerged with deadly force.
For decades, exactly how the parasite had
acquired this resistance remained a mystery.
“It was the household Tylenol,” says Professor
David Fidock, a molecular biologist and
geneticist at Columbia University in New
York. “It was present throughout all malariaendemic areas. Any initial symptoms of fever
and that’s what you took, because it was
presumed to be malaria.”
This changed in 1999 thanks to Fidock.
The Australian scientist was working at
the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in
Washington, in the lab of malaria researcher
Thomas Wellems, who had evidence that
a single mutant gene was to blame for
the resistance.
At its peak use, an estimated 300 million
doses were taken per year. This heavy usage
saw the most deadly malaria parasite,
Plasmodium falciparum, develop a resistance
to chloroquine.
It was Fidock who correctly identified that
gene, called PfCRT, which they described in
the journal Molecular Cell. The discovery
changed the course of malaria research and
treatment strategies globally, enabling a
simple molecular test to diagnose the extent
of resistance.
8
CHANGING THE COURSE OF
MALARIA RESEARCH
With resistance verified around the world, the
once overused chloroquine was replaced with
more effective antimalarial drugs.
In the years since, the global research
community has made significant progress
battling malaria. Mortality rates dropped by
60 per cent between 2000 and 2015, resulting
in an estimated 6.2 million averted deaths,
according to the World Health Organization.
But the toll is still frighteningly high: more
than 400,000 people are killed each year, says
Fidock, and more than 80 per cent are children
under the age of five in Sub-Saharan Africa.
In the last few years, malaria parasites have
also begun developing resistance to another
front-line drug known as artemisinin. It was
Fidock who, in 2015, provided definitive
genetic evidence that mutations in the K13
gene drive this resistance.
bear fruit, given the complex biology of the
malaria parasite. The parasite can change
forms inside the body and enter different
life stages as it moves from the liver to the
bloodstream, evading detection.
them with combinations of drugs, Fidock says.
As with chloroquine, this discovery provides
a molecular signature to identify where
resistance has occurred, and to alter
treatment strategies accordingly, he says.
The toll is still frighteningly
high: more than 400,000 people
are killed each year, says Fidock,
and more than 80 per cent are
children under the age of five in
Sub-Saharan Africa.
THE HOLY GRAIL OF MALARIA
RESEARCH
Fidock was recently honoured at the 2016
Advance Global Australian Awards, winning
in the Life Sciences category for his significant
contributions to malaria research. His
overarching mission, Fidock says, is to help
eradicate malaria globally, or at least “shrink
the map” of affected areas.
Doing so means trying to constantly outsmart
these highly complex, ever-evolving parasites.
SEEING THE DISEASE IN THE FLESH
Born at a NATO base in France, Fidock moved
to Australia with his family at age seven.
He completed a Bachelor of Mathematical
Science at the University of Adelaide, where
he focused on genetics.
Compelled to address global health issues
largely ignored by big pharmaceutical
companies, Fidock returned to France in
1989 to undertake a PhD at the Institut
Pasteur in Paris, where his work centred on
malaria vaccines. It was a year later while on
a research trip to western Kenya that he first
witnessed the horrific impact of the disease.
Fidock thought he could make a bigger impact
by applying his expertise in genetics to
understand how drug resistance was evolving.
As it turns out, he was right.
TESTING NEW DRUGS
The breakthrough discovery of the PfCRT gene
catapulted Fidock to a faculty position at the
Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New
York, and later Columbia University.
Now a Professor of Microbiology and
Immunology, his lab of 16 researchers has
published 160 papers and receives around
US$1.5 million annually from the NIH, the US
Department of Defense, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation, the Burroughs Wellcome
Fund, and the Medicines for Malaria Venture
in Geneva.
“You could see kids coming in who were
already in a coma, and you knew that most of
them wouldn’t make it to the next day,” Fidock
told the Columbia Medicine magazine. “It was
shocking and humbling to understand that for
these people, malaria was still an ever-present
part of life.”
The lab has helped pioneer the field of
genome editing in malaria parasites, making it
possible to quickly understand how resistance
evolves and how specific drugs attack these
organisms on a cellular and molecular level.
The lab has also shown that some genetic
mutations result in resistance to one drug,
but make the parasite more susceptible
to another.
After nine years, Fidock abandoned his search
for a vaccine. He says it seemed unlikely to
If they can “lock parasites in these
evolutionary dead ends”, they can eradicate
His lab also exposes parasites to drugs in the
development pipeline, to assess how likely it
is that a genetic resistance will evolve in the
future – and how quickly.
Most antimalarial drugs target parasites that
have invaded red blood cells, which is when
the disease turns deadly. But Fidock wants
to develop a new class of drug, like a malaria
vaccine, which can detect the parasites earlier,
before they are detectable in the liver – their
first port of call in a human host.
Inside liver cells, a form of the parasite rapidly
produces up to 30,000 replicas over a sevenday period. It’s these offspring that will invade
red blood cells and become transmissible. To
reproduce on this scale, however, the parasites
need energy scavenged from massive
amounts of fatty acids.
Fidock hopes to genetically engineer parasites
that are less adept at gathering these fatty
acids and load them into a vaccine. The
modified parasites would get stuck inside the
liver for longer periods, generating a more
robust immune response from the host.
“That’s the ultimate goal,” says Fidock, “to
find a drug that not only cures the infection,
but eliminates all forms of the parasite in the
body. We want to stop it from progressing to
the disease-causing stage.”
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Myles Gough
9
SCIENCE
SCIENCE
“A solution will ultimately save global health
authorities trillions of dollars.”
A HISTORY OF BREAKTHROUGHS
Petrovsky knows a thing or two about
vaccines. With funding support from the US
National Institutes of Health he has helped
developed vaccines that fight common and
exotic infections including influenza, hepatitis
B, Japanese encephalitis, MERS, HIV and Ebola.
IMAGE: NIKOLAI PETROVSKY IN THE LAB. CREDIT: VAXINE
FINDING THE ELUSIVE ALZHEIMER’S CURE
Australian biotechnology company Vaxine and its US partners are developing a vaccine that could
revolutionise the treatment of dementia and Alzheimer’s, a disease with 7.5 million new sufferers around
the world every year.
A breakthrough in the search for a cure
for Alzheimer’s disease has captured
world attention.
With its partners at the Institute of Molecular
Medicine, Vaxine’s solution is targeted at
early intervention – vaccinating people before
they develop an unmanageable amount of
symptoms. The scientist leading the research
is Nikolai Petrovsky, Professor of Endocrinology
at Flinders University in Adelaide, South
Australia, and Research Director of Vaxine.
