power to the people - Swinburne University of Technology

VENTURE
SCIENCE | TECHNOLOGY | INNOVATION
power to
investigating
consciousness
inspiring young
scientists
neuroscience
of body image
mapping the
universe
succession
planning
www.swinburne.edu.au issue one 2013
the people
Changing the
way energy
is supplied
and used

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contents
VENTURE
Issue One, 2013
The magazine of Swinburne
University of Technology,
John St (PO Box 218), Hawthorn
Victoria 3122 Australia
EdITOrial ENQUIRIES
Peter A Brown
Senior Manager, Marketing
Swinburne University of Technology
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
email: magazine@swinburne.edu.au
esubscribe for free access to current
and past issues online:
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine/subscribe
professor david liley
8
dr nives zubcevic-basic
12
Courses
tel: 1300 275 794
www.swinburne.edu.au/courses
Industry research enquiries
Sandra Mosca
tel: +61 3 9214 5225
email: smosca@swinburne.edu.au
6
Dr jordy kaufman
professor
ryszard kowalczyk
VENTURE
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available now
from the iTunes
App Store
Industry student plACEMENTS
tel: +61 3 9214 5766
email: iel@swinburne.edu.au
Philanthropy
Bruce McDonald
tel: +61 3 9214 5911
email: bmcdonald@swinburne.edu.au
CRICOS Provider Code 00111D
Venture is published for
Swinburne University of Technology
by Hardie Grant Media
Ground Level, Building 1
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Victoria 3121 Australia
www.hardiegrant.com.au
COVER stoRY
16
Associate Professor
sarah maddison
20
professor feng wang
Publisher
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ISSN 2200-6338 (Print)
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Copyright © Swinburne University of Technology
All rights reserved.
The information in this publication was
correct at the time of going to press, May
2013. The views expressed by contributors in
this publication are not necessarily those of
Swinburne University of Technology.
10
power to
the people
How we use and
share energy could
be revolutionised by
smart technology
being developed
at Swinburne.
by Kristen alford
4 Upfront
The latest innovations and events.
6 Child’s Play
What are the effects of using touchscreen
devices on our young children?
8 conscious decisions
A pioneering project is investigating
how our brain activity is transformed
when under anaesthesia.
12 facing up to body image
Looking at the neuroscience behind
how people’s views about themselves
are influenced by the media.
14 thought leaders
A Swinburne team is working to open
up access to grey literature, a rich
source of information for researchers.
15 shooting stars
The hidden secrets of the universe are
being revealed for the first time thanks
to a new IMAX film.
16 INSPIRING KNOWLEDGE
A Swinburne astrophysicist is working
with primary schools to encourage the
next generation of scientists.
18 keeping it in the family
Handing over the reins of a business
to the younger generation can be a
difficult transition.
20 model discovery
Identifying the molecular structure
of one of chemistry’s most important
compounds.
22 sport for all
Should Australian children’s sport
be driven by talent or participation?
23 Game changers
A Swinburne duo have designed
an award-winning video game.
issue one 2013 | venture | swinburne | 3

upfront
enabling high-impact
education, research
and innovation
As we approach the end of the first semester, it’s inspiring
to see our campuses buzzing with students and progress
being steadily made on the Advanced Manufacturing and
Design Centre at Hawthorn. By bringing together design
with our other areas of strength, this will create many
new opportunities for Swinburne students when it opens in 2014.
We also recently opened KIOSC, our new $10.3 million trade
training centre in Wantirna. With a focus on the application of new
technologies to solve real-world problems, this multi-purpose facility
is the product of a unique partnership between Swinburne and
schools in the region.
This issue of Venture highlights the scope of the research and the
calibre of the researchers that help us to understand our world and
improve people’s lives – underlining the value of innovation to the
Australian economy.
Our leadership in science, technology and innovation comes through
strongly in a story about smart energy systems being developed
through an international collaboration. Cutting-edge technologies
and software solutions will enable future households to monitor and
reduce their energy consumption, which is great news both for our
environment and our economy.
Swinburne’s investment in the facilities and resources needed to
undertake world-leading research can be seen in the achievements
of Professor David Liley and his team. Working on one of only two
magnetoencephalography (MEG) machines in Australia, they are
using electromagnetic signals to explore the effects of anaesthesia
on the brain.
Our community outreach is exemplified by Associate Professor
Sarah Maddison. While making her own research discoveries as an
astrophysicist, she still finds time to encourage the next generation of
scientists through her involvement with primary school children. Also
meet Dr Jordy Kaufman, who is working with preschool children in
his research into the effects of tablet devices on infant development.
I hope you enjoy this issue of our magazine.
Professor Linda Kristjanson
Vice-Chancellor
Swinburne University of TechnOLOGy
Casting light
on the darkest
zones of space
Adecade-long assumption about the
masses of black holes at the centres
of galaxies has been dramatically
overturned by Swinburne astronomers.
Professor Alister Graham and
Dr Nicholas Scott from Swinburne’s Centre for
Astrophysics and Supercomputing have found that
the traditional approach to calculating the mass of
black holes underestimated their mass in larger
galaxies while overestimating it in smaller ones.
“For the past 15 years it was assumed that
0.2 per cent of every elliptical galaxy and the
central bulge of every spiral galaxy was tied up in
its central black hole,” says Professor Graham.
Galaxies and their central black holes grow
by accreting gas, some of which may be turned
into new stars or devoured by the black hole.
Astronomers had thought that galaxies and their
black holes grew equally over time, preserving
the 0.2 per cent mass ratio.
From an analysis of data from the Keck
Telescope in Hawaii, the Very Large Telescope
in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope, the
researchers examined the characteristics
of 72 galaxies with supermassive black holes.
The new research reveals that the black holes
have been growing much faster, relative to their
host galaxy, than previously thought, with mass
ratios lower than 0.01 per cent in small galaxies
and around 0.5 per cent in large galaxies.
“Interestingly, the black holes appear to have
also grown at the expense of the compact, millionstrong
star clusters observed only in the smaller
galaxies and bulges,” Professor Graham says.
inside structure of the
8.2-meter-diameter
Very Large Telescope,
Paranal Observatory,
northern Chile.
Satisfy
your inner
Spielberg
Smartphone novices will be able
to capture everyday moments
with a touch of Spielberg when
a new video app is launched
by Swinburne postgraduate
student Alexandra Kinloch.
The Master of
Entrepreneurship and
Innovation student won
the $20,000 first prize in
Swinburne’s Venture Cup for
establishing Capture.Us, an app
designed to empower users to
develop high-quality video clips
on their smartphone.
“The idea for Capture.Us came
to me when I was on holidays,”
Kinloch says. “I was surrounded
by all the technology I needed
to capture the holiday, but had
no idea how to capture a great
video and stitch it together into
a clip that my friends and family
could watch.”
She recruited a business
partner, Ben Rashleigh, who
she met at a technologists’
co-working space in
Melbourne’s CBD, and within
months they found themselves
receiving their winner’s cheque.
The app will be launched in
mid 2013 – visit www.capture.
us. Details on the Venture
Cup can be found at www.
swinburne.edu.au/corporate/
knowledge/venturecup
4 | swinburne | venture | issue one 2013

