What's On at UWA

Drone use has grown faster than a global pandemic! As a society we have come to appreciate drones and remote sensors as affordable tools that enable high resolution and on-demand data collection.

Join Dr Nik Callow (Senior Lecturer and UWA Chief Remote Pilot) as he explores the purpose of drones as useful remote sensing tools in research, teaching and industry. He will explore the strengths and weaknesses of both drones and sensors (RGB, multispectral, thermal) and walk through the simple steps, critical to those involved in drone work.

When dealing with the strange nanoscopic world that is simply too small to see, experiments and data visualisation approaches are vitally important to our understanding of life on this scale.

Brady Johnston is a PhD student in structural biology at UWA. Brady will introduce you to how data is collected and presented, leading to famous images of insulin and viruses alike. He will also cover some of the new and exciting technology that can help to communicate the Sciences and research to broader audiences.

Our local beaches have had a rough start to winter with many looking narrower than they have been in some years as a result of recent storms. Many of us who visit our local WA beaches may wonder how and why our coastlines change shape so dramatically throughout the seasons.

Join Dr Jeff Hansen, as he provides an overview of the processes that dictate the balance between erosion and accretion along our coastline. He will also explain how we monitor and measure our coastline, as well as highlight some unique aspects of WA’s oceanography that are important in shaping our beaches.

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Appearances can be deceiving. Despite these warnings, evidence shows that people can’t help but make rapid judgements of character based on a mere glimpse of a stranger’s face. These impressions really matter because they predict all sorts of social outcomes. For instance, children who look attractive are assumed to be smart by teachers, and are less likely to receive harsh discipline.

Dr Jemma Collova will discuss how psychology research can help us understand how we form first impressions from children’s faces, whether these impressions are at all accurate, and how children learn to form these impressions too.

Waste minimisation and byproduct reuse is a growing challenge for the global mining industry, driven by investor, regulatory, and community pressures as well as internal corporate and industry-wide goals. Responding to this challenge requires mining companies to develop strategies and technology to reduce waste generation, energy use, and greenhouse gas emissions, and increase byproduct reuse. These strategies are being developed within a context of depleting, lower grade, and more complex reserves, and a volatile market, with social license to operate positioned as one of the biggest operational risks given recent tailings dam failures.

This online panel discussion will examine the step changes required for zero waste mining to become an affordable industry reality.

Panellists include representatives from mining companies, not-for profit organisations, regulators, consultants, and research and training providers to explore zero waste mining from multiple angles.

From Geraldton to Esperance, the South-West of WA has experienced increasingly variable climate conditions for over a century. With increasingly drier winters and warmer, wetter summers affecting our state’s cropping industry; we need to gather and integrate knowledge from across Science to understand how best to respond to the challenges ahead.

Join three UWA experts: Frances Hoyle (Soil), Nicolas Taylor (Plant) and Don McFarlane (Climate effects on water) as they explore how research has helped address previous and current challenges facing growers; and help them anticipate how we ‘gear up’ and identify areas of future knowledge needed for the sustainability of the industry.

The recovery of the ‘Vienna Dexippus’ has been one of the most significant discoveries in recent Classical palaeography. The text, recovered from the reused leaves of an 11th century manuscript, later bound into a 13th century Greek codex, now in the Austrian National Library, sheds considerable light on the otherwise poorly documented history of the Gothic invasions of the Roman Empire during the 250s and 260s C.E. The recovery of the text is due to the innovative use of multi-spectral imaging, a technique which has already revolutionised the study of palimpsests and which has the potential to expand our knowledge of classical literature. Ivan Lozic will give an introduction to multi-spectral imaging technology, and Chris Mallan will consider some of the major outcomes of this project from the perspective of an historian who has worked with this particular text, as well as some thoughts on the uses of digitised texts in the study of Classics and Ancient History more generally.

Why do we have earthquakes in WA? Why do they happen more in some areas and not at all in others? WA is a long way from a tectonic plate boundary, so our earthquakes are different in nature to those in places like California, Indonesia or Japan.

Join Prof Myra Keep and PhD candidate Sean Standen as they explain the underlying geology of WA (using cake) and how it controls earthquake locations. They will then describe an example of an earthquake from the Wheatbelt, which occurred in Lake Muir in 2018, and see how the cake explains reality! Did we mention cake?