“The vaccine drives the immune system
to make antibodies,” Professor Petrovsky
explains. “The antibodies recognise abnormal
brain proteins while ignoring normal proteins.
They then ‘haul’ the abnormal proteins out of
the brain and destroy them.
10
“The vaccine essentially teaches the immune
system how to recognise abnormal proteins
without damaging the normal proteins we
need for brain function.”
Petrovsky says the latest vaccine is more
powerful and efficient than earlier
generations of vaccines.
“People had shown conceptually that this idea
might work but they could never induce the
body to make enough of the right antibodies.
What we have now done is design a vaccine
able to generate millions of antibodies so
they can quickly find every abnormal protein
forming in the brain and dispose of them.”
Petrovsky believes a vaccine for Alzheimer’s
disease and dementia could be available to
the public within five to seven years.
“A US Government report predicts its health
system will be crippled unless a solution to
Alzheimer’s disease is found soon,” he says.
“By 2025, the global cost of Alzheimer’s
disease is estimated to be around US$2-3
trillion, so spending several billion dollars on
Alzheimer’s research is a drop in the ocean
compared to how much it will cost to deal
with all these patients down the track.
What we have now done
is design a vaccine able to
generate millions of antibodies
so they can quickly find every
abnormal protein forming in the
brain and dispose of them.”
“I’m a clinician first and foremost but my
passion has always been to help more than
my immediate patients,” Petrovsky says. “As
a clinician, I believe we have an obligation
not just to treat but to do research to
improve disease understanding and develop
new treatments.
“By 2025, the global cost of
Alzheimer’s disease is estimated
to be around US$2-3 trillion, so
spending several billion dollars
on Alzheimer’s research is a drop
in the ocean compared to how
much it will cost to deal with all
these patients down the track.
“The diabetes and endocrine space is my
speciality but I run a large research group
that has multiple focuses. I have a love of
immunology. As a doctor, it is good to be able
to administer treatments to reduce disease
symptoms but it is even better if you can
prevent it.”
Incorporated in 2002, Vaxine evolved from
earlier work on a sugar-based technology by
Dr Peter Cooper, a retired scientist from the
Australian National University. The company’s
embryonic work focused on a diabetes
vaccine, an extension of Petrovsky’s PhD
research into the prevention of autoimmune
(type 1) diabetes.
This sugar-based technology for enhancing
vaccine effectiveness turned out to have
broad applicability and attracted post 9/11
biodefense program funding from the US
Government. More recently, Vaxine has
extended these findings to other vaccine
applications including cancer prevention
(in collaboration with Dr Chris Weir at the
University of Sydney) and a vaccine against
Alzheimer’s disease (in partnership with the
Institute for Molecular Medicine associated
with the University of California, Irvine).
Petrovsky has led Vaxine’s Alzheimer’s work
for the past decade. Project partner IMM has
been working on a treatment for at least two
decades. Success is based around collective
knowledge, according to Petrovsky. “It is not
something you can get your head around in a
day or two, and you need large collaborative
teams to solve such complex problems,”
he says.
“Alzheimer’s is a big challenge for the world.
It is primarily driven by the fact people are
living longer. The older you are, the more likely
you are to come down with Alzheimer’s but
there may also be other lifestyle factors such
as type 2 diabetes and vascular disease that
contribute. It is a growing problem.
“Australia, Europe and all developed countries
are going to be faced with the same challenge.
It is a desperate situation that needs an
urgent solution. There currently is no cure,
but that is the kind of challenge we like – the
impossible ones.”
development program, and has begun a
clinical trial of an avian influenza vaccine to
protect against the new H7N9 strain causing
periodic deaths in China.
Petrovsky predicts that in the next 20 years
we will see many vaccine breakthroughs
for things we never imagined could be
vaccinated against.
“Australia, Europe and all
developed countries are going
to be faced with the same
challenge. It is a desperate
situation that needs an urgent
solution. There currently is
no cure, but that is the kind
of challenge we like – the
impossible ones.
“Already there are clinical trials testing
vaccines against smoking and cocaine
addiction, cancer and high blood pressure,”
he says. “We are seeing an explosion
of novel vaccine technologies allowing
new approaches and new targets. This
is a tremendously exciting time to be in
vaccine research.”
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Matthew Hall
VACCINES OF THE FUTURE
Vaxine was a finalist in the 2016 Australian
Export Awards, recognised for its broad work
in the biotechnology field. It was the first
company in the world to bring a swine flu
vaccine to human trial stage after the 2009
swine flu pandemic. It is collaborating with
the US Army to develop an Ebola vaccine.
Vaxine also recently initiated a Zika vaccine
11
Innovation and a keen entrepreneurial spirit combine in Australia’s most cutting-edge
businesses. From the eye-tracking technology of Seeing Machines that is taking the
automotive industry by storm to the nanotechnology used by luxury watchmaker
Bausele, find out how Australian organisations are breaking new ground and making
their mark on the world.
IMAGES: TOP LEFT THE TERRA AUSTRALIS WATCH THAT WAS FEATURED AT BASELWORLD IN SWITZERLAND. CREDIT: BAUSELE; TOP RIGHT: CHRISTOPHE HOPPE (CENTRE) WITH THE FLINDERS UNIVERSITY RESEARCH TEAM IN THEIR LAB IN
ADELAIDE. L-R PROF. DAVID LEWIS, DR JON CAMPBELL, AND DR ANDREW BLOCK. CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY; BOTTOM LEFT: GUARDIAN SYSTEM IN TRUCK CAB TO DETECT FATIGUE AND DISTRACTION. CREDIT: SEEING MACHINES;
BOTTOM RIGHT: TIM EDWARDS, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER OF SEEING MACHINES, CREDIT: SEEING MACHINES.
BUSINESS
BUSINESS
BUSINESS
In the past year, trucks using
Seeing Machines’ Guardian
system have travelled 300
million kilometres without a
single fatigue-related accident.
In that time, the company has
woken up drivers from microsleeps in moving vehicles
453,228 times.
IMAGE: AUTOMOTIVE EYE TRACKING TECHNOLOGY BEING USED IN A CAR. CREDIT: SEEING MACHINES
Seeing machines making driving safer
Australian company Seeing Machines uses eye tracking technology to detect when a driver is drowsy or
distracted, saving lives on the road, in mines and on railways. From 2017, its driver safety systems will be
used to augment self-driving vehicle technology.
Fatigue is a major killer on the roads, with
one in six fatal accidents involving a drowsy
driver. The problem is particularly acute in the
trucking industry, where drivers travel long
distances for long periods.
An Australian company is dramatically
reducing the number of fatal vehicle accidents
with its eye tracking technology, which can
detect, in real time, when a driver is drowsy
or distracted.
