Amir Mahmood will become dean of business at Western Sydney U in October. Professor Mahmood is now head of the University of Newcastle’s Singapore campus. Senior DVC Scott Holmes now doubles as WSU biz dean.

Deb Verhoeven (UTS) has Cad$350 000 per annum for seven years as a Canada 150 research chair at the University of Alberta. She moved from Deakin U to UTS a year or so back to become associate dean, engagement and innovation in the arts and social science faculty. Professor Verhoeven will go to Alberta in April where she will lead a team, “using machine learning and crowdsourcing to create an open-linked, open data knowledge base of feminist content sourced from a wide range of Canadian cultural collections.”

Engineers Australia’s selection of 30 innovative engineers for 2018 is out, including;

Ben Horan (Deakin U) for a VR childbirth simulator

Francesca Iacopi (UTS) researches the miniaturisation of electronics

Sumeet Walia (RMIT) for his work on nanoscale electronics

Daniel Messina (RMIT) has built a scanning robot

Marc Carmichael (UTS) for a robotic system for abrasive blasting

Ravi Naidu (Cooperative Research Centre CARE) for soil remediation

Riyyadh Al-Ameri (Deakin U) works on using medical plastic waste to improve concrete

Bing-Jie Ni (UTS) for low greenhouse gas-emission wastewater management

Bret Hallam UNSW) has created technology to increase solar-cell efficiency