upfront
quest for
a genuine
win–win
scenario
When large multinational
companies set up new
manufacturing or service
facilities in a developing
country, governments often
worry whether positive
long-term outcomes will
ever emerge.
Swinburne international business
researcher Dr Jerome Donovan
and his team (including Professor
Chris Selvarajah, Dr Eryadi Masli,
Dr Gregoria Manzin and Dr Chris
Mason) are researching ways that
developing economies can get
the best possible outcomes from
foreign investment – considering
not just the impact on economic
development, but also social and
environmental outcomes.
The project was inspired by a UN
conference, where Dr Donovan
met a range of senior government
officials from tiger economies
in South-East Asia, who were
being inundated with foreign
investment proposals but were
unsure how to get the most out of
this investment. The Australian
Government’s AusAID program
has provided a $1.1 million grant
for the project, which will examine
how the governments of Thailand,
Vietnam, the Philippines, Myanmar,
Indonesia and Laos can manage
foreign investment to maximise
the development value for local
communities.
Dr Donovan has had enthusiastic
cooperation from governments
across the region. “This is very
targeted research with strong,
practical outcomes. We want the
governments we are working with
to take this research and use it to
make a significant difference for
communities in these developing
countries. There are a lot of
complex challenges in getting the
right local people with the right
skill set into roles with foreign
companies, and building longterm,
sustainable benefits for
local economies.”
Award for
Ajay Kapoor
A famed prize known as the
Jewel of India has been awarded
to Swinburne Pro Vice-Chancellor
(International Research
Engagement) Ajay Kapoor for
his contribution to research
and education.
Professor Kapoor was
awarded the Hind Rattan Award
by the Non-Resident Indian
Welfare Society of India for his
outstanding achievements as
part of the Indian diaspora.
Professor Kapoor studied at the
Indian Institute of Technology in
Varanasi, India, and Cambridge
University, in the UK. In 2007
he moved to Australia and has
delivered outstanding research
in areas such as electric vehicles,
design for the ageing population,
and clinical engineering.
New honour
for Hai Vu
As traffic congestion issues spread around the
world, there is likely to be increased demand for
the work of Associate Professor Hai Vu (above),
who has received a prestigious Victoria Fellowship
from the state government.
Associate Professor Vu’s work is examining ways
that sophisticated computer systems can reduce
traffic congestion, developing new solutions by
analysing vast quantities of traffic data.
Dr Vu will use the fellowship to travel to the
Netherlands to visit leading traffic management and
planning groups at Delft University of Technology.
Dr Vu is also a recipient of a Future Fellowship
award from the Australian Research Council.
insights from a galaxy
far, far away
Some people spend their working day thinking about atoms, or maybe just
about lunch, but Swinburne Associate Professor Chris Blake has a mental
canvas bigger than most. He has been commissioned by the Australian
Research Council to spend the next three years surveying galaxies across
the universe. Far from spending nights peering up at the heavens, this
mammoth task involves aggregating data from an array of telescopes
around the world and analysing it with the help of Swinburne’s supercomputers.
Dr Blake hopes to find insights into dark energy, a mysterious anti-gravity force
that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate. In 2011, a group of
researchers led by Dr Blake published findings that confirmed the existence of dark
energy after mapping more than 200,000 galaxies, looking the equivalent of seven
billion years back in time – more than halfway back to the Big Bang. He hopes for new
insights into the nature of dark energy from his latest survey project.
Dr Blake’s achievements in galaxy cartography were acknowledged earlier this year
when he was awarded the prestigious Pawsey Medal by the Australian Academy of
Science, recognising outstanding research in physics by scientists under 40.
“Galaxies are the building blocks of the universe and I specialise in mapping how
they are scattered through space. By studying their distribution, we can learn a lot
about the physics of the universe. Luckily in Australia we have some of the best
telescopes in the world for investigating these sorts of questions.”
Swinburne
film STArs
drAWn TO
Hollywood’s
red carpet
The painstaking process of
effectively making a movie twice
has paid off for Swinburne students,
who were awarded a Gold Award in
the Animated Film category at the
2012 California Film Awards.
ATOM, directed by Klayton Stainer,
was created by the tortuous process
of rotoscoping – filming the movie
in real life, then drawing over each
of the 8737 frames by hand.
The movie, developed by first- and
second-year Bachelor of Film and
Television students, portrays the
experiences of two characters, Tom
and Alexis, who fight the forces
of evil, attempting to prevent the
activation of a great atom.
“We are thrilled that ATOM has
made it this far,” Stainer says.
“During post-production we faced
the challenge of teaching others
how to rotoscope and it was quite
tricky trying to make everyone have
a similar drawing technique and
style,” Stainer says.
“It truly is an honour to receive a
Gold Award from the California Film
Awards, it has been an inspiring
journey for all of us,” he says.
Two other Swinburne films also
took out honours at the prestigious
awards. Sonburn, directed by Ella
Carey, won the Gold Award in the
Student Film category, while Hath
No Man, directed by Linus Koh,
received the Diamond Award in the
short film category.
Movie trailers
ATOM / atom.kascreations.com.au
Sonburn / vimeo.com/30721773
Hath No Man / vimeo.com/33171062
issue one 2013 | venture | swinburne | 5