Seeing Machines’ technology uses two
cameras, placed in the cabin of a truck, plane
or train, which are pointed at the driver or
pilot. The cameras measure the driver’s head
pose and orientation, eyelid closures, pupil
diameter and the direction of their gaze. This
information is analysed to determine how
14
distracted the driver is – whether they are
alert, drowsy or inattentive.
If a truck driver, for instance, is found to be
drowsy or distracted, the driver’s seat vibrates
and an alarm sounds to wake them up, with
the warnings increasing in stridency if they are
ignored. Seeing Machines’ SafeGuard Centre
in Tucson, Arizona is also alerted. If required,
the centre contacts the driver and tells them
to pull over.
In the past year, trucks using Seeing Machines’
Guardian system have travelled 300 million
kilometres without a single fatigue-related
accident. In that time, the company has
woken up drivers from micro-sleeps in moving
vehicles 453,228 times.
Guardian can be found in trucks in Europe,
North and South America, Asia and the
Middle East, and in more than 4,000 off-road
mining vehicles.
“The technological goal is to understand
what is going on in the mind of a person,”
says Timothy Edwards, co-founder and Chief
Technology Officer of Seeing Machines. “So, a
machine can derive a high-level understanding
of somebody’s intent, emotional state, level of
fatigue or distraction.”
SAVING LIVES
Most of Seeing Machines’ competitors assume
this problem can be solved with a webcam
and algorithms, but it’s also a problem of
lighting and physics – how does the camera
see through sunglasses or in poor lighting,
for instance?
“Imagine the difference between the eyes of
someone that is squinting, looking into the
sun as they drive, and someone with their eyes
closed – the difference is about one millimetre
of eyelid opening,” says Edwards. “We have to
detect this difference reliably enough to tell
the vehicle that the driver cannot see the road
and to engage safety procedures or not. It’s
not something you want to get wrong.
“Improving road safety for drivers has
enormous benefits for society,” he adds, noting
that road deaths are the major killer in the
developed world. “People are basically being
lulled into a sense of security when they’re
driving their fantastic ‘lounge on wheels’. It’s
actually one of the most dangerous things you
can do in your everyday life.”
One of the major applications of the
technology will be in what are known as
conditionally autonomous vehicles – cars
that can drive themselves but can also be
operated by the driver. For the next 10 or 15
years, so-called driverless cars still need a
qualified driver to be behind the wheel and
pay attention to the road, ready to take over
the driving if need be.
Once the car becomes aware the ‘driver’ isn’t
paying attention, it gently nudges the driver
with seat vibrations or visual flashing, and
escalates the alerts if they’re being ignored.
Seeing Machines is in talks with vehicle
manufacturers in Japan, Germany and the US
about installing its system in their self-drive
cars. Consumers can expect to start buying
vehicles with its safety systems integrated
from 2017.
IMPROVING INTERACTIONS
BETWEEN HUMANS AND
MACHINES
Edwards studied systems engineering at
the Australian National University (ANU) in
Canberra from 1995. After graduating, he
worked at CEA Technologies, an Australian
company that is a world leader in radar
technology. He then joined Klein Bottlers
where he helped develop software for the
realistic creation and animation of water/
liquid surfaces.
After travelling overseas, he returned to
Australia not knowing what he wanted to do,
except to “find the most interesting group of
people … and spend time with them”.
This led him to join the Robotics Systems
Laboratory at ANU.
Edwards and Seeing Machines’ three other
co-founders, Alex Zelinsky, Jochen Heinzmann
and Sebastian Rougeaux, started working on
eye tracking technology and began talks with
Volvo research and development in Sweden. It
got them thinking that the first mass-market
robots were likely to be in the most evolved
piece of machinery that people already buy
– cars.
Seeing Machines was founded in 2000 to
commercialise the technology. It started
selling eye tracking research equipment to car
companies, before using the technology to
develop its own safety equipment.
The organisation moved into the mining
sector, applying its alertness detection
systems to mining vehicles. Edwards says this
was a chance to finally use the technology to
save lives. It was a commercial breakthrough
for Seeing Machines. It eventually exited the
sector, licensing its intellectual property to
Caterpillar, which is installing the technology
in its vehicles.
Seeing Machines, which was a finalist
in the 2016 Australian Export Awards, is
now working with two original equipment
manufacturers in the aircraft industry and two
major airlines on applying its technology to
pilot monitoring and training. The company’s
eye monitoring technology will be used to
detect where trainee pilots look when using a
flight simulator and compare this with the eye
movements of an experienced pilot. This will
tell if the trainees are making ‘rookie errors’
or are becoming overwhelmed or confused.
The trainees would then be given feedback on
any errors.
“Improving road safety for
drivers has enormous benefits
for society,” he adds, noting that
road deaths are the major killer
in the developed world. “People
are basically being lulled into a
sense of security when they’re
driving their fantastic ‘lounge on
wheels’. It’s actually one of the
most dangerous things you can
do in your everyday life.”
Seeing Machines’ eye tracking technology is
now so reliable a number of new applications
have also opened up in education and health.
“It’s going to hopefully make society a little
safer and smarter,” Edwards says.
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Christopher Niesche
15
BUSINESS
BUSINESS
IMAGE: DR JON CAMPBELL FROM FLINDERS UNIVERSITY WORKING IN THE CENTRE FOR NANOSCALE SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY. CREDIT: FLINDERS UNIVERSITY, SUPPLIED BY CHRISTOPHE HOPPE.
NANOTECHNOLOGY AND LUXURY WATCHES: AN
INNOVATIVE AUSTRALIAN PARTNERSHIP
In 2015, Bausele became the first Australian luxury watch brand to be invited to Baselworld in Switzerland
– the world’s largest and most prestigious luxury watch and jewellery expo. Its success is, in part, thanks to
a partnership with nanotechnologists at Flinders University and a unique new material called Bauselite.
Founded by Swiss-born Sydneysider
Christophe Hoppe, Bausele Australia bills itself
as the first “Swiss-made, Australian-designed”
watch company.
The name is an acronym for Beyond Australian
Elements. Each watch has part of the
Australian landscape embedded in its crown,
or manual winding mechanism, such as red
earth from the outback, beach sand or bits
of opal.
But what makes the luxury watches unique
is an innovative material called Bauselite,
developed in partnership with Flinders
University’s Centre of NanoScale Science
and Technology in Adelaide. An advanced
ceramic nanotechnology, Bauselite is featured
in Bausele’s Terra Australis watch, enabling
16
design elements not found in its competitors’
watches.
NANOCONNECT PROGRAM
FOSTERS INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIP
Flinders University coordinates NanoConnect,
a collaborative research program supported
by the South Australian Government, which
provides a low-risk pathway for companies to
access university equipment and expertise.
