Research

Research interests

The Faculty of Engineering and Surveying has Postgraduate Research Supervisors covering a wide range of research interests. Other Research Supervisors are also listed below.
Postgraduate Research Supervisors	Faculty discipline	Research Interests
Dr Tony Ahfock	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Axial flux machines Brushless DC machines Low frequency electromagnetics DC magnetisation of transformers Inverter output DC offset elimination
Dr Armando Apan	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Information: Remote sensing of agricultural crops and forest vegetation GIS Spatial analysis and modelling for resource and environmental management
Assoc Prof Thiru Aravinthan	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Structural Engineering and Materials: Fibre composites Structural rehabilitation External post-tensioning Bridge engineering Concrete
Dr Vasanthadevi Aravinthan	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Environmental Engineering: Advanced wastewater treatment processes Wastewater reclamation and reuse Emerging new contaminants, their occurrence and fate in the treatment processes Source control for sustainable potable reuse Drinking water quality Pressure management as a strategy of water conservation GIS as a tool for environmental modelling
Dr Badri Basnet	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Information: Precision agriculture Site-specific management of land resources
Prof John Billingsley	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechatronic Engineering Robotics Machine vision Automation Control theory Simulation
Dr Ian Brodie	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Assoc Prof David Buttsworth	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Fluid mechanics Rheology Thermofluids
Dr Guangnan Chen	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Agricultural Engineering: Agricultural climate risk management, reduction of grain harvest weather loss, post-harvesting technology Agricultural environment and resources management, management of greenhouse gas emissions, life cycle assessment Drying technology Agricultural machinery
Dr Ian Craig	National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture	Agricultural and Environmental Engineering: Water use efficiency and evaporation control technology Micrometeorology and air quality
Dr Jayantha Epaarachchi	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Fibre Composites Fatigue, Fracture, Damage Mechanics Static & Dynamics of Structures, Solid Modelling and Finite Element Analysis Experimental Stress Analysis Structural Health Monitoring Use of FBG sensors (Fibre Optics) for Structural Health Monitoring Full Scale Model Testing and Fatigue Spectrum Development
Hon Prof John Grant-Thompson	Hononary Professor	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Director, Mansell Neonatal Transport Equipment Biomedical Engineering
Assoc Prof Nigel Hancock	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering and Agricultural and Environmental Engineering: Measurement science and engineering Acidity measurement in dairy processes Evaporation science and measurement
Dr Fouad Kamal	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Power Engineering Renewable energy technologies Photovoltaic power systems Solar water heating Wind energy systems Sea-waves electric energy generation Interconnection of renewable energy generation systems to utility grids Sustainability Distributed energy generation Micro-hydro systems Heat pumps Fuel cells and hydrogen technologies Advanced energy storage technologies
Assoc Prof Karu Karunasena	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Structural Engineering and Materials: Fibre Composites Modelling and analysis of structures Rehabilitation of concrete, steel and timber structures Structural Health Monitoring Wave propagation in composite materials
Dr Alexander Kist	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Networking, routing Teletraffic engineering, network optimisation Network planning and design Quality of service provisioning, wireless networks
Dr Harry Ku	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Manufacturing engineering Microwave processing of materials Materials Engineering education
Assoc Prof John Leis	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Speech/video signal processing Cross-layer networking Signal processing algorithms for tomography Internet protocol engineering
Dr Nam Mai-Duy	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Computational Rheology and Mechanics Meshless Methods Meshless, numerical modelling for polymer processing
Dr Andrew Maxwell	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, Mechatronic Engineering: Measurement science and engineering Acidity measurement in dairy processes Remote sensing and distributed sensor networks Radio frequency and microwave systems GNSS applications
Dr Kevin McDougall	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Information: Geographical information systems Spatial data infrastructures Land administration
Dr Rabi Misra	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Agricultural and Environmental Engineering: Impact on reuse of wastewater (with focus on grey water) Precision irrigation strategies to accommodate spatial variability in soils and crops Nuclear magnetic resonance approaches to measurement of water Soil structure affecting compaction and erosion of soils Modelling of plant and soil processes Plant roots and the processes at the soil-root interface
Dr Ruth Mossad	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Computational Fluid and Heat Transfer: Ventilation Renewable energy Erosion Environmental applications
Dr Selvan Pather	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Application of mechatronic technology in health care Medical robotics Industrial robotics Mechanical engineering design