Conflicts between groups are deeply rooted in our society, but we also have the capacity to get along with our neighbours and ally for a common goal.

Using evolutionary theory as a navigational guide, Dr Cyril C. Grueter draws on his research on the social organisation of our primate relatives to explore the origins of tolerance in human sociality.

Sleep is a vital biological need. It is crucial for good health, mood stability, and high performance. Despite this, sleep loss and sleep disorder are now global health epidemics. Sleep is a vital state within which your brain ‘cleans house’ and replenishes needed energy. Sleep of poor quality or quantity is linked to health and social problems now: and in a person’s future, can be linked to the development of dementia.

Join Dr Michelle Olaithe as she will discuss how psychology research can help us understand what sleep is, why we need it, what good sleep looks like, and how much is enough.

Science investigates the world in highly methodical ways: and our scientists use different chemical markers to record and observe changes in our environment. This knowledge helps to better understand the past, observe what is happening in our present and aid in the maintenance of our future.

UWA scientsits Dr Greg Skrzypek & Dr Aleksy Sadekov will be joined by Angela Rossen, Artist and Biodiversity Educator, to discuss how scientific enquiry informs our understanding of the world. Greg will walk you through the use of stable and radio isotopes to assess changes to flora, fauna and the atmosphere. Whilst Aleksy will explain how his work with marine calcifiers can trace chemical pollutants in the ocean.

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Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.



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This event will showcase recent insights and advances in mining workforce mental health from UWA, including impacts of FIFO work, aboriginal perspectives onto mining, and sleep disruptions and disorders. It is geared towards solutions that support a mentally healthy and resilient mining workers that may be of interest to work health and safety practitioners, EAP providers, mining operators and contractors as well as workplace psychologist. Event: 3:30pm - 5:00pm with networking 5:00pm - 5:30pm

Come and hear UWA’s top postgraduate students present their research in agriculture and related areas. Opening address by Mr Simon Stead, Chairman, CBH Group. Aernoon tea and refreshments provided. All are welcome.

We propose a model-free approach to analyse the movement of pedestrians in experiments and simulations. Using concepts from control and analysis of complex dynamical systems we set up a scheme which allows us to identify dynamical unstable signatures in pedestrian flows. These signatures are the building blocks for crowd control and soft management of people. Our approach is entirely data driven and we provide a proof of concept by field and laboratory experiments. In addition, our approach provides, based on experimental observations, quantitative benchmarks to judge the quality of mathematical models for pedestrian motion.

Abstract: Children who experience poor academic performance at school have been d escribed as having learning difficulties (LD). These children are thought to show reduced performances in reading, written language and numeracy, and/or to be inactive and inefficient learners. Hearing is one of several factors thought to influence a child’s learning at school with students spending at least 45% of their classroom activities that require listening and 45 - 75% of their time in the classroom comprehending their teachers’ and classmates’ speech. Hearing impairment can include loss of hearing sensitivity and/or impaired auditory processing. While rates of peripheral hearing loss in the Australian primary school-aged population is estimated to be between 3.4% - 12.8%, rates of impaired auditory processing in this population are not available in Australia. Children with peripheral hearing loss and/or impaired auditory processing often show behaviours similar to those reported in children with LD, suggesting that LD and hearing impairment could be related in primary school child populations. This seminar will present the research that investigated LD and hearing impairment in a school-aged child population in the greater Brisbane region of Queensland, Australia.

Bio: Robyn is a lecturer in Audiology in School of Human Sciences. Robyn’s current area of research is auditory processing disorder and middle ear assessment in the paediatric population. In particular, Robyn is passionate about improving educational outcomes in children with learning difficulties who may have a hearing impairment. Robyn’s other research interests also include using simulated learning in clinical education and tele-audiology. Clinically, Robyn specialises in middle ear and Central Auditory Processing assessment and management in the paediatric population.

Globally, farmers are already seeing the effects of climate change. How are innovative Australian farmers adapting to climate change and how can we future-proof Australian farms?

Join The UWA Institute of Agriculture for a lively discussion on lessons learned and future opportunities.