child development
Grandparents rarely try them, parents are getting the hang of them,
teens are glued to them and young children are fascinated by them.
If you put an iPad or other tablet computer in front of most
toddlers, they seem immediately comfortable manipulating its
touch-screen controls. However, many parents worry that tablets
add to the negative effects on their child’s development of too
much screen time.
Dr Jordy Kaufman, senior research fellow at Swinburne, watched
his son use a tablet computer and decided to explore the concerns in greater
detail. He started by noting an important distinction between the effect of television
viewing and the use of tablets.
“Research into the negative effects of television has been lumped onto tablets,”
he says. “Being on a touch-screen device is more interactive. It’s not right to assume
that sitting in front of the TV has the same effects on children as using tablets.”
Dr Kaufman is founder and director of the BabyLab at Swinburne, which is one of
Australia’s first research facilities to specialise in child cognitive brain research and
social development from birth. He moved from the UK to Australia after completing
his PhD in developmental psychology at Duke University in the US and a postdoctoral
fellowship at the University of London in developmental cognitive
neuroscience.
Google comes on board
Dr Kaufman’s research has attracted attention around the world, and
last year he received a Google Faculty Research Award to advance the
work in collaboration with fellow Swinburne academics Dr Mark Finn,
Dr Anthony Bartel and Peter Ciszewski. “It was a great boost, we were
one of two Australian teams to receive a grant,” Dr Kaufman says.
Dr Kaufman’s research team includes two PhD students, honour
students and undergraduate volunteers, working with volunteer
parents and children from across Melbourne. “We usually get around
15 children in a week from about four months to over six years of age.
We’ve had 40 to 50 children take part in the touch-screen research,”
Dr Kaufman says.
This research looks at attentiveness, impulsivity, learning and
emotional effects of a touch-screen environment with children
aged four to seven. Experiments contrast the attention spans
and problem-solving capabilities of children using
traditional toys with their experiences using
a tablet.
“We give them creative activities such as
drawing and block building,” Dr Kaufman says.
“So far, there has been no difference between touch-screen and real-world activities
when it comes to slow-paced creative activities. We are not finding any difference
in their skills whether they are using a tablet or a toy. If you are careful with the
applications you choose, we haven’t found any negative effects on attention span.”
Parents have voiced concern that the virtual screen environment might take away
from the physical world. To test this, Dr Kaufman’s team give children a difficult
problem-solving task. “First we use real objects, and then we get the children to
practise the same task using an application on an iPad. Both groups of kids improve
dramatically on both the iPad and using the real object.”
Love at first byte
Dr Kaufman said many parents found asking their child to stop playing a touch screen
caused tantrums and tears. “We are just beginning to look at emotional findings,” he
says. “We want to determine if these responses are related to it being a touch screen
or if they are about stopping them from doing something they are enjoying.”
Another area of research includes video communication, through programs such
as Skype. Postgraduate student Joanne Tarasuik, who is a part-time researcher
on the touch-screen work, is undertaking her PhD on the video research. Testing
methods include separating children from their parents and providing the child
with a video link to the parent. “When there is a video link, the children don’t
act like they are alone and are happy to explore,” Dr Kaufman says. “We will
also look at video versus audio and parents versus strangers over video.”
Baby brain development
Brain activity in babies has been a developing area of research for
Dr Kaufman since 2009. “The babies listen to sounds and see pictures,
and we look at what the brain does when you show them something
different,” he says.
“Other work with young infants is about understanding
how babies’ brains help keep objects in mind. It’s not always
necessarily out of sight, out of mind. Babies remember what was
hidden and where it was hidden.”
This research has led to working with infants with a high
hereditary risk of autism. The team received $85,000 from
the Bennelong Foundation towards this research, which
studies babies who have an older sibling with autism.
“We measure brain activity and social gaze behaviours
to determine if these measures predict a later outcome
of autism,” Dr Kaufman says. “Studies have found that it
can be more effective if autism is detected early and can
be very helpful with babies.” l
CHILD’s PLAY
The explosion of tablet technology has created
yet another parenting dilemma: what are the effects
on our children of using these devices? A Swinburne
team is hoping to resolve this question in its study
of infant cognitive development.
by fiona kiLlman
6 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

