Sydney Engineering Excellence Awards winners announced

The winners of the Sydney Engineering Excellence Awards for 2014 have been announced by Engineers Australia Sydney Division. Spanning 13 categories, the winning engineering projects were selected from 49 finalists.

Recognising an engineering accomplishment of exceptional merit, the 2014 Bradfield Award recipient is CSIRO with joint entrants Flinders University, Flinders Medical Centre and Griffith University for ‘Fibre Optic Manometry - A 21st Century approach to in-vivo diagnostics’.

Dubbed ‘the Hubble telescope of gastroenterology’ by clinical experts, fibre-optic manometry combines advanced fibre-optic technology, high-level engineering and software design to develop a completely unique instrument for monitoring muscular activity deep within the human body.

Steve Finlay, General Manager Engineers Australia Sydney Division, said the 2014 winners of the Excellence Awards showcase the industry’s elite.

“The Excellence Awards is a true celebration of what our industry can do. It highlights those who are willing to push boundaries in order to have a real impact on the community. This group of talented engineers have delivered exceptional projects, all of which are set to have long-term positive impacts for local, national and international communities,” said Finlay.

This year, two projects were selected as recipients of the President’s Award for displaying outstanding engineering and innovative qualities. These were the University of Wollongong with joint entrant TAFE NSW Illawarra Institute for the ‘Team UOW ‘Illawarra Flame’ Solar Decathlon Home’; and the Centre for Sustainable Materials Research and Technology, UNSW with joint entrants OneSteel and Brickworks Building Products for their project ‘Green Materials - Novel processes to transform waste, automotive glass and plastics into value-added materials’.

The Professional Engineer of the Year award was presented to Dr Robert Care, Principal in the Australasia Region of Arup Group, who helped lead the reform of Australia’s building regulations in the 1990s and has worked on many major global railway and infrastructure projects.

The co-founder of Open Kernel Labs, UNSW Scientia Professor and leader of the Software Systems Research Group (SSRG) at NICTA, Professor Gernot Heiser, was awarded Entrepreneur of the Year, recognising his contribution to operating systems including implementations of the L4 microkernel.