It was through this program that Hoppe met
nanotechnologist Professor David Lewis, and
his colleagues Dr Jonathan Campbell and Dr
Andrew Block.
“There were a lot of high IQs around that
table, except for me,” jokes Hoppe about their
first meeting.
After some preliminary discussions, the
Flinders team set about researching the
luxury watch industry and identified several
areas for innovation. The one they focused
on with Hoppe was around the manufacture
of casings.
Flinders University coordinates
NanoConnect, a collaborative
research program supported
by the South Australian
Government, which provides a
low-risk pathway for companies
to access university equipment
and expertise.
Apart from the face, the case is the most
prominent feature on a watch head. It needs
to be visually appealing but also lightweight
and strong, says Hoppe, who is also Bausele’s
chief designer.
The new material allows holes to be drilled
more precisely, which is an important feature
in watchmaking. “It means we can make
bolder, more adventurous designs, which can
give us a competitive advantage,” Hoppe says.
The researchers suggested ceramics might
be suitable. Conventional ceramics require
casting, where a powder slurry is injected into
a mould and heated in an oven. The process is
suitable for high-volume manufacturing, but
the end product is often hampered by small
imperfections or deformities. This can cause
components to break, resulting in wasted
material, time and money. It can also make the
material incompatible with complex designs,
such as those featured in the Terra Australis.
Bauselite can also be tailored to meet specific
colour, shape and texture requirements. “This
is a major selling point,” Hoppe says. “Watch
cases usually have a shiny, stainless steel–like
finish, but the Bauselite looks like a dark
textured rock.”
Bauselite made its luxury watch debut in
Bausele’s Terra Australis range. The ceramic
nanotechnology and the watch captured the
attention of several established brands when
it was featured at Baselworld.
After some preliminary
discussions, the Flinders team
set about researching the luxury
watch industry and identified
several areas for innovation. The
one they focused on with Hoppe
was around the manufacture of
casings.
ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
HUB IN AUSTRALIA
NEW MATERIAL OFFERS
COMPETITIVE EDGE
“Bauselite is strong, very light
and, because of the way it is
made, avoids many of the traps
common with conventional
ceramics,” explains Professor
Lewis.
Using a new technique, the Flinders team
invented a unique, lightweight ceramiclike material that can be produced in small
batches via a non-casting process, which
helps eliminate defects found in conventional
ceramics. They named the high-performance
material Bauselite.
“Bauselite is strong, very light and, because
of the way it is made, avoids many of the
traps common with conventional ceramics,”
explains Professor Lewis.
Hoppe and the Flinders University team are
currently working on the development of new
materials and features.
Together they have established a joint
venture company called Australian Advanced
Manufacturing to manufacture Bauselite. A
range of other precision watch components
could be in the pipeline.
watches onshore. “I’ve seen what Europe is
good at when it comes to creating luxury
goods, and what makes it really special is
when people control the whole process
from beginning to end,” says Hoppe. “This
is what we want to do. We’ll start with
one component now, but we’ll begin to
manufacture others.”
The ceramic nanotechnology
and the watch captured the
attention of several established
brands when it was featured at
Baselworld.
He hopes the hub will be a place where
students can develop similar, highperformance materials that could find
applications across a range of industries,
from aerospace to medicine, for bone and
joint reconstructions.
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Myles Gough
The team hopes to become a ‘centre of
excellence’ for watchmaking in Australia,
supplying components to international luxury
watchmaking brands.
But the priority is for the advanced
manufacturing hub to begin making Bausele
17
From a Western Australian startup that’s providing sustainable housing for
communities in need to a Sydney professor who’s protecting vulnerable underwater
worlds, Australia’s sharpest minds are collaborating, creating and communicating to
ensure the health of our planet and the population for generations to come.
IMAGES: TOP LEFT: NEVHOUSE VANUATU CREDIT TED GRAMBEAU PHOTOGRAPHY/NEVHOUSE; TOP RIGHT: NEV HYMAN WITH VILLAGE CHILDREN IN VANUATU CREDIT TED GRAMBEAU PHOTOGRAPHY/NEV HOUSE;
BOTTOM LEFT: PROFESSOR EMMA JOHNSTON AT WORK. CREDIT: UNSW SYDNEY; BOTTOM RIGHT: WEEDY SEADRAGON, SYDNEY HARBOUR CREDIT: ERIK SCHLOGL
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENT
climatic, lifestyle, cultural and spiritual needs
of the community.
PLASTIC WASTE IN A PRISTINE
PLACE
Another pillar of the Nevhouse business is
cleaning up plastic pollution. Hyman became
aware of the problem of marine debris while
travelling in the South Pacific on a surfing trip
in the early 2000s.
“I was shocked at the amount of plastic that
was washing up on pristine beaches on this
remote island,” he says.
IMAGE: NEV HYMAN WITH VILLAGE ELDER IN VANUATU CREDIT: TED GRAMBEAU, PHOTOGRAPHY/NEV HOUSE
AUSTRALIAN SURFING ICON DELIVERS SUSTAINABLE
HOUSES FOR COMMUNITIES IN NEED
From surfboards to sustainable shelters, Nev Hyman’s latest startup is providing safe, affordable housing
to some of the world’s most vulnerable people. His low-cost houses are cyclone-proof, built almost
exclusively from recycled plastic and waste materials, and can be deployed to remote communities in a
matter of weeks.
Growing up in Western Australia, Nev Hyman
remembers riding the beautiful, big ocean
swells that formed near the coastal town of
Margaret River.
Surfing was more than a passion for
Hyman; it was the catalyst for becoming
an entrepreneur. At age 13, he was shaping
boards for friends inside his dad’s garage. In
1975, after finishing high school, he opened
his first business: Odyssey Surfboards.
Four decades later, Hyman has cemented
his reputation as one of the top surfboard
designers internationally. One of his startups,
Firewire Surfboards, is part-owned by surfing
legend Kelly Slater.
20
FROM SURFBOARDS TO SAFE
HOUSES
Today, Hyman is attempting to conquer
something far more daunting than waves.
“Our motto is housing humanity,” Hyman says
of his latest venture, Nevhouse.
The United Nations estimates that more than
one billion people globally have inadequate
shelter. It’s a problem that could intensify
as more people are displaced from their
homes and communities by conflicts, natural
disasters and climate change.
Nevhouse designs and develops low-cost,
prefabricated homes from recycled plastics
and other sustainable materials. It works with
aid agencies, governments, charities and the
private sector to rapidly deploy these homes
to communities around the world that need
support and as part of post-disaster relief.