child development
case study
KIDS and
TABLETS
Laura Matthews, aged seven,
and her sister Claire, aged four,
are two enthusiastic volunteers
at Dr Kaufman’s BabyLab. Their
mother Leanne Matthews
explains how they got involved.
“I saw an ad on Facebook about
helping people with their PhD
work,” she says. “Claire did
three separate tests in the baby
brainwave work.” Laura has
participated in the touch-screen
and video communication
research.
It’s not right to
assume that sitting
in front of the
TV has the same
effects on children
as using tablets.
dr jordy kaufman
and PhD student
Joanne Tarasuik In
Swinburne’s babylab.
Parents
wanting more
information or who are
interested in being part
of the BabyLab research
can visit www.babylab.org
or www.facebook.com/
the.swinburne.
babylab
“The touch-screen research was
interesting – this was the first
time she had one in front of her.
I have generally tried to steer
them away from those devices,”
Mrs Matthews says. “She did well,
and ended up showing me what
to do. The only thing I noticed
was that she occasionally paused
when using the iPads because the
colours weren’t as vivid.”
During the video research,
Mrs Matthews and Laura were in
separate rooms communicating
over a webcam. “She
was waving at the
camera and showing
me what she
was doing,” Mrs
Matthews says.
“It was the same
as if I was in the
room.” l
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 7

anaesthetics
Since modern anaesthesia was first
employed 171 years ago to lessen
the pain of surgery, the true nature
of human consciousness and
unconsciousness has remained a
scientific mystery. Now, armed with
one of the world’s most advanced
diagnostic instruments and the rarest naturally
occurring gas, a team of Australian scientists are
proposing to reveal the way our brain activity is
transformed when we descend into unconsciousness.
Impelled by media horror stories of patients ‘awake
under the knife’ and by resulting insurance claims and
psychological trauma, a 30-year global research effort
has so far failed to disclose exactly how anaesthetic
drugs act upon the brain, the mind and the state of
consciousness – despite the millions of operations
performed with them around the world every day.
Defining the nature of consciousness
For Swinburne’s Professor David Liley, the nature
of consciousness has been a lifetime fascination,
marked by an important milestone in 2012 when his
Brain Anaesthesia Response (BAR) device entered
clinical trials as a potential replacement for existing
electroencephalogram techniques used the world
over to monitor patients under anaesthetic. Now,
in a world-first experiment in partnership with
Melbourne’s St Vincent’s Hospital, Professor Liley and
a talented team of intrepid ‘brain geographers’ are
combining the power of magnetoencephalography
(MEG) – reading minute electromagnetic signals
within the brain – with the use of a rare and costly
anaesthetic, the noble gas xenon, to try to define the
process that takes place when a person passes from
one state of consciousness to another.
“Despite all the monitoring of brain function that
has gone on over the years, consciousness remains
a black box,” he explains. “We have huge amounts
of data about brain states, but little or no insight into
the thing we are really trying to monitor: whether a
person is conscious or unconscious. Whether they
are aware of what is happening around them, or can
feel pain.”
New technology and the
volunteer study
Equipped with one of only two MEG machines in
Australia, Professor Liley and his colleagues at
Swinburne’s Brain and Psychological Sciences
Research Centre are studying electromagnetic
signals many millions of times weaker than the
earth’s magnetic field. This is a task of such
exquisite delicacy it must be carried out in a
specially shielded chamber that excludes all
New research is using
cutting-edge technology and
the rare gas xenon to
explore the effects of anaesthesia.
CONSCIOUS
decisions
by julian cribb
8 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

