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ITRI takes research at Deakin to the next step
Deakin’s newly created Institute for Technology Research and Innovation will take the university’s research activities to an exciting new level, said Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) Professor David Stokes.
“This
new Institute will be the home for our strong portfolio of discovery
and applied research in advanced manufacturing that
includes work in new materials, composites, nanotechnology, biotechnology
and intelligent systems,” Professor Stokes said.
“It will also play a huge role in attracting more world-class researchers to Deakin, as well as expanding the partnerships the university has been so successful in developing with industry.
“Already there are more than 40 partnerships between industry and research in place at the Geelong Technology Precinct on our campus at Waurn Ponds,” Professor Stokes said.
“We expect that number to grow considerably once ITRI is fully up and running – researchers and industry practitioners working together to solve real world problems.
“Certainly that’s what so much of Deakin’s research is about, finding solutions that will have a positive impact on the lives of people not just in Victoria or Australia, but all over the world.
“The fact that Ford chose Deakin as the only Australian university to take part in its Global Challenge to design a Model T for the 21st Century is further confirmation of that.
“I don’t think it is giving too much away to say the new design our researchers will put forward will be for a post-petroleum era vehicle. That is indeed an exciting concept as the world tries to come to grips with global warming.”
The announcement that the Indian IT company, Satyam, would be setting up on the GTP was another early sign of the sort of growth that can be expected, as was the Victorian Government’s decision to help finance a “proof of concept” facility at Waurn Ponds.
The Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds sits on a 360-hectare site, so even with these developments, space won’t be an issue for a long time.
“Other universities in the capital cities would love to have the advantages we do at ITRI – the capacity to do excellent science right up to proof of concept stage in partnership with industry, the room to grow, and the wonderful lifestyle that goes with living in a regional centre so close to the Great Ocean Road,” said Professor Stokes.
“We believe that our research at Deakin is world-class, and there are many ways of measuring that, both formal and informal.
“One of the best informal ones is that, as we expand, we are attracting more interest in the Institute from researchers from all over the world. We now have research students from over 16 countries working at the GTP.
“In Europe, where you have so many countries together, that would not be exceptional but in a regional city in the far-off southern hemisphere, that is a pretty fair sign that people not only know about what we’re doing at Deakin in research, but they want to be part of it.”
Professor Stokes said the innovative nature of Deakin’s collaborative approach was also recognised in March when Senator Kim Carr announced at the annual dinner of the Geelong Manufacturing Council that the Innovative Regions Innovation Centre for Australia would be located at the GTP.
Universities in regional economies have a key role to play,” Professor Stokes said. “They are not commercial enterprises in the sense that Small to Medium Enteprises (SMEs) and large companies are commercial enterprises, but there is a real opportunity for industry and universities to work together in partnership, each benefiting from the other in areas of their core business.”
For more information on ITRI: http://www.deakin.edu.au/research/itri/
Kate on song in new roles
Although she’s only been at Deakin University a short time, Dr Kate Buchanan is already making a vital contribution to the university’s ever-growing research reputation.
Dr Buchanan, who was formerly at Cardiff University before shifting to Geelong, has just been appointed as editor of the of the science journal Emu Austral Ornithology.
The journal has been published by the CSIRO for more than 100 years and is that organisation’s premier journal documenting avian research.
“It is a great honour to be asked to edit this publication,” Dr Buchanan said. “I am really looking forward to the challenge of communicating the important work scientists are doing in avian research to a broader audience.
“A lot of the work has a very serious environmental component.”
The journal's website is: http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/96.htm
Dr Buchanan’s own ground-breaking research was also recognised in May when she appeared on The Science Show on ABC Radio National, interviewed by the country’s top science broadcaster, Robyn Williams.
A transcript of the interview features below.
The interview began with birdsong.
Robyn Williams: No, not a whale pretending to be a bird, that's a starling, and the discovery made by Dr Kate Buchanan is that their song becomes distorted, more complex if they suck up poisonous chemicals from water. And the worrying thing is that the effect on bird populations is profound.