“Nevhouse is an economic, social and
environmental solution to the need for
affordable housing globally,” Hyman says.
Each structure comes flat-packed and is
delivered to the site where it can be built
in two to four days by local workers and
villagers trained in the assembly process.
The permanent dwellings have solar power,
sanitation, and technology for providing clean
drinking and washing water. They require
little if any maintenance over their multigeneration lifespan.
Perhaps most important is the design process
itself. Nevhouse engineers and architects work
with local engineers and architects to develop
tailored solutions meeting the geographic,
A study published in Science magazine in
2015 suggests that 8 million metric tonnes of
plastic entered the world’s oceans in 2010.
A separate study by the United Nations
Environment Programme in 2014 estimated
the financial damage to marine ecosystems
caused by plastic waste to be around US$13
billion annually.
Hyman wanted to help address this problem,
and in 2004 invested in a recycling company
that turned mixed plastic into wood
replacement products. By 2012, the company
had evolved into Nevhouse.
Forty to 50 per cent of Nevhouse’s current
structures – mainly the wall panelling
components – are made from recycled
plastic. This amounts to between two and
three tonnes of plastic waste per structure,
says Hyman.
Nevhouse structures also feature sustainable
Australian timbers and steel roofs. Galvanised
iron screw piles used for the foundation
eliminate the need for concrete, further
reducing the carbon footprint and cost.
CYCLONE PAM CHANGES THE
PLAN
Hyman was set to begin deploying his
sustainable shelters in Papua New Guinea,
but these plans changed after Cyclone Pam
smashed through Vanuatu in March 2015. The
severe tropical cyclone devastated the Pacific
Island nation, causing hundreds of millions
of dollars in damage and leaving over 75,000
people homeless.
Hyman flew to Vanuatu in the aftermath.
He met a teacher who fled with his students
from the local school building as it was torn
apart by 300-kilometre-per-hour winds. They
survived by taking refuge behind a six-metrewide banyan tree.
“To see these people so vulnerable, with no
shelter really rocked me,” says Hyman.
In the wake of Cyclone Pam, Nevhouse
delivered on its first major project: rebuilding
the remote village of Enkatelei, on Vanuatu’s
Tanna Island. The project was funded by a
Hong Kong–based charitable organisation
that focuses on post-disaster relief.
The company is working on ways to recycle
more codes of plastic, and Hyman hopes the
total amount of waste in future designs will
exceed four tonnes per structure.
Over eight weeks, villagers assembled 14
Nevhouse structures, including classrooms,
a medical clinic, accommodation for nurses
and teachers, and other community buildings.
Each structure was designed to withstand
Category 5 cyclones, protecting villagers in the
event of future storms.
At present, the panels are manufactured
in China, but Hyman wants to shift this
process to Australia, and possibly set up
manufacturing hubs in the regions where
Nevhouse is operating.
It’s the first time the subsistence farming
village of 1,200 people has had electricity,
and Hyman hopes the new medical clinic and
classrooms will improve access to healthcare
and education.
“The children ran into their new classrooms
and cheered. They had desks, computers
and all this stuff that they couldn’t believe
existed,” he says.
LOOKING AHEAD TO A BRIGHTER
FUTURE
The cyclone-resistant shelters deployed in
Vanuatu – which were designed by Sydneybased architect Ken McBryde – were honoured
at the 2016 Australian Good Design Awards,
winning the top prize for sustainability.
Hyman hopes to continue helping
communities in Vanuatu as the country
rebuilds, but also has plans to deploy his flatpack homes elsewhere. Twelve countries have
expressed interest, including Indonesia, Fiji,
the Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka and Mexico.
Indigenous communities and local councils in
Australia have also expressed interest.
The company deploys up to 40,000 structures
per year, anywhere in the world, Hyman says.
One challenge, however, is lowering the cost:
Nevhouse structures currently range from
A$10,000 to A$100,000, depending on the
logistics of shipping materials to the building
site. Hyman hopes future designs will come
in at around A$7,000 per structure, enabling
wider deployment across the world.
A new partnership with Australian
construction giant Brookfield Multiplex will
help Nevhouse achieve these goals.
For an Australian entrepreneur who has spent
his life chasing the perfect wave, the next big
adventure is just getting started.
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Myles Gough
21
ENVIRONMENT
ENVIRONMENT
“We’re publishable in the international
scientific literature and we’re policy-relevant.
That’s the ‘sweet spot’ where I really like to
be,” says Johnston, claiming she’s always been
interested in “useful research”.
If that weren’t enough, the energetic marine
scientist advises government through bodies
such as the Marine Estate Expert Knowledge
Panel, an independent arm of the New South
Wales Marine Estate Authority. She is also
the lead author of the ‘Coasts’ chapter of the
five-yearly Australia State of the Environment
report, funded by the Australia Government.
IMAGE: PROFESSOR EMMA JOHNSTON, CREDIT: UNSW SYDNEY
Topping off this impressive list of
accomplishments, Johnston is a high-profile
science communicator and broadcaster,
familiar to viewers worldwide as a copresenter of the Foxtel/BBC television series
Coast Australia.
PROFESSOR EMMA JOHNSTON:
UNDERWATER TRAILBLAZER
Emma Johnston’s passion and laboratory are Sydney Harbour and the coastal waters and estuaries
of Australia’s ‘marine estate’. The multi-award-winning scientist and communicator uses her brain,
collaboration and cutting edge tools to ensure vulnerable underwater worlds remain healthy for
generations to come.
Professor Emma Johnston is on a mission: to
use the tools of science and communication to
help protect the underwater world she loves.
It’s partly due to the fact she grew up next to
Melbourne’s Port Phillip Bay.
“We swam and snorkelled and sailed,” says
Johnston, who was a middle child between
two brothers. One brother became a
landscape architect and the other a musician
– she was the only sibling to turn the family
passions into a professional career.
At age 42, Johnston is a pace-setting ecologist
and ecotoxicologist at the University of
New South Wales. There she heads the
Applied Marine and Estuarine Ecology Lab,
training tomorrow’s marine scientists and
collaborating with today’s experts. She
22
was the inaugural Director of the multidisciplinary, multi-institutional Sydney
Harbour Research Program (SHRP) at the
Sydney Institute of Marine Science.
globally,” she says proudly. There are 20 city
partners, from Jakarta and San Francisco to
Shanghai and Rio de Janeiro.
Johnston is passionate about Sydney Harbour
because, despite being surrounded by almost
5 million people, it’s a global hotspot for
marine and estuarine diversity. “It hosts
almost every type of habitat that exists in the
ocean,” she explains.
Johnston is passionate about
Sydney Harbour because,
despite being surrounded by
almost 5 million people, it’s a
global hotspot for marine and
estuarine diversity. “It hosts
almost every type of habitat
that exists in the ocean,” she
explains.