anaesthetics
extraneous magnetic signals. A special gantry holds
a helmet with 306 sensors over the patient’s head,
monitoring the tiny electromagnetic fluctuations
produced by populations of neurons while they
communicate with one another, to sensitively assay
brain activity as the patient passes under the influence
of the anaesthetic.
Twenty volunteers will take part in the study,
equipped with a mask for administering the gas
mixture and provided with a simple low-attention
task – pushing a button in response to a tone – to
compare their reactions with those revealed by the
MEG machine as it monitors the changing signals in
their brain.
“We are using xenon and nitrous oxide gases as our
chosen anaesthetics as they are both widely believed
to work by the same essential mechanism, reducing
brain excitation, but so far have been reported to
produce quite different effects on brain activity.
However, we have good reasons to hypothesise
they both impact a particular part of the brain – the
parietal lobe – and that this represents the common
pathway into unconsciousness. If this turns out not to
be the case it might mean that there is no single route
to unconsciousness,” Professor Liley explains. “Thus
our experiment will provide important insights into
the process by which consciousness is maintained or
lost, and where in the brain this occurs. We will start
with the patient fully awake and record the changes in
brain electromagnetic activity as they become sedated
and lose and regain consciousness.”
Multiple applications and lower risks
While Professor Liley’s research will not attempt
to cast light on the nature of consciousness, it has
every chance of revealing the actual physical steps
and changes involved. The research outcomes could
contribute to the development of new ways to monitor
the brain state of anaesthetised surgical patients,
people in comas and people suspected of early-onset
mental diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.
The research will also provide insights that could
assist in the design of new and better anaesthetics,
avoiding the risk of ‘awakening’ or other side effects.
“In this research our ideal aim is to define the
processes or steps which invariably occur, under all
forms of anaesthesia, as the state of consciousness
changes,” Professor Liley says.
“If we can better understand the mechanisms
of consciousness, we can make sure patients are
genuinely 100 per cent unconscious when they are
supposed to be. We will also have a valuable new
diagnostic tool for exploring other central nervous
system conditions.” l
Our experiment
will provide
important
insights into the
process by which
consciousness
is maintained
or lost...
Professor DAVID Liley
with a volunteer
at Swinburne’s Brain
and Psychological
Sciences Research
Centre.
xenon
in its
element
Xenon is a colourless, odourless
noble gas, meaning it is so inert,
it does not react with other
chemicals to form compounds. It
occurs in the earth’s atmosphere at a
ratio of about one part in 11,500,000.
Its main uses are in arc lamps, lasers
and, since the 1950s, as a surgical
anaesthetic.
Produced by filtering air, xenon is
expensive – more than three times
the price of standard chemical
anaesthetics. Its high cost has
limited its use in medicine but recent
advances in recovery methods have
increased its affordability. Currently
it is only approved for routine
anaesthetic use in Europe.
“Xenon is a remarkable element,”
says Professor Liley. “It is completely
unreactive with other chemicals
in its surrounding environment,
and yet it produces a profound
anaesthesia. This makes it ideal
for modelling the process of loss
of consciousness.”
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 9

technology
Smart energy systems being developed
at Swinburne are changing the way
householders can monitor and reduce
energy use, as well as the way energy is
supplied and used across neighbourhoods.
power
to the people
by kristen alford
left to right:
Associate Professor
Lachlan Andrew,
Professor Ryszard
Kowalczyk and
Dr Bao Vo at
swinburne’s energy
management
Research centre.
The option to switch on a light and turn
on the television is a ritual taken for
granted in most households. But as
energy prices and fossil fuel emissions
continue to rise, our dependence
on electricity and our capacity to
control our household power
consumption is becoming an important economic
and environmental issue.
Creating opportunities to control the energy use, not
just of households, but also of neighbourhoods and
nations, is an area of expertise for Professor Ryszard
Kowalczyk, of Swinburne’s Energy Management
Research Centre.
“We develop cutting-edge technologies and software
solutions to allocate resources so that people may be
satisfied individually, and the system and its operations
optimised overall,” Professor Kowalczyk says.
Beating the upwards trend
Australia’s retail electricity prices rose by 72 per cent
between June 2007 and June 2012, according to the
Australian Bureau of Statistics. With no end in sight
for power price hikes, consumers and companies
have an increasingly powerful motivation to moderate
their usage – especially if they can reduce bills by
shifting some of their power usage to lower-priced,
off-peak periods.
10 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

