With less than 14% of degree qualified engineers in Australia being women, YoWIEs, or Young Women in Engineering are as difficult to find in engineering schools across Australia as their mythical counterparts.

This week, UNSW Canberra is hosting the largest pack of YoWIEs ever seen at its engineering summer school, and it really is an amazing sight.

The YoWIE program was created to directly disrupt the imbalance in the gender make up of Australian engineers. It has been designed specifically for young women and aims to show them engineering is for them through a number of fun, hands-on activities.

This year, more than 80 year 9 to 12 girls from across the country have come together to take part in the free three-day event. Some of the activities the girls will complete include designing satellites, building and testing rockets, disassembling a lawn mower and programming a robot. They will also hear from Liz Pearce who works at the Australian Space Agency.

Event organiser and aerospace engineer Dr Bianca Capra is passionate about increasing the number of women into the profession she loves.

“Engineering is a unique profession mixing creativity, abstract thinking and technical skills to solve unknown problems,” Dr Capra said.

“It is fundamental to our lives, yet sadly remains non-representative of our society. The innovative future that is our promise to further generations will only be achieved with diverse and inclusive teams – and increasing the number of women in engineering is a crucial first step to greater diversity.”

Dr Capra said the participants are at an important time in their schooling. Some will be deciding on subjects for their senior classes, while others considering university options.

“Over the next few days, these young women will develop and use the real skills of practicing engineers, improving not only their skills but their confidence in engineering. We hope that this week they are empowered to continue studies in the areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics, which are critical subjects to any STEM career,” Dr Capra said.

“YoWIE continues to grow organically, with a year-on-year growth of about 28% so we must be doing something right! The success of YoWIE is testament to the depth of the program as well as the support from schools, teachers and parents. Importantly this program is having a real impact with several of our first pack of YoWIEs enrolling to studying engineering.

“We need gender parity in all areas of STEM, and particularly engineering where the numbers remain stubbornly low. It’s time we shook things up, and that’s what we do here at YoWIE and that’s why I love it.”

Research into the swarm behaviours of robots, how sound waves exert force on objects and how a bird’s wingtip feathers contribute to its flying ability are among six UNSW Canberra projects awarded more than $2.8 million in Australian Research Council (ARC) funding.

Eleven academics from UNSW Canberra Engineering and IT were awarded funding from the ARC Discovery Projects on Wednesday.

In total, 72 UNSW projects received $30.8 million in the ARC Discovery Project scheme announced by Minister for Education Dan Tehan.

Professor Nicholas Fisk, Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research), congratulated the University’s researchers on their funding success.

The Discovery Projects scheme provides funding for research projects that can be undertaken by individual researchers or research teams.

The objectives of the scheme include: supporting excellent basic and applied research by individuals and teams; encouraging high-quality research; enhancing international collaborations in research and expanding Australia’s knowledge base and research capabilities.

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UNSW Canberra ARC Discovery Project 2020 Round grant recipients:

 

$580,000 to Professor Hussein Abbass and Dr Sondoss Elsawah

Transforming data assets into organisational knowledge assets sits in the hands of a few, highly specialised, data scientists. The aim of this research is to design educational instruments to support non-experts to teach artificial intelligence (AI) systems in a similar way to educating human teachers to teach human learners.

$390,000 to Professor Jiankun Hu

Privacy-preserving Biometrics based Authentication and Security. Password based authentication systems cannot verify genuine users. Biometric authentication can address this issue. The intended deliverables will include deep learning based biometric feature extractor, cancellable biometrics and cloud oriented biometrics security protocols.

$373,000 to Associate Professors Kathryn Kasmarik and Matthew Garratt

This project aims to develop algorithms to permit groups of robots to evolve coordinated, collective, swarm behaviours. Groups of robots will be conceptualised as developmental swarm organisms with an initially limited set of behaviours, but equipped with structures and processes to permit them to evolve new behaviours.

$540,000 to Professor Valeri Ougrinovski

The project aims to develop an innovative systems theory and optimisation methods to enhance the design of components for next-generation quantum communication networks. It will advance new theoretical knowledge and efficient algorithms that can be applied to make networks more efficient and less costly.

$400,000 to Dr David Powell

This project aims to investigate how sound waves exert forces on objects, and how these forces can be controlled by artificially engineered structures known as acoustic metamaterials. The project is expected to lead to a new understanding of acoustic radiation forces, and how they can be efficiently manipulated with high resolution.

$535,000 to Dr Fangbao Tian, Associate Professor John Young, Professor Joseph Lai and Dr Sridhar Ravi

This project aims to produce a deeper understanding of the role of wingtip feathers in the remarkable abilities of birds to fly in unsteady and unpredictable aerodynamic environments, and in some cases to do so almost silently.

A new collaborative workspace precinct in Canberra City dedicated to the defence and security industries has been announced today.

Called Launch on Northbourne, and hosted by UNSW Canberra, the precinct is a concept that will provide three floors of collaborative workspace bringing together industry, government and academia to grow innovation and capability in defence and security.

UNSW Canberra Rector Professor Michael Frater said that innovation is one of the most significant sources of sustainable competitive advantage.

“That is why UNSW Canberra identified the need for a dedicated innovation space that will allow these different industries to come together to develop defence and security capability, talent and technology,” he said.

As part of the Launch concept, UNSW Canberra will host a cohort of start-ups in the defence and security industries. The incubator initiative also forms part of the University’s greater commitment to growing industry and academic capability in the region.

“Universities are trusted partners in the development of defence and security capabilities and Launch on Northbourne will build off a successful base of established activity, talent and infrastructure that is maintained by UNSW Canberra and the greater UNSW network,” Professor Frater said.

The precinct will be designed using the Protective Security Policy Framework which articulates the effective implementation of physical, personnel and information security. Launch’s flexible space solutions will suit a broad number of organisations, with security Zones Two, Three and Four supporting the proposed workspace models.

Professor Frater said that for a model such as Launch to be successful it requires the ability to tap in to a network of innovators, researchers, thought leaders and existing commercial expertise.

“The workspace provided by the precinct will provide an avenue for shared infrastructure and ideas, through to networking opportunities with complementary entities and individuals and to pool resources with like-minded companies and institutions,” he said.

More information about the precinct can be found on the Launch on Northbourne website.