What's On at UWA

LIWA invites you to a free seminar on: "Patenting for medical researchers the ins and outs" by Mr Gary Cox, Chairman, Partner, Wray and Associates. Time: 12 noon for light lunch with 12.30pm – 1.30pm presentation.

Richard Heinberg, a Senior Fellow of the Post Carbon Institute, will deliver a public lecture exploring the close link between the resource/environment and the social/economic components of the present global turmoil.

Richard argues that continuous growth of either population or GDP is impossible in a finite world, with both these drivers of unsustainability having now run up against nature’s biophysical limits. While the conventional wisdom is that we must get ‘the economy’ growing again, Heinberg shows that not only is this the wrong strategy, it is actually making the situation worse.

Nature—according to Richard—is now forcing humanity to a transition, one that is as profound as the transition from gatherer/hunter to settled agriculturalist 10,000 years ago.

Richard is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost Peak Oil educators. His latest book, The End of Growth, follows nine others that deal with declining resources, particularly oil. His books have been translated into eight languages. Richard is a recipient of the M. King Hubbert Award for Excellence in Energy Education (2006). He has appeared in a number of documentaries, the most recent being Earth 2100 (2009)

An ‘Inquiring Minds’ lecture by Rod Tyers, Winthrop Professor of Economics, UWA Business School.

This lecture will review recent economic development in China and Japan and will examine the likelihood that either country will overcome barriers to further economic growth. It will draw on research using models of the global economy and associated projections of economic performance to suggest the consequences for the Australian economy during the coming decade.

Free, but RSVP required. Book a seat online (unreserved):http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/tyers

Want to go on exchange to Asia? Come along to the info session to hear specific details on studying in Asia. Meet UWA students who have studied there as well as students studying at UWA from Asia.

In October 2002, Professor Fiona Wood led a Royal Perth Hospital team treating 28 people injured in the Bali bombings. The scale of burns injuries was previously unseen by the hospital, and the exceptional situation required individuals, governments and the private sector to work together closely in coordinating evacuations and treatment. During that time, Fiona witnessed extraordinary bravery, saw incredible acts of courage and was moved by people’s will to survive. The experience inspired her to drive forward on all fronts cutting across boundaries and exploring ground-breaking and innovative research and treatments applicable in burns and other traumatic injuries.

Fiona has now established the Fiona Wood Foundation, which is built on the premise that each and every patient must be given the opportunity to achieve the best possible outcome by combining current treatments with cutting-edge research. At the breakfast, Fiona will share inspiring stories, as well as her vision for the future of burns treatment: a holistic approach encompassing community education, clinical, basic science and population health research to improve wound healing, and the associated long-term physical and psychological complications of burns.

Price: Members $45 / Guests $55 / Table of Ten $450

Price includes a two-course sit down breakfast and presentation by Fiona Wood

Whilst trade and enterprise have led Australia's bilateral relations with China, education promotes mutual understanding and long lasting links. This year's forum will focus on developing Chinese language and cultural competency in schools, universities and industry. His Excellency Mr Chen Yuming, Chinese Ambassador to Australia, will provide the keynote address and a panel of business leaders and education representatives will share their experiences.

***NOW RESCHEDULED TO 18 OCTOBER***

“Individual(s) ….embrace a new paradigm for all sorts of reasons ... . Some of these … lie outside the sphere of science entirely. Others depend upon idiosyncrasies of autobiography….” (Kuhn, 1970, p.l52). I will highlight some “idiosyncrasies of autobiography” that have led to enjoying an academic life – the opportunity to research and teach, to construct and communicate knowledge. I plan to illustrate how psychometrics, a field in which I had the opportunity to ignore or embrace an emergent, non-standard statistical paradigm, has lead beyond mathematical modelling to areas such as the philosophy of science, the sociology of knowledge and academic controversy. I plan to also illustrate the challenges in negotiating the complex world of academic research and communication.

Anne-Sophie has a Research Masters in Islamic finance (2010) from the Australian National University where she focused on the sources of variation in the application of Shariah compliant finance contracts between the Arab states of the GCC and Southeast Asia, both regional epicenters for Islamic finance. She is a PhD candidate in emerging economic thought at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in France.

Controversy continues to surround national student assessment in Australia. However, I argue that testing is neither good nor bad: the devil lies in what people – teachers, school, systems and even parents – do about the tests and the data they generate. I report the experiences of principals, teachers and curriculum consultants in one educational authority to describe how responsibility for interrogating, interpreting and applying data has gradually shifted from an external top-down approach to an internal bottom-up model in a planned, sustained and centrally supported manner, during the past eight years.

The annual PhD Conference in Economics and Business attracts national attention and has significantly enhanced PhD studies for a large number of students.

The Confererence was established as a response to the widespread feeling that PhD students could benefit from interacting with their peers at other universities and being exposed to a broader group of scholars. The students present papers on their research and receive comments from prominent scholars in the area. The tone of the conference is scholarly and highly professional, but constructive and supportive, with the students the focus of attention.

The conference was initiated by the UWA Business School in 1987 and is now a joint venture between UWA, the Australian National University, the University of Queensland, and from 2012 Monash University. The 25th Conference will be held at UWA in November 2012.