technology
Designing smart energy systems that monitor
and control household appliances allows for greater
efficiencies and also offers opportunities to change
the way we share, use and generate energy within
neighbourhoods – better balancing supply and demand.
For power companies, this information could bring
huge efficiency savings. “The current infrastructure is
designed for the peak demands, which typically occur
only one per cent of the time, during high summer,”
explains Professor Kowalczyk.
“By shifting usage from the peak demand periods,
the infrastructure can be better used and also
the expensive spot prices for supply can be
significantly reduced.”
International partnership
Professor Kowalczyk came to
smart energy solutions through his
background in artificial intelligence
and agent-based systems, working
to automate negotiation and support
decision-making processes.
He founded Swinburne’s Energy
Management Research Centre
(EMRC) in 2011 in partnership with
US-based technology company
GreenWave Reality, which needed
intelligent energy management
software in order to deliver on the
potential of smart sensors they had
developed.
The EMRC’s work has attracted the
interest of energy sector companies
such as GE Energy, Siemens Energy
and Enel, and communications
companies including Ericsson
and Nokia Siemens Networks. Its
research team is generating new
insights into consumer behaviour
and energy use patterns, by
analysing data from smart meters
attached to appliances in specially
monitored households.
The team is also developing new
ways to support and automate
decisions about appliance usage,
based on patterns of consumer
behaviour and need combined
with patterns of grid-wide energy
usage, to examine ways to reduce
peak load.
We are coming to a point
where we can ... help
consumers save money
and at the same time
help utility companies
save money…
Professor Ryszard Kowalczyk
“These intelligent systems provide functionality
so that we can optimise the usage of energy and
how it is allocated to different households, so we
can find ways of minimising the cost,” Professor
Kowalczyk says.
Smarter technology
EMRC staff, Associate Professor Lachlan Andrew
and Dr Bao Vo, are analysing patterns of energy
usage of appliances in a bid to develop a system of
power signatures – which would enable houses of
the future to identify fridges, ovens or other powerconsuming
appliances.
“We are trying to detect which appliance is
plugged in – for example, is it a toaster or an
air-conditioner?” Dr Vo says. “Once we can do this,
the next challenge is to monitor consumption
within the house and work out which devices you
can switch on and off to optimise energy usage and
reduce costs.”
Coupled with an energy management system on
a local computer drive, this system could enable
future homes to automatically manage appliances
regardless of where they are located in the home.
Local solutions
Similar logic can be applied to regulating
neighbourhood power demand. “The grid
would not cope if a lot of consumers wanted to
charge an electrical vehicle at the same time,
so we need to develop a system of coordination
between households. It can’t be a solution that is
centralised – where someone else decides for you
when the car can be charged. It has to be a process
of mutual benefit, where you have options, but
some popular choices cost more.”
Using Professor Kowalczyk’s system, users would
be able to select some parameters – such as what
time their electric car is required for use – and the
system could balance those needs by identifying
a charging time that optimises the combination of
neighbourhood demand, low-cost power and high
supply times. This means both the user and the
distribution network realise benefits.
“We are coming to a point where we can provide
software to help consumers save money and at the
same time help utility companies save money by
balancing the load,” says Professor Kowalczyk.
Sharing the load
Optimisation means energy is not wasted through
transmission when it’s not needed. If a household
has a solar panel that is generating energy,
they can share that energy with their neighbour.
Additionally, households can use back-up sources
of energy, such as a charged electric car, to
supplement energy supply, bringing added energy
security to the household and neighbourhood.
Smarter systems are moving energy
management from the supply side to a more
sophisticated consideration of both supply
and demand factors, balancing a system
where households, neighbours and distribution
networks have a role to play in the optimisation
of energy, reducing costs and enabling a more
robust network. l
The new
home of
design &
innovation }
Swinburne is proud
to announce the
construction of our new
$100 million Advanced
Manufacturing and
Design Centre, opening
in 2014 at the Hawthorn
campus.
}swinburne.edu.au

CULTURE
Facing up to
Bombarded by thousands of unrealistic advertising images,
young Australian women are becoming increasingly dissatisfied
with their bodies. Findings from cutting-edge research are
prompting calls for greater regulation in this contentious field.
by fiona marsden
During the 1970s, consumers
saw 500 advertisements per
day. In today’s multimedia
landscape, that figure
has ballooned to 5000.
At the same time, there’s
a growing gap between
idealised images in the
media and the way people look in real life.
Advertising predominantly features super-thin
models, even though the average clothing size
is getting bigger. And although Australia is
becoming more ethnically diverse, the media
remains saturated with Caucasian images.
Unrealistic expectations
“Less than five per cent of women can achieve
this media-driven ideal,” says Dr Nives
Zubcevic-Basic, lecturer and director of
Swinburne’s Master of Marketing program.
“When young women don’t see themselves
reflected in external images, they start
believing those images are the cultural norm
and the only acceptable form of beauty.”
Additionally, the rise of instant fame via
reality television and YouTube, along with
social media such as Facebook and Twitter,
means young women are more influenced by
images of attractive celebrities – and more
likely to judge themselves and their peers
accordingly. “In this environment,” says Dr
Zubcevic-Basic, “it can be difficult for young
women to maintain a positive self-image.”
It could be argued that many people are
dissatisfied with their appearance in some
way; most of us can see flaws that we’d rather
not have. But what does this mean for young
women in particular? At what point do faint or
fleeting feelings of dissatisfaction become a
major problem?
“Young women can develop issues when,
instead of looking at their body as a functional
entity, they examine individual body parts and
pick them apart as flaws,” says Dr Zubcevic-
Basic. “They genuinely believe they would
be happier if those flaws didn’t exist.” These
negative thoughts can extend into debilitating
behaviours such as avoiding social events,
altering nutritional habits or, in extreme
cases, developing eating disorders.
Less than five
per cent of women
can achieve this
media-driven
ideal.
Dr Nives Zubcevic-Basic
Judging the book by its cover
In a study of body image Dr Zubcevic-Basic
recruited 1111 male and female participants
aged 18 to 55 from across Australia.
Participants looked at images of models and
rated their attractiveness. They were also
asked how they felt about themselves before
and afterwards. “Across the board, there was
a significant decrease in participants’ own
body image after looking at the models,” says
Dr Zubcevic-Basic.
It wasn’t just women who responded to the
images in this way. While women felt worse
about their own bodies after seeing super-thin
female models, men felt worse about their
bodies after seeing muscular male models.
“It’s clear that men – just like women – are
increasingly feeling the pressure to conform to
an unrealistic ideal,” says Dr Zubcevic-Basic.
Perhaps more disturbingly, participants
in a subsequent study by Dr Zubcevic-
Basic overwhelmingly equated physical
attractiveness with success at university and
in subsequent careers. The study recruited
242 university students aged 18 to 40.
“Regardless of age or life experience,
participants attributed more importance
to looks than personality, character or
intelligence as a predictor of achievement,”
says Dr Zubcevic-Basic.
On the plus-side, Dr Zubcevic-Basic sees
two hedges against the factors predisposing
12 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