Prof Steve Raine	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Agricultural and Environmental Engineering: Design and management practices to improve the efficiency and productivity of both surface and pressurised irrigation systems Decision support systems for irrigation management Factors influencing soil slaking and dispersion and their subsequent effect on infiltration processes Mechanisms affecting soil aggregate hierarchy and structural stability Salinity, sodicity, soil-water and solute movement under commercial practices Natural resource management
Prof David Ross	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Dr Ahmad Sharifian	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Fluid Mechanics Rheology Thermofluids
Dr Jim Shiau	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Geotechnical Engineering: Limit and shakedown analyses Numerical and experimental geomechanics Deep braced excavation Soft ground tunnelling
Prof Rod Smith	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Irrigation and Environmental Hydraulics: Evaluation, simulation, optimisation and real time control of surface irrigation Infiltration from surface irrigation advance data Precision or prescription irrigation Development of diagnostic tools for mobile sprinkler irrigation systems Irrigation pipeline hydraulics Salinity and leaching
Dr David Thorpe	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Innovation and technology development/management, Infrastructure development/management, Project/contract delivery/management, Engineering education: Technology transfer from CRC for Construction Innovation to construction SME sector Life cycle evaluation of materials and components of engineered fibre composite structures Performance evaluation and improvement of ENG2002 Technology and Society course
Prof Thanh Tran-Cong	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Computational fluid and solid mechanics Numerical methods Computational engineering
Dr Andrew Wandel	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical Engineering: Turbulent combustion modelling Development and testing of turbulent models for the mixing of fuel and oxidiser: Multiple Mapping Conditioning (MMC) and binomial Langevin model Spray combustion: analysis of Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) data for physics Engineering Education: Use of Tablet PC to assist student learning Impact of contextual examples in lower-level courses
Dr Hao Wang	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Manufacturing and Materials Engineering: Solidification and semisolid metal processing Amorphous and nano structured materials Metallic bio-materials
Dr Peng (Paul) Wen	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Control and Computer Engineering and Biomedical Engineering: Networked real-time control system Wireless sensor network Human head modelling and EEG
Assoc Prof John Worden	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Civil and Environmental Engineering: Isotope and trace element geochemistry Geochronology Mineral deposit genesis modelling Uranium exploration techniques Radiometrics Environmental management decision-making and compliance by petroleum companies Problem-based learning as applied to engineering education Assessment and Intractivity in learning
Dr Wei Xiang	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Wireless multimedia communications Joint source-channel coding and decoding Information theory Cross-layer design
Dr Talal Yusaf	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering: Renewable Energy and alternative fuels Micro-organism treatment using unconventional techniques Combustion Technology
Dr Hong Zhou	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Computer networking Wireless Internet Mobile communications
Other Research Supervisors
Assoc Prof Ron Ayers	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Civil Engineering: Rural transport Pavement engineering Engineering education
Mrs Lyn Brodie	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Biomedical engineering Engineering and Surveying education
Mr Glenn Campbell	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Information: Remote sensing of water quality Land administration
Prof David Dowling	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Information: Engineering and Surveying education Management and development
Mr Joseph Foley	Agricultural, Civil and Environmental Engineering	Agricultural and Environmental Engineering: Hydraulic simulation of pressurised irrigation systems Agricultural water use efficiency Sprinkler fluid dynamics
Mr Robert Fulcher	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering Engineering Management Engineering Education Technology Management Energy management especially with respect to electricity production
Mr Peter Gibbings	Surveying and Land Information	Surveying and Land Management: GPS GNSS VRS Engineering and Surveying education
Mr Steven Goh	Mechanical & Mechatronic	Mechanical & Mechatronic Engineering Engineering Leadership Technology/Knowledge Transfer Manuacturing & Materials
Mr Gordon Hampson	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
Mr Glenn Harris	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
Mr Mark Norman	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
Mr Peter Penfold	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering
Mr Mark Phythian	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering: Mechatronics Agricultural robotics
Dr Ron Sharma	Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering
Mr Shane Simmons	Surveying and Land Information	Engineering and Surveying Education: Professional issues Surveying education Land development
Mr Chris Snook	Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering	Mechanical Engineering: Biomechanics Solid mechanics computational mechanics