Over the last 25 years, the Conference has provided the opportunity to gain valuable exposure for, and feedback on, the work of around 700 PhD students from most Australian and New Zealand universities, as well as a number of prominent universities such as Chicago, MIT, Queen’s, Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics. The Conference also acts as an informal job market with major employers sending representatives to the event.

One important feature of the conference is the outstanding quality of the discussants’ comments. The student papers are circulated beforehand and discussants prepare written comments, typically devoting several days to this task. As there is substantial professional prestige in being invited to be a discussant, there are strong incentives for discussants to work hard at the conference and help the students by proving detailed comments and advise. Additionally, there is the highly-valued “Best Discussant Prize” for which the competition is vigorous.

Please see below link for more information.

This course will take you through the basics you need to do statistical analyses in R, a powerful freeware statistical package.

The course will cover basic statistics such as t-tests, regression and ANOVA as well as producing high quality graphics.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The course is designed for people with knowledge of basic statistics who want to learn more about designing and analysing experiments.

It will cover material ranging from a review of simple one-way ANOVA, to more complex designs and analyses including crossed and nested factors with fixed and random effects.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The UWA Business School Centre for Social Impact is delighted to announce the 2nd annual Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations (IBEC) Conference to be held at UWA Business School on 3 –4 December 2012.

The theme of the 2nd IBEC Conference is Growth and New Opportunities for Indigenous Business.

Conference Streams;

- Indigenous business, enterprise and entrepreneurship in action

- Native Title trusts, agreements, and Corporations

- Corporate and Government Indigenous business partnerships

- New opportunities and emerging sectors: Finance, education, housing, tourism and the arts

- Research in the IBEC sector

Recent years have witnessed significant growth of Indigenous businesses and community enterprises around Australia. Native Title agreements are providing new opportunities to transform economic and social outcomes for Traditional Owners and Indigenous communities.

This breakfast brings together a panel of Indigenous leaders to examine the state of the Indigenous economy in Australia and consider how new opportunities can be created and built upon to improve economic and social outcomes for Indigenous people.

The panel will consider issues surrounding the balancing of cultural values and economic opportunities and the role the corporate sector and governments can play in enhancing the environment for growth. It will also consider the barriers faced by Indigenous businesses and the challenges of transforming the benefits of Native Title agreements into sustainable opportunities.

This breakfast coincides with the UWA Business School Centre for Social Impact’s 2012 Indigenous Business, Enterprise and Corporations Conference being held on campus on December 3 and 4.

Price: Members $45 / Guests $55 / Table of Ten $450 Price includes a two-course, sit-down breakfast and panel discussion.

SEM is used widely by researchers to test complex relationships among observed (measured) and latent (unobserved) variables. This course will introduce you to SEM and also covers issues relating to model specification, identification and estimation, assessing model fit (goodness-of-fit criteria), and dealing with problem data.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

The course is designed as a comprehensive coverage of applied SEM techniques using the Mplus statistical software package. Mplus offers a general modelling framework that allows both the modelling of cross-sectional and longitudinal data using observed variables that are a combination of continuous and categorical variables.

The course is hosted by the Centre for Applied Statistics and we offer discounted rate fees to UWA Graduate Research Students.

Fee information is available on our website http://www.cas.maths.uwa.edu.au/courses. Please register online.

*Advanced methods in exposure assessment and epidemiology *Methods for combining exposure assessments and epidemiological models for use in risk assessment and risk prediction *Use of molecular markers in the identification of occupational and environmental risk factors *Heat stress and acclimatisation of workers, development of a biomarker of acclimatisation status *Risk assessment in environmental health decision making *Lessons learned from the Western Australian experience of mesothelioma

Professor Michael Burawoy who is the 2013 UWA Business School Visiting Professor will present a public lecture as part of the Contemporary Issues in Employment Relations Series.

Abstract: The world is currently living through multiple crises including the ongoing global financial crisis, the Arab Spring, pervasive work insecurity and the present and looming ecological disasters. In this lecture, Professor Burawoy will consider new social movements that have emerged in response to these, and their source in the different manifestations of neoliberalism and its impacts on labour, finance, nature and knowledge. How should we characterise these movements, what can we attribute them to, and what can we glean from them in terms of future forms of engagement both broadly, and in relation to work and labour?

Professor Burawoy is a longtime member of the sociology department at the University of California at Berkeley and the current President of the International Sociological Association. Professor Burawoy was the former president of the American Sociological Association.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to basic statistics. It will cover descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations); data exploration; basic categorical data analysis; simple linear regression and basic analysis of variance (ANOVA).

Subsidised rates are available for UWA Graduate Research Students.

Please register online.

We invite you to attend our upcoming information evening which will give you the opportunity to learn about the programs on offer, to discuss your study options, meet Business School staff and have all your questions answered before applying for your chosen MBA course.

The event starts at 5.30pm with the following format

5.30-6.00pm: Meet the current students and professors 6.00-7.00pm: Presentation 7.00-7.30pm: Individual question time

Please RSVP at: www.business.uwa.edu.au/school/news/infoevenings/