CULTURE
body image
young women towards a poor body image.
The first comes from women themselves.
“Research I did in 2010 found that women who
maintained close ties with their traditional
cultural and ethnic background were less
affected by idealised media images, even if
their family had been in Australia for several
generations,” she says.
The case for regulation
Dr Zubcevic-Basic believes the second hedge
must come externally, through government
regulation. In 2010 the federal government
established a voluntary code of conduct for the
media, advertising and fashion industries.
Just two teen magazines took the initiative –
discussing body image issues with readers
and using photographs of models that weren’t
digitally altered.
She acknowledges that advertisers continue
using stylised images because intense
competition makes them risk-adverse.
However, she believes the industry’s lukewarm
response towards the voluntary code puts
more onus on government.
“UK regulators have begun banning
advertisements that look overly airbrushed,”
she says. “Australian regulators could restrict
how images can be altered, alert consumers
to retouched images and encourage more use
of physically and ethnically diverse models in
the media.” l
Research for
the real world
Drawing on a background spanning
psychology, brand management and
advertising, Dr Nives Zubcevic-Basic
has specialised in researching body
image since 2006.
In 2011 she joined Professor Heath
McDonald, Dr Julian Vieceli, Professor
Richard Silberstein and Dr Joseph
Ciorciari to form Swinburne’s Consumer
Neuroscience Centre. The centre’s current
projects include studying fanaticism
in sport and the effects of individual
personality differences on marketing.
The centre will also deliver a two-day
consumer neuroscience course for
managers and executives on 15–16 July.
For details, visit www.swinburne.edu.au/
consumerneuroscience
Detecting our
true feelings
about body image
“Every research methodology has
limitations,” says Dr Nives Zubcevic-
Basic. “If a participant is asked,
‘How do you feel when you look at this
image?’, and they’re uncomfortable
with the topic or unsure of how they
feel, they may not reveal exactly
what’s on their mind.”
She and her Swinburne colleagues
use neuroscience technologies
that bypass these roadblocks by
picking up responses in milliseconds.
They include:
• Magnetoencephalography (MEG):
provides direct information about
evoked and spontaneous brain activity
in specific locations.
• Steady State Topography (SST):
developed at Swinburne by Professor
Richard Silberstein and colleagues,
SST records electrical brain activity
while participants watch audiovisual
material and/or perform a
psychological task.
• Functional Magnetic Resonance
Imaging (fMRI): produces activation
maps showing which parts of the
brain are involved in a particular
mental process.
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 13

technology
Ahuge wealth of information is produced
by academics, government agencies,
NGOs, think tanks and other similar
bodies, but these reports and papers
are often difficult to trace because they
are not published commercially.
Based at the Swinburne Institute for Social
Research, Australian Policy Online (APO) is a
research database that provides free access to this
material, known as grey literature, which can be an
important source of information for researchers.
“The key aim is to bring together high-quality
research, which is otherwise uncollected, and make it
widely available to people to help make public policy
a more informed place,” says Amanda Lawrence, who
until late last year was the site’s managing editor and
is now APO’s research manager.
by virginia millen
Informing the debate
Lawrence and her small team actively monitor
more than 500 organisations, and source from
about 1500 in total. Research is published based
on its relevance to the Australian public policy
landscape, and made available to the public online.
Although much of what APO collects is available
on the web, it is often very difficult to find, making
the database a valuable resource.
“We’re told all the time by people in government,
NGOs, academia and the media that Policy Online is
an absolutely essential service, which alerts them
to what sort of research is going on, and allows
them to access it. It really is one of the key bridges
between policy and research,” says Lawrence.
Now Lawrence is looking at how she can take
the information published and catalogued on
Thought leaders
A Swinburne team is undertaking a project to change the
way research is accessed online in Australia.
APO in another direction to make it more accessible
to the public. In November last year a team from
the Swinburne Institute for Social Research led by
Professor Julian Thomas, Professor Sandy Gifford and
Amanda Lawrence were awarded a grant from the
Australian Research Council to develop APO’s capacity
as a linked database that can connect with other
systems. The project is titled Linked Data Policy Hub:
Connected Resources for Social Research.
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the worldwide web,
has pioneered linked data. The idea behind it is to
create a richer network of information by linking
raw open data with other digital resources including
reports, articles and data.
“The project will connect APO’s collection of grey
literature resources with other major research
databases, including RMIT Publishing’s Informit
database of journal articles and the National Library
of Australia’s Trove catalogue,” says Lawrence. “I’m
really interested in looking at what we can do with our
database of publications and what can we do with the
technology to bring related content together in more
useful ways.”
The linked data project will see Policy Online enter a
new frontier of online research. “It’s an exciting time,”
says Lawrence. “We’ve had a long period where we can
get a flow of catalogue information and centralise that,
but the new area of linked data offers a lot of potential
for being able to pull together related resources from a
lot of different places on different topics. We’re looking
to be part of that new world.” l
apo.org.au/about/linked-data-project
The key aim is to bring
together high-quality
research ... and make
it widely available to
people to help make
public policy a more
informed place.
Amanda Lawrence,
Australian Policy Online research manager
The Swinburne team is
undeRTAking a PROJeCT
on linked DATA, a
concept pioneered
by Tim berners-Lee,
inveNTOR of the
WORLDWIDe web.
Bridging the gap
Also based at the Swinburne Institute for Social
Research, Inside Story is dedicated to publishing longform,
high-quality analysis and reportage by university
researchers and journalists. Peter Browne, one of the
founders of Australian Policy Online, launched Inside
Story four years ago and has been editing the site ever
since. “The concept was to run longer pieces than the
newspapers, while trying to bridge the gap between
academia and journalism,” he says.
The site publishes pieces on Australian politics, society
and culture as well as world news, drawing on articles
filed by correspondents from around the world and
averages around 65,000 page views per month.
www.inside.org.au
14 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