In November 2014, Johnston and her SHRP
colleagues launched the World Harbour
Project. “The new project arose out of a
desire to share techniques and learnings
about multiple-use harbours that are heavily
impacted but also highly valued, so the
findings and priorities are being rolled out
“I do need eight hours’ sleep,” Johnston
admits, shrugging off the suggestion that she
is a ‘short-sleeper’ like British Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher. “I can get by on seven
hours for a few days but then I crash,” she
laughs, before answering the phone.
“Women are socially and
culturally engendered to
think of maths and physics
as difficult – that we don’t
have a natural facility with
them,” says Johnston. “It’s not
true. What the community
believes the child believes, and
it affects a child’s choices and
performance.”
“That was a call from The Discovery Channel,”
explains Johnston. “They’re filming six
episodes on Sydney Harbour, to air next year.
I’m hoping to get some underwater research
into the program, not just cruises and New
Year’s Eve.”
She acknowledges that it will take effort
and a “massive cultural shift” to shake off
entrenched prejudices.
Given her diverse but integrated projects,
it may seem that Johnston followed a
preordained career path, from young
sailor to professional marine scientist
and communicator. That’s not the case. “I
didn’t have a clue what I wanted to be,” she
confesses. “Growing up we had lots of music
and visits to art galleries. I was tempted to be
a painter.”
Proving her point that women can handle
the ‘hard’ subjects, Johnston won the first
Nancy Millis Medal for Women in Science,
awarded by the Australian Academy of
Science on International Women’s Day, 2014.
The award honours the memory of the late
Professor Nancy Millis, a Melbourne University
microbiologist who pioneered the field of
biotechnology in Australia. It is just one of
a string of awards, including the 2012 New
South Wales Science and Engineering Awards
and the New South Wales Government’s 2015
Eureka Award for the public communication
of research.
Proving her point that women
can handle the ‘hard’ subjects,
Johnston won the first Nancy
Millis Medal for Women in
Science, awarded by the
Australian Academy of Science
on International Women’s Day,
2014.
The fact is, young Johnston was presented
with a world of ideas and options. Her father
was an applied mathematician at Melbourne’s
Monash University. Her mother was a chemist,
until she was forced to leave work when
refused a request for part-time work after
starting a family. Undaunted, she took up
painting and studied Japanese.
“That was back in the 70s,” sighs Johnston,
who works hard to encourage girls to
see a place for themselves in the STEM
disciplines: science, technology, engineering
and mathematics.
“Women are socially and culturally
engendered to think of maths and physics as
difficult – that we don’t have a natural facility
with them,” says Johnston. “It’s not true. What
the community believes the child believes, and
it affects a child’s choices and performance.”
At first glance, the Eureka Award represents
a recent twist on Johnston’s linear path from
sailor to scientist. In fact, it links directly
back to her childhood as the daughter of a
scientist who had postings in France, England
and Japan, as well as Australia. With so many
experiences under her belt at an early age,
it’s not surprising that in her teens she had
decided to be a science journalist.
This professional head start
enabled the early-career
scientist to get straight into
the field – in Johnston’s case,
the water. She has explored
the tropical waters of the Great
Barrier Reef and the sea beds
of Antarctica, investigating the
impact of human activities on
marine life.
“So I studied biology, physics, chemistry
and maths, and majored in the philosophy
23
ENVIRONMENT
of science at the University of Melbourne,”
Johnston recalls. “I was also very motivated by
social and environmental issues and was the
president of the student union.”
Science, journalism, public advocacy – it
began to fuse when Johnston took a class in
ecological research.
Johnston explains: “I was fascinated. I did an
honours then PhD in the field, and got a job
straight out of my PhD. That’s very unusual.”
This professional head start enabled the earlycareer scientist to get straight into the field –
in Johnston’s case, the water. She has explored
the tropical waters of the Great Barrier Reef
and the sea beds of Antarctica, investigating
the impact of human activities on marine life.
Sweeping seagrass meadows and kelp
forests, rocky corals and sponge gardens, even
handfuls of soft sediment from harbours and
estuaries, provide vital information about life
underwater. The results can be significant.
For instance, by combining data collected in
Sydney Harbour and many other estuaries
in NSW with laboratory assays, Johnston
demonstrated a decade ago that toxic
contaminants, particularly copper, facilitate
the potentially disruptive invasion of alien
species into coastal waterways.
“We’ve now got multiple lines of evidence,
a causal mechanism and real-world data
through time and space,” says Johnston.
She regularly discusses her team’s findings
with policymakers and ‘stakeholders’,
Sweeping seagrass meadows
and kelp forests, rocky corals
and sponge gardens, even
handfuls of soft sediment from
harbours and estuaries, provide
vital information about life
underwater.
24
ENVIRONMENT
among them recreational fishers, often
reluctant to acknowledge the impact of their
favourite hobby.
“It’s my job to put the information we gather
out, explaining how it was gathered, and to
acknowledge and discuss it within the context
of their personal experiences.”
Meanwhile, Johnston’s group is working
with collaborators at the CSIRO, the National
University of Singapore and the Canadian
Rivers Institute to build “very fun, very
cutting edge” tools. The idea is to use the
powerful new tools of genetics and ‘big data’
to examine the biodiversity and health of
marine ecosystems.
“This is the kind of information we need, to
understand how we can help species survive
in rapidly changing circumstances, which
includes rising sea surface temperatures,”
Johnston says, noting that some of their
“bio-functional diagnostic tools” are this
year being adopted by Australian national
research programs.
change. We need a national monitoring
system to provide confidence that monitoring
is ongoing and consistent.”
“This is the kind of information
we need, to understand how
we can help species survive in
rapidly changing circumstances,
which includes rising sea surface
temperatures,”
We need more people like Emma Johnston to
get things done and train the next generation.
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Leigh Dayton
“But the latest, most cutting edge tools are
still in development, and our initial findings
have been received with much interest at
international conferences in Hong Kong and
the UK, at which I have been a plenary speaker
this year.”
Despite such successes, there’s more to do.
After pulling data together for the State of the
Environment report, Johnston became acutely
aware that there is no national monitoring
system for near-shore coastal systems and
estuaries. The result is confusion and conflict
about the use of ecosystems such as the Great
Barrier Reef and Sydney Harbour.
“We need to know if an ecosystem is in good
shape or close to a threshold which could put
it over the edge,” says Johnston. “We need
tools to get information and provide feedback
about how ecosystems are responding to
25
Australians are leading the charge when it comes to developing innovative products
that have a real impact on people’s lives. Read about Daniel Timms’ ground-breaking
artificial heart, and the pioneering single-atom electronic devices designed by physicist
Michelle Simmons that are putting Australia at the forefront of quantum computing.