Kate Buchanan: We're interested in the effects of toxic chemicals on neurobiology and behaviour in birds. I've been interested in the effects of stress on birdsong. But these chemicals are a specific case because they work as oestrogen mimics, and song development is oestrogen dependent.
Robyn Williams: So you thought that if these chemicals were having an effect on the nervous system, obviously the brain being the main part, then if you wanted some sort of test of an effect, birdsong might be the very one.
Kate Buchanan: Absolutely. Birdsong hasn't been considered to be condition dependent but it is a biomarker of developmental conditions, and that's because it is strongly dependent on the neural machinery underlying its production, in particular one centre called the HVC, the high vocal centre in the brain which determines how complicated the birdsong is.
Robyn Williams: Which bird, what sort?
Kate Buchanan: We've been following European starlings which have very complicated song which is very plastic, it changes from year to year, and females prefer to mate with males that have more complex songs.
Robyn Williams: I wonder why? The simple message I would have thought would be as attractive. So they go in for complicated songs, and how complicated does the pollutant make it?
Kate Buchanan: We measured levels of these pollutants in the worms that these birds are taking in, we fed them ecologically relevant doses, and we found that it significantly enhanced song complexity, so it made them sing longer, it made them sing longer bouts, and it made their repertoire size larger, which means they sing more different kinds of syllables, 'syllables' being...an analogy would be words in a sentence.
Robyn Williams: So in some ways these pollutants were good for the birds.
Kate Buchanan: Absolutely, it makes them sexier.
Robyn Williams: I see. So did it do any damage in the long-term to the creatures?
Kate Buchanan: Absolutely, yes, this is the problem is that females will bias their reproductive decisions towards these males, but we have hints that these males are actually physiologically less fit. We ran some immune function tests on these birds, and males who were dosed artificially with these pollutants had suppressed immune function using two different immune tests. So we suspect these males are actually not very well, but females will choose to mate with them regardless.
Robyn Williams: And in the real world, how does that add up? Because in the real world you want your mate to be healthy and strong, and having a complex song is an indication of that. So what would make the song complex in the natural world where there is no pollutant?
Kate Buchanan: The problem with
this is we would expect to see a population decline if females are choosing
to mate with males that are in poor condition, and in fact that's exactly
what we've seen in European populations of starling which are now listed
as a Red Data Book species because they are showing such sharp decline
in populations.
So of course there are other reasons for this decline
but we're suggesting that environmental pollutants might be one of them.
Robyn Williams: Where do the birds go to get, in the wild, these chemicals? Where do they pick them up?
Kate Buchanan: Our hypothesised route was foraging on sewage treatment filter beds, and there may be other sources of oestrogen mimics but our study focuses on a number of different chemicals which are largely products of the plastics industry and also natural oestrogen which is bioaccumulating in invertebrates on sewage treatment filter beds.
Robyn Williams: With other animals who are also picking up these chemicals, the ones that don't have birdsong, how would you test the same sort of thing with them?
Kate Buchanan: It depends on oestrogen dependent behaviours. So you would have to look at hormone levels in those animals or neural development in centres that are dependent on oestrogen, or other condition indices.
Robyn Williams: So what's your broad conclusion about this? If you've got widespread oestrogen-like chemicals in the water generally and birds are picking them up, there's a broader story about the things we should worry about, surely, that we should be concerned that there are these pollutants around.
Kate Buchanan: I think endocrine disrupters are extremely worrying because these levels are relatively low in the water and they're bio-accumulating in the invertebrates. It's a difficult area to work in because the pollutants can have synergistic effects. The effects are not ubiquitous, so it depends on the dispersion in the water column, whether it's bio-accumulated up the food chain. So it's a difficult area to assess exactly what kind of effects you're going to have, but it is certainly very worrying.
Robyn Williams: You know the Canadians have done an experiment by putting some of these chemicals in the lake to see what would happen to the fish. Have you come across that?
Kate Buchanan: No, I haven't come across that one, but there is a great deal of work which has looked at endocrine disrupters in aquatic environments and there's very well publicised effects on fish and alligator morphology and behaviour and reproductive success showing alarming effects of these chemicals.
