And the winner is... Tuesday, 21 February 2017

Water, robotics and biotechnology are among the disciplines rewarded in recent awards from three of Engineers Australia's colleges.

The Sir John Holland Award for Civil Engineer of the Year was won by Mark Babister from WMAwater. He has 30 years’ experience in the water industry, working on projects such as the upgrade of the Pacific Highway, Brisbane River Flood Study, and Warragamba Dam. He has provided expert advice in a number of enquiries and was instrumental in the update of Australian Rainfall and Runoff guidelines. The award is sponsored by the John Holland Group.

Other awards from the Civil College included the Rod McGee medal for final year civil engineering students and the WH Warren Medal for the best paper presented in the civil discipline. The former was won by Sam Johnson from the University of NSW. The latter was won by Riadh Al-Mahaidi, M Javad Hashemi, Robin Kalfat & Graeme Burnett from Swinburne University of Technology for their paper, 'Development and validation of multi-axis substructure testing system for full-scale experiments'.

In the Information, Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering (ITEE) College awards, Matthew Sheedy from Genesys Electronics Design took out the David Robinson Award and Julian O'Shea from the Laika Academy took out the IREE Neville Thiele Award. Sheedy has been working on a new generation gynaecological probe for the detection of cervical cancer and the project is currently at the clinical trial stage. O'Shea founded a new social enterprise that delivers innovative educational programs for Australian university students to gain skills and experience working in the Asia Pacific region and to support them to apply their professional skills to make a positive impact in the world.

In the Electrical College awards, Vinod Kumar Gupta from ElectraNet took out the National Professional Electrical Engineer of the Year. He has been involved in successful execution of several power, oil and gas, infrastructure, and petrochemical installations world wide.

The prestigious MA Sargent Medal was awarded to Prof Hugh Durrant-Whyte from the University of Sydney. Durrant-Whyte was previously in charge of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, the Australian Centre for Field Robotics, and National ICT Australia (NICTA). From April 2017, he will be Chief Scientific Advisor for the UK Ministry of Defence.

[From left, Mark Babister, Hugh Durrant-Whyte and Julian O'Shea.]