IMAGES: TOP LEFT & TOP RIGHT: DANIEL TIMMS INVENTOR OF THE BIVACOR. CREDIT: BIVACOR INC/TEXAS HEART INSTITUTE;
BOTTOM LEFT: MICHELLE SIMMONS IN LAB AT THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES. CREDIT: CQC2T;. BOTTOM RIGHT: MICHELLE SIMMONS WITH PRIME MINISTER MALCOLM TURNBULL. CREDIT: CQC2T
DESIGN &
INNOVATION
DESIGN & INNOVATION
DESIGN & INNOVATION
“But magnetic levitation technology is used in
all sorts of things – for example, the trains in
China and Japan.”
Fins on one side of the spinning disc inside the
BiVACOR pump blood around the body. Fins on
the other side pump blood to the lungs. And
because the disc is levitating, it never touches
any other part of the device.
“So there’s no part of the device that is
wearing out,” says Timms. “That’s a significant
thing to note – the predicted lifetime of the
BiVACOR is more than 10 years. There’s no
reason why the device should stop. Other
artificial heart devices may have issues with
breaking membranes or other things which
have plagued the field so far.”
IMAGE: DANIEL TIMMS AND THE BIVACOR TEAM. CREDIT: BIVACOR INC/TEXAS HEART INSTITUTE.
THE ARTIFICIAL HEART THAT COULD
REPLACE TRANSPLANTS
GLOBAL COLLABORATION
Daniel Timms spent his childhood learning the mechanics of plumbing from his father. Today he is using
that knowledge to create a ground-breaking artificial heart device with the potential to prolong the lives of
millions of people with heart failure.
Daniel Timms was 23 years old when he
first imagined an artificial heart device in
the garage of his parents’ Brisbane home
while completing a PhD at the Queensland
University of Technology. Little did he know his
BiVACOR device would go on to lead the field
in artificial heart technology.
Small enough to fit inside a child’s chest
yet powerful enough to support an adult,
the device could be the answer for the tens
of thousands of people worldwide who
desperately need a heart transplant. With only
about 4,000 donor hearts available each year,
there is a huge gap between what is needed
and what is available. Recipients also have to
wait for the right-sized heart from a donor
with the right blood type.
28
More than 300,000 Australians are affected
by heart failure, including Timms’s father, who
passed away at age 55. There are 11 million
sufferers in the US and Europe, and those
figures are expected to increase by 25 per cent
by 2030.
weighs about 500 grams, around the same
weight as an adult heart.
“The BiVACOR device could act as an
alternative to heart transplant. You could
pull it off a shelf and implant it in a patient
without having to wait,” explains Timms.
In fact, there is no pulse. Rather than having
a heartbeat to keep the blood running,
the BiVACOR works similarly to a fan –
perpetually propelling the blood forward.
The key component of the device is a small,
spinning disc in the centre, which levitates in a
magnetic field.
THE HEART WITH NO PULSE
The BiVACOR device looks like it belongs inside
a machine, rather than a human.
The titanium shell is about half the size
of other artificial heart devices. It is small
enough to fit in the palm of your hand and
“If you were to see it on a desk, you couldn’t
guess what it does,” says Timms. “And that’s
because it doesn’t work on the basis of a
pulse, like a natural heart.”
“If you see it, it does seem like magic. You
can see it levitating in air – or blood in our
case – and wonder ... how can that happen?”
says Timms.
Timms says his background knowledge for the
BiVACOR device came from his father. The pair
would work in their garage and visit hardware
stores to develop Timms’s vision.
It’s taken 15 years from the first rough sketch
of the device to the present. In that time,
Timms completed a mechanical engineering
degree at the Queensland University of
Technology (QUT), as well as a PhD on the
BiVACOR idea. He did this while working at
Brisbane’s Prince Charles Hospital, where
he was able to seek rare insights from
doctors and surgeons to further develop the
technology.
A second big break for Timms came
when he was approached by Germany’s
Helmholtz Institute, which is a world leader
in engineering elements of artificial heart
technology. At the same time, a lifelong
cooperation was formed with key Japanese
researchers, who helped to refine the
magnetic levitation system.
“I’d known about Helmholtz from my studies,”
says Timms. “Fortunately they opened the
doors for our team to go and work there for
almost three years.
“Their experience in developing these heart
devices, from an engineering perspective in
terms of manufacturing, is unique to that
institute. So, without their assistance, we
may have stumbled in particular areas, like
specialised engineering techniques.”
This was just one of many international
collaborations for Timms, who seems to have
a knack for developing relationships with
scientists around the world. For instance,
Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University
offered him a lab for a month, with access
to their artificial heart technology and preclinical testing opportunities.
“I walked in essentially with my device in my
backpack and said, ‘Here it is, but I don’t know
how to connect it into the circulation system
just yet’,” says Timms. “They went out the
back, opened a cupboard and brought out a
connection they’d used in the 1980s and then
refined it for our device.”
HUMAN TRIALS THE NEXT STOP
Many of the research papers Timms read
from a young age were written by leading
cardiac surgeon, Dr Bud Frazier, who has been
involved in the development of artificial heart
technology for 50 years. Dr Frazier is also
Director of Cardiovascular Surgical Research
at the Texas Heart Institute, where Timms
and the BiVACOR team continue to work in
close collaboration.
“Dr Frazier saw our device while I was
presenting at a conference in Paris in 2009,”
says Timms. “He predicted it would be
something that would lead the artificial heart
field in the future – and his contribution
to the field is beyond human. To have his
endorsement and contributions early on was
crucial to us having success in our field, and to
open the doors required to get something like
this across the line.”
One of the most crucial doors was to the Texas
Heart Institute (THI), where Dr Frazier has
been pioneering artificial heart development
since Dr Denton Cooley implanted the first
artificial heart in a human in 1969.
In 2015, a team of 25 medical and engineering
specialists from around the world implanted
the BiVACOR device into a sheep at QUT’s
Medical Engineering Research Facility.
Six hours later, the sheep was standing
and eating.
Dr Billy Cohn, a pioneering American heart
surgeon from the THI, was part of the team
that completed the transplant.
“A sheep without a heart [was] being kept
alive by a machine with one moving part,”
Cohn said in an interview with The Australian
newspaper. “No pulse at all … the BiVACOR
team have come up with a mechanism that
makes an artificial heart balance [systemic
blood flow] like a native heart, which nobody
has ever been able to do.”
The BiVACOR team is now headquartered in
the Texas Medical Center, in Houston, and
pre-clinical testing is underway to submit the
device to the regulatory bodies for human
use evaluation.