Robyn Williams: Dr Kate Buchanan is at Deakin University in Geelong Victoria, and she's following up that work on pollutants coming from industrial waste, not from pharmaceuticals used by women, by the way.
To hear this interview, or the one the following week with Bronwyn Fox and Betime Nuhji from the Centre for Material and Fibre Innovation, click on to: www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/default.htm
Research Services Division:
Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds
Pigdons Road, Geelong, Victoria 3217 Australia
Telephone: +61 3 5227 2673 Facsimile:
+61 3 5227 2175
Email: dvc-research@deakin.edu.au
www.deakin.edu.au/research
Deakin Research Updates - back copies
Back issues of Deakin Research Updates are available at: www.deakin.edu.au/research
Christophe gives Deakin top billing
Moving to Deakin University has taken internationally renowned researcher Christophe Lefèvre to the cusp of fulfilling a major ambition – seeing a platypus in the wild.
“I am told you can see them in the Barwon River near Inverleigh which is not far from here,” he says between sips of his coffee at the Lake House on the Geelong Campus at Waurn Ponds. “I really hope so.
“Some colleagues have promised to take me out there and I am really looking forward to it. But I might have to get up really early!”
Christophe’s fascination with the fabled duck-billed creature from Down Under is a longstanding one. He first heard about the unique creature as a schoolboy growing up in the Loire Valley in France.
More recently, he was a part of the ground-breaking platypus genome project that garnered international acclaim for a body of researchers from around the world.
Their findings, featured in Nature magazine and also five concurrently published papers in Genome Research, show that the platypus’ mix of reptilian and mammalian characteristics is reflected at the genome level.
The genome sequencing presents a marvellous insight into the evolution of mammals. It seems it was about more than 160 to 210 million years ago that the genetic changes took place that created the first mammals, which are generally defined by their mammary glands that in females produce milk.
Chris set to achieve for Deakin
Chris Hum laughs heartily as he describes himself as the under-achiever in his family.
“I have a sister, Fiona, who is a lawyer with a PhD in Juridical Science, and I have another sister, Winsome, who is a psychiatrist.
“One of my brothers, Michael, is a medico working in the aged-care domain and the other one, Tony, runs an IT company.
“So I tell people I am the under-achiever but I guess what I have really done is to move away from academia to a more commercial area in my career.”
Under-achievements or otherwise, Chris’s background, which includes a Master of Science and a Master of International Business from Melbourne University, make him a perfect fit for his new role within the Research Services Division at Deakin.
Chris is one of two new recently appointed Research Development Managers, one at Burwood, the other – Russell Walker - at Geelong.
“I started in April and my first objective is to meet as many of the researchers on the Burwood campus … as well as touching base with others based in Geelong and Warrnambool … particularly those involved in the Biomedical and Health related areas, initially just to find out what their immediate and future research aspirations are,” Chris said.
“Then I will do my own homework into what opportunities there are in securing new grants, or to build on existing ones.
“As I go around, the message I am getting is with the increased demands and workloads with teaching and lectures, many of the researchers are finding it more difficult to keep their fingers on the funding pulse, and with the great research conducted across all Deakin campuses I have identified this as missed opportunities for the university.
“So if I can do all the donkey work to assist them, that would help in the process of meeting the required deadlines for grant applications and liaising with the right funding bodies, then we have gone a long way to alleviating that pressure.”
As well as those two Masters degrees, Chris comes to Deakin with well-established links with industry.
“My previous job was with Blackwell Publishing, regarded as the world's leading learned society publisher particularly in the area of physical sciences, life sciences, medicine, social sciences and humanities as many of the Deakin researchers will be familiar with,” he said.
“Through those publications for example; Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Nutrition Society of Australia I was already well aware of the excellent research work Deakin has been doing in the area of nutrition, particularly in obesity and risk to diabetes and other cardiovascular diseases.
“As well as working closely with editors and authors around the world at Blackwells, another important part of my job was to liaise with industry locally and internationally.
We talk to Research Development Manager, Russell Walker