What's On at UWA

Course objective: to present the basic geochemical concepts that enable mine site pollution to be managed by industry professionals, and that facilitate constructive communication between them. It will promote awareness, enable recognition and assist management through the application of appropriate techniques.

Who should attend? The course will be of value to those involved in mining, especially managers, technicians, operators, consultants and regulators.

Contact the ACG for more information and to register.

The Soil&Water seminar on Weds, March 21st at 12pm will be given by Assoc.Prof. Ryan Vogwill, from UWA/Curtin/DEC. All welcome!

“Toolibin Lake 2010, combining hydrogeology, soil physics, remote sensing and plant ecophysiology to explain the response to management interventions. “

About the speaker: Originally from Canada, Ryan Vogwill joined the Department of Environment and Conservation in 2006 and had previously worked for the Department of Water after completing his PhD at Curtin University. In his PhD he used fractals to model pore space as well as regional scale flow modelling and local scale investigations to look at the capacity of groundwater abstraction to impact on the 150,000 migratory wader birds, which come to Broome annually. Prior to joining DEC and UWA Ryan worked on Gnangara Mound rationalising the triple bottom line (social, economic and environmental benefits of water) using the Perth Regional Aquifer Modelling System (PRAMS). Recently he has pursued this issue over a wider area, the Wheatbelt, with a focus on the protection of key biodiversity assets in the Natural Diversity Recovery Catchments. Ryan is now a joint Associate Professor in Hydrogeology at UWA and Curtin.

At Sinclair Knight Merz (SKM), our goal is to have a positive and enduring impact on the world. We’re a leading projects firm with global capability in strategic consulting, engineering and project delivery, deploying more than 7,000 people across 17 countries.

We lead the market across a range of sectors by harnessing the talents and passions of people like you. Here you’ll be encouraged to innovate, offered unique opportunities and supported to achieve your full potential in a flexible environment that embraces your lifestyle.

We'll be talking to you about SKM and our graduate program and we'll have one of our senior engineers tell you about his success with SKM.

OpenFOAM [http://www.openfoam.com/] is a free open source Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) package with an extensive range of features to solve anything from complex fluid flows involving chemical reactions, turbulence and heat transfer, to solid dynamics and electromagnetics.

Prof. Hrvoje Jasak is a co-author of OpenFOAM and he will showcase a wide variety of applications where OpenFOAM has been applied such as structural analysis, fluid structure interaction, multiphase flows and high performance computing.

Please register your attendance at this free seminar to Gaye Thomas - [email protected]

Want to know how to get your graduate application to the top of the pile? Want to learn how to transform an average application response into one that will get you noticed?

Two reps from Teach for Australia will talk you through the various components of the graduate selection process.

We'll fill you in on the do's and don'ts of graduate applications to make sure you avoid common mistakes and know what employers look for.

Bookings essential through UWA CareerHub - http://uwa.careerhub.com.au

In the last half-century, engineering education has been predominantly focused on engineering science. In this talk Winthrop Professor James Trevelyan shall discuss important dimensions of engineering practice that seem to have been forgotten, not only within education but also within the profession. The most important is the raison d’être for engineering itself. W/Prof Trevelyan shall present evidence that leads one to the conclusion that engineering is a profession that has lost both its purpose and much of its working knowledge. This is sufficient to explain why engineers feel they are widely unrecognised, unrewarded, underpaid and often find themselves sidelined, working for generalist project managers with limited if any understanding of technical issues.

W/Prof Trevelyan will also present evidence suggesting that the cost of this oversight, just in Australia, could be many billions of dollars a year. In low income countries, the consequences of this oversight could be one of the principal barriers for overcoming persistent poverty.

FAWA’s junior seminars are a great opportunity to discover whether finance is the right fit for you. Learn more about what units and majors will maximise your chances of success in breaking into finance. The presentation will feature students who have worked in a number of different industries including Investment Banking, Private Equity, Management Consulting, and Accounting.

The main objective of this seminar series is to document and disseminate the latest experiences and state-of-the-art technologies in the challenging and evolving area of deep and high stress mining.

The Graduate Networking Event is the biggest SPE event of the year. The GNE is an excellent opportunity to meet and network with company representatives who are looking to recruit from ALL disciplines for their upcoming graduate and vacation work programs.

Representatives from the technical and HR divisions of the attending companies will be present.

Companies: Accenture Baker Hughes Chevron Deloitte Ernst & Young KPMG PwC Santos Schlumberger Shell Subsea7 Wood Group Kenny Woodside + More to come!