As the proud son of a Brisbane plumber,
Timms fondly remembers the time he spent
with his dad, building pumps and irrigation
systems in the backyard. His father did not live
to see Timms’s artificial heart come to fruition,
but the knowledge he passed on to his son
may soon enable millions of people to lead
longer, more fulfilling lives.
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Imogen Brennan
29
DESIGN & INNOVATION
DESIGN & INNOVATION
new modelling abilities that will improve the
quality and speed of drug development.
Simmons says quantum computers could help
transport and delivery companies dramatically
reduce fuel consumption, or improve the
pattern-recognition software in self-driving
cars, making them safer and faster. For
everyday people, benefits could range from
real-time analysis of traffic and weather, to a
new era of personalised medicine.
ENTERING THE QUANTUM REALM
IMAGE: MICHELLE SIMMONS, DIRECTOR OF THE ARC CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE FOR QUANTUM COMPUTATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES. CREDIT: CQC2T
AUSTRALIA LEADING
THE GLOBAL QUANTUM RACE
A pioneer in the fabrication of single-atom electronic devices, physicist Michelle Simmons has turned
Australia into a global powerhouse in the international race to develop a viable quantum computer.
“Quantum computing allows you to solve
certain problems in minutes that would take
conventional computers centuries, or even
thousands of years,” says Professor Michelle
Simmons from the University of New South
Wales (UNSW Sydney).
Rather than performing sequential
calculations one after the other like
conventional computers, these futuristic
machines will carry out calculations in parallel.
Australia is leading the international race
to develop a viable quantum computer in
silicon. This powerhouse status is thanks
in large part to Simmons, who is the
Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for
Quantum Computation and Communication
Technology. The Centre comprises close to
180 researchers across UNSW Sydney, The
University of Melbourne, Australian National
30
University, Griffith University, The University
of Sydney, UNSW Canberra at the Australian
Defence Force Academy, and The University of
Queensland.
Around the world, research groups have
explored various approaches to developing
a quantum computer, some involving
exotic materials. Simmons and her Centre
have focused on just two ‘implementation’
strategies: developing an optical quantum
computer, where information is encoded
in photons of light, and developing a solidstate quantum computer using silicon as the
base material.
The latter is where they have demonstrated
international leadership with pathways to
scale to practical systems: “We have been
systematically building that capability in
Australia for over a decade, giving us a
competitive edge,” she says.
“We’re leading the field in atomic precision
devices and it will be very hard for people to
catch us.”
SOLVING SPECIFIC COMPLEX
PROBLEMS
Simmons’s team has a detailed plan to build a
10-qubit integrated circuit device within five
years, and is aiming for a 100-qubit system
within the decade beyond that.
If all goes to plan, she says, quantum
computers will excel at searching colossal
datasets, solving complex optimisation
problems, and modelling things like financial
markets or simulating biological molecules.
Quantum technologies will provide important
The unique ability of quantum computers
stems from how information is encoded.
In conventional computers, information
is represented by classical bits: the zeroes
and ones of binary code, determined by
a transistor device being switched ‘off’ or
‘on’. In the atomic-scale devices Simmons
is renowned for fabricating, information is
written on the electron-spin or nuclear spin
of individual phosphorus atoms precisely
positioned in silicon, known as quantum bits,
or qubits.
By cooling the device to extremely low
temperatures and putting it in a magnetic
field, they can create the two-level quantum
system where the spin behaves as a tiny
bar magnet and either aligns with the field,
representing a zero state, or against the field,
representing a one state analogous to classical
information.
But qubits have spooky properties and can
exist in a superposition of these states at the
same time. A consequence of this is that the
amount of information doubles with each
new qubit added to a system, giving rise to
an exponential increase in its computational
power.
Furthermore, qubits also exhibit a strange
state known as quantum entanglement.
Any operation carried out, says Simmons,
will affect all the qubits and their coherent
states, simultaneously. “This is what enables
the power of massive parallel processing,”
she says.
With 300 qubits, it is theoretically possible
to store as much classical information (ones
and zeroes) as there are atoms in the universe.
A system this size, if error corrected, would
be more powerful than the most powerful
supercomputer with billions of classical bits.
THE SILICON STORY AND ITS
ADVANTAGES
In 1998, a physicist named Bruce Kane
outlined a hypothetical approach for building
a quantum computer in silicon using
phosphorus atoms at the qubits.
Simmons, then at Cambridge University in the
UK, had “exquisite control” over her Gallium
arsenide quantum devices but was unable to
make the same device twice.
“I was genuinely frustrated,” she recalls.
“Bruce’s proposal got rid of all the things we
knew were causing problems ... and reduced
the problem to just phosphorus and silicon. I
thought the concept was about the simplest
way you could make a reproducible quantum
device, and it was on the edge of what was
technically feasible.”
As the material used in all modern-day
computer chips, silicon offers several
advantages: it’s easy to manufacture, can
be purified to contain no other spins, and
its properties are well understood thanks
to trillions of dollars of research and
development investment.
Simmons decided it was the “best material
in the world to build a scalable quantum
computer” and never looked back.
COMING TO AUSTRALIA TO BE A
SCIENTIFIC LEADER
In 1999, Simmons made an “easy decision” to
come to Australia. “I felt the Australian culture
was much more open and collaborative
than the US or UK, and had many more
opportunities for young people to find
leadership roles early in their career,” she says.
With funding and academic freedom to
pursue “ambitious and high-risk” projects,
Simmons has led a steady flow of scientific
breakthroughs and technical achievements.
Her team developed the world’s first singleatom transistor and the narrowest conducting
wires in silicon. They have demonstrated the
ability to read-out the spin states of individual
electron spins on single phosphorus atoms
with the highest precision, and more recently,
earned the distinction of having the ‘lowest
noise’ of any silicon device. Interference or
‘noise’ from the surrounding environment
can wreak havoc with the ability of qubits
to keep their state, so this is an important
achievement, she says.
In late 2015, the Australian Government
promised A$26 million to help the Centre
translate its research. This was quickly
followed up with A$10 million pledges from
the Commonwealth Bank of Australia and
telecommunications giant Telstra.
REAPING THE REWARD
Simmons was made a Fellow of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences, which includes
250 Nobel Laureates, and won the 2015 CSIRO
Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science.
After receiving the 2017 L’Oréal-UNESCO For
Women in Science Award, Simmons said:
“Trying to control nature at its very smallest
scale is such an exciting and rewarding field
to be in. This has been my passion for many
years and has such tremendous potential. I
am honoured by this recognition and hope it
inspires others.”
First published on
www.australiaunlimited.com
Author: Myles Gough
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