Lumen Autumn 2017 - Flipbook - Page 14
story by Kelly Brown
Australia’s
best defence
Decisions by the Australian Government over the past 12 months have
created a wealth of new opportunities in research and education in the area
of defence. As a long-time partner of the defence sector, the University of
Adelaide is well-positioned to increase its involvement.
P
rofessor Michael Webb was
appointed Director of Defence and
Security at the University in 2016
to help drive new collaborations with
industry and government. Michael has
worked in the sector for almost 30 years,
20 of those at the Defence Science and
Technology Group (DST Group) – the
Australian Government’s lead science and
technology defence agency. He has been
with the University for almost 10 years.
Lumen caught up with Michael to
discuss our past, present and future
involvement in defence.
Where are the opportunities
coming from?
The opportunities have arisen from a
couple of places. In its 2016 Defence
Industry Policy Statement, the Australian
Government identified an approach to
defence innovation that includes the
Next Generation Technology Fund of
$730 million and the Defence Innovation
Hub of $640 million. That’s almost
$1.4 billion over 10 years, a significant
investment. The University has already
been successful in winning project work
from this funding and there is potential
for more to come.
There are also the major maritime projects
– the Future Submarine and Future
Frigates programs and, critically, the
continuous shipbuilding program in South
Australia. These are all areas where the
University has a role to play.
12 Lumen | Autumn 2017
What skills and expertise do we offer?
Most people wouldn't know this, but the
University of Adelaide does more work
with defence than most universities in the
country. I’ll mention a few examples of
research to illustrate different aspects and
excellence of our work. In our Institute
for Photonics and Advanced Sensing
we have developed the world’s most
precise clock, a cryogenically cooled
sapphire clock which loses no more than
a second every 40 million years or so.
This precision measurement of time is vital
in many systems – navigation and radar
to name two.
In our School of Medicine, a group is
researching the neural physiology of
the dragonfly. The dragonfly is widely
considered to be nature’s most effective
predator, able to capture tiny flying prey in
mid-air at speeds of up to 60 km/h with
an incredible hit-rate of over 95 per cent.
Recently this research has been used
to build an autonomous robot that can
effectively and efficiently pursue targets in
unstructured environments.
For almost a decade, Researchers at
the University of Adelaide’s Centre for
Defence Communications and Information
Networking (CDCIN) have been working
with the Department of Defence and the
Australian Defence Force (ADF) to ensure
its communications remain at the cutting
edge. CDCIN assists in both optimising the
performance of existing ADF systems, and
exploring, assessing and developing new
concepts and approaches so that systems,
equipment and people can interact rapidly,
effectively and securely at all times.
Research conducted at the University
in collaboration with DST Group has
led to the development of a software
performance modelling environment, called
MEDEA. This technology allows missioncritical software systems in submarines,
aircraft and armoured vehicles to be
performance tested early in their design to
highlight problems that would traditionally
be found only towards the end of projects.
What is our history in defence
and partnering with government
and industry?
It goes back to early days. In 1948 our
first full-time Vice-Chancellor was Sir
Albert Percival Rowe, the Chief Scientific
Officer for the British rocket program
in Australia and scientific adviser to the
Australian Department of Defence. If you
look at any of DST Group’s history, you
will find University of Adelaide scientists
throughout; we’ve had a close working
relationship with the group for decades.
We have members of DST Group and
the defence industry on the boards of
some of our Institutes. Members of our
faculty, including myself and Professor
Pascale Quester, Deputy Vice-Chancellor
and Vice President (Academic), sit on
industry boards including Defence SA
and Defence Teaming Centre.
We are also a participant in the rapid
prototype development and evaluation
(RPDE) program, which is run by the
Department of Defence and involves a
couple of hundred companies that solve
short-term defence problems, often
with a technology focus.