Tickets: $10 for SPE members $15 for non-members

The tickets will go on sale on the 19th of March until the day of the event in front of the Civil & Mechanical Engineering Building. Tickets will also be available online at http://www.trybooking.com/22300

The ticket entitles you to food, drink vouchers and informational booklets from each company.

The 2012 Technip Big Brekkie hosted by the UWA Careers Centre could be your chance to meet your prospective employer!

EMPLOYERS: (as at 1 March 2012 – updates on www.facebook.com/uwacareerscentre)

Technip – our gold sponsor, Momentum Partners, GE and BHP Billiton – our silver sponsors

Deloitte, Hatch, Independent Market Operator (IMO), KordaMentha, PwC, Rio Tinto, Shell, Thiess Services, Monadelphous, BP Australia, Leighton Contractors, Accenture, SKM, John Holland, Fluor, QR National, Ernst & Young, DOFSubsea, Fulton Hogan, and Norman, Disney & Young.

DETAILS: Friday 30 March 2012 from 7:45am-10:00am (breakfast concludes at 9am with free networking until 10am). Cost is $20 (includes breakfast at UniClub, networking and employer profile booklet).

TO REGISTER: Complete form on CareerHub Events or our website - http://www.careers.uwa.edu.au/students/workshops. Table allocation will be conducted on a first come, first served basis, so don’t miss out on sitting with your preferred employers.

STILL UNDECIDED? Hear from a 2011 Big Brekkie participant: “After attending the Big Brekkie I was contacted by HR managers from two companies I spoke to at the Big Brekkie, one of these companies ended up offering me a position in their Graduate Program. I highly doubt I would have been as successful if I had not attended the Big Brekkie. The difference between the Big Brekkie and other networking events is the limited number of people attending which allows you to have a one on one discussion with company reps. This also makes it easier for company reps to remember your name and face – an obvious advantage when job applications can reach well over 1000 people at the larger companies. I definitely recommend attending the Big Brekkie, it gives you the edge over the other applicants and could kick start your career like it did mine!”

Seeking further information, just contact us! UWA Careers Team – [email protected]

Wood & Grieve Engineers is a leading national multi-discipline consulting engineering firm, providing consulting engineering services for building and land development. We employ over 320 staff located in 6 offices throughout Australia. Our offices are in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Busselton and Albany.

Our success is based on the philosophy of committed staff focused on providing quality service and building long-term professional relationships with our clients.

WGE is a privately owned company, where the owners of the company work alongside everyone else. We are non-bureaucratic and foster a flat management structure with a young, enthusiastic, vibrant and professional working environment.

Wood & Grieve is actively seeking motivated and talented Graduates, so come along and see for yourself why Wood & Grieve is a great place to work.

The aim of this course is to give the participants an introduction to the facilities available in MS Excel from a statistical point of view. As well as an introduction to Excel, spreadsheet functions and graphics, we concentrate on performing basic statistical methods, producing charts and tables, and discuss the limitations of Excel when it comes to more complex statistical analysis.

Semiparametric regression is concerned with the exible incorporation of nonlinear functional relationships in regression analyses. Assuming only a basic familiarity with ordinary regression, this short-course explains the techniques and benets of semiparametric regression in a concise and modular fashion. Spline functions, linear mixed models and Bayesian hierarchical models are shown to play an important role in semiparametric regression. There will be a strong emphasis on implementation in R and BUGS.

Registration for the course is available online at http://scg.maths.uwa.edu.au/?id=347

In this talk, Jenni draws on more than a decade of education research and teaching in chemical engineering to focus on the central issue of improving student learning in engineering education.

Illustrating these points through a range of innovations at the 2nd year level in chemical engineering, she contrasts the knowledge obtained through education research with that obtained through the scholarship of teaching. The central questions that guide this talk are the following:

- What are the big challenges in teaching in the disciplines? What questions should we be researching?

- What knowledge is needed to practice scholarly teaching? Can education research provide this knowledge?

- What kind of teaching is needed to support high quality student learning?

To register your attendance please RSVP to Ilse Lorenzen by 3 April 2012.

In this highly interactive masterclass, participants who are relatively new to engineering education research (although they might be experienced researchers in science or engineering) will engage closely with some of the key foundational issues in this research field.

Key questions around which the masterclass will be structured include:

-What do I really want to research and how do I go about it?

-Why do I need to bother about theory?

-Can qualitative research generate rigorous findings?

-How should I engage with the education literature?

-Do I have any chance of getting published?

To register your attendance, please RSVP to Ilse Lorenzen by 3 April 2012.

Microalgae Energy Farms for Low Cost Biodiesel Production Presented by Dr Peer Schenk

ABSTRACT: From start to finish, biodiesel production from microalgae requires optimisation of all steps towards cost effectiveness and energy efficiency, as current limitations exist mainly in the industrial feasibility of microalgae systems. Our team is developing improved non-GM Australian microalgae strains, as well as low cost algae cultivation and harvesting systems to provide a cost & energy effective biodiesel production module. This module utilises microalgae's potential as zero-waste biorefineries, producing not only bioenergy, but also protein-rich animal feedstock and high-value products such as Omega-3 fatty acids. Our research group maintains a growing collection of marine and freshwater microalgae from Queensland, whereby high lipid yielding strains are screened and selected for improvement. We use adaptive evolution methods incorporating mutagenesis and high throughput selection for high-lipid yielding strains. These are then used in especially engineered "Split-System" cultivation units that incorporate both, a low cost photobioreactor (PBR) coupled with several extensive raceway ponds. In the PBR, optimal culture conditions are maintained with daily culture harvested into the raceway ponds to stimulate lipid biosynthesis. Several harvesting and lipid extraction.

Autotrophic Production of Algal Biofuel: What is the best technology line-up Presented by Dr Skye Thomas-Hall

ABSTRACT: Microalgae have the potential to produce 10-20 times more biofuel feedstock per unit area than any terrestrial bioenergy crop. However for this to be economically viable, three important technology stages need to come together: i) cultivation of high lipid species must be relatively contamination free and highly productive (ideally AFDW in excess of 30 g m-2 d-1); ii) the biomass needs to be harvested quickly using energy efficient technology; and iii) the harvested algae should be processed into stable products before value is lost. Cellana LLC was formed in 2008 with the primary aim of developing the technology pathway to make algal biofuels economically viable. Cellana’s 2.5ha Kona Demonstration Facility (KDF) is located on the Big Island of Hawaii and has been producing high quality algal biomass since 2009. The production can be tailored to customer needs for different fractions of the algal biomass, including lipids for biodiesel, protein for animal feed, essential fatty acids (i.e. EPA, DHA) and accessory pigments (e.g. lutein, ß-carotene, lycopene etc) for the nutrition and cosmetic industries. Cellana’s KDF is primarily a research facility, designed to test many algal species simultaneously (up to 12) in realistic outdoor conditions. The large scale hybrid system can grow 2 species simultaneously and has excellent flexibility that enables cultivation conditions to be optimized for each individual strain. The facility is also set up to test a variety of harvesting and dewatering techniques on each species grown at demonstrations scale (up to 780,000 L). Presented is an overview of strain selection at small scale (lab <1 L) and mid scale (outdoor 200 L). Growth parameters that can be altered for optimizing cultivation at mid scale and large scale (60,000 – 130,000 L). The majority of the presentation is on harvesting and processing techniques used by Cellana and in the wider algae industry, focusing on cost versus efficiency of methods trialed at Cellana’s Kona Demonstration Facility (KDF). Best handling and storage practices are also presented along with data analysis specifically focusing on lipid quality.

Many contemporary concerns in higher education focus on the student experience of learning. With a larger and much more diverse intake than ever before at the same time that funding for higher education is being cut back in some parts of the world and at least limited elsewhere, questions are being asked afresh around the purposes of higher education. This talk puts forward a social realist approach to researching student learning, illustrating its potential value by an exploration of student learning in engineering education. Employing Margaret Archer’s social realist theory, student narratives are employed towards developing a realist understanding of the underlying mechanisms that constrain and enable student success.

To register your attendance, please RSVP to Ilse Lorenzen by 3 April 2012.

Clough will be on campus to talk about graduate opportunities for: • Civil/Structural Engineering • Construction Management • Electrical/Instrumentation Engineering • Mechanical Engineering • Process/Chemical Engineering Please book through http://uwa.careerhub.com.au

An evening of inspirational speeches and invaluable networking opportunities with industry representatives and women in engineering spokespersons. Enjoy a decadent high tea and discover what the workforce is like for a young female engineer.

Representatives from: SKM, BHP, MONADELPHOUS, HATCH, ENGINEERS AUSTRALIA, ROBOGALS, and UWAYE

Open to all engineering and new course science students.

Tickets on sale outside engineering building 1-2pm everyday. Only $5 for UWAYE members, $10 non members.

Linfox Logistics will be on campus to talk about graduate opportunities for engineering, maths and business/commerce students. Please book through http://uwa.careerhub.com.au