astronomy
Shooting stars
The world’s largest screens will give moviegoers
a deeper view into space than ever before,
with the help of Swinburne astronomers.
by jessica gadd
The final frontier of human exploration
is being breached by cinema audiences
across the world as they witness a taste
of Swinburne’s astronomical expertise on
display in the IMAX film, Hidden Universe.
The movie provides a rare opportunity
for viewers to see high-resolution real footage of the
universe, paired with highly accurate models of deep
space developed by staff from Swinburne’s Centre
for Astrophysics and Supercomputing.
“It’s a case of the truth is stranger than fiction,”
says Hidden Universe producer, December Media’s
Stephen Amezdroz. “Space is the new frontier and
it’s exciting to see real images of it displayed on an
eight-storey-high IMAX screen.”
The team filmed at Kakadu in the Northern Territory,
and the world’s highest and driest desert, the Atacama
Desert in Chile where they had access to the Very
Large Telescope, as well as the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). ALMA is the
largest astronomical partnership in existence and is
tipped to revolutionise what is known about space.
A unique insight
The film uses images gathered from a number of
telescopes around the world and reconstructs the 2D
observations into 3D structure. The film also includes
footage from probes, such as the Mars Reconnaissance
Orbiter (MRO). “This never-before-seen footage of
Mars is accurate to within 30 centimetres,” says Hidden
Universe director Russell Scott, from the Centre for
Astrophysics and Supercomputing. “This means you
can look at the footage of a rock on Mars and know
that it’s a real rock on Mars: that rock really exists,”
Scott says. “Not only that, it’s a colour you’ve never
seen before. As for the footage of the sun – the detail,
the colour – it’s incredible. That’s the real sun, not
computer-generated imagery. It’s jaw-dropping to see
this on screen. There is no make-believe in this film.
This is really special footage.”
Swinburne’s G-Star supercomputer
The accuracy of the footage is one of the film’s
hallmarks: every image, every graphic, is taken from
real data sourced by Swinburne’s team of researchers
and astrophysicists. The film uses a number of the
latest astrophysics simulations, with the 2D to 3D
conversions of the space images based on research
provided by Swinburne astronomers.
Creating these images for the massive IMAX screen
and the fact that the film is in 3D, meant that Hidden
Universe needed a huge amount of computing power.
By the time the film was complete the team had
churned through millions of computing hours and used
over 100 terabytes of data. This is where Swinburne’s
‘Green Machine’ and G-Star supercomputer stepped in.
“This could only have been done at Swinburne,”
Scott says. “It’s one thing to have a supercomputer;
it’s another thing to have expertise in astronomy,
simulations, supercomputing and 10 years’ experience
in making 3D content. Only Swinburne could provide
the broad range of skills we needed for this project.”
One of the simulations reproduced in the film is
thought to be the largest single astronomy simulation
ever created in Australia. GiggleZ is a large simulation
suite assembled by Swinburne postdoctoral lecturer
Dr Greg Poole to measure the universe (among
other things).
A new lens on the cosmos
Amezdroz agrees that the information supplied by
the Swinburne researchers is a key driver of the film.
A huge amount of work has been invested in ensuring
the film’s accuracy, so that family audiences will be
inspired by a new – and highly accurate – perspective of
the universe.
“Hopefully viewers will leave the film with a different
and clearer understanding of the universe,” he says.
“One of the key points of the film is understanding that
the earth is a part of this great cosmos, and we are
connected to all of it.”
The film, which has backing from Film Victoria,
will be shown at IMAX cinemas worldwide. l
www.hiddenuniversemovie.com
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 15

education
inspiring
knowledge
A Swinburne astrophysicist is working with primary schools
to encourage the next generation of scientists.
by lisa starkey
Despite a hectic research, training
and supervision schedule, often
involving international travel,
astrophysicist Sarah Maddison
still finds time to inspire a
new generation of scientists
at primary schools across
Melbourne.
Associate Professor Maddison is a long-time
participant in the Scientists and Mathematicians
in Schools program run by the CSIRO since 2007.
Her journey to school engagement began earlier
than this, however, having visited Victorian primary
schools on her own initiative for many years, with
the broad aim of getting kids to embrace science.
She is now working with her fifth school.
“Sarah has such an engaging personality and is
a very interesting presenter, so the students love
to interact with her,” says Alexandra Parrington,
teacher and science coordinator at Cornish
College, who has worked with Associate Professor
Maddison for many years, initially at Hartwell
Primary School. “The students are always really
excited to work with a real scientist.”
Teaching the scientific process
Associate Professor Maddison attributes her own
inspiration to becoming a scientist from her time
at primary school doing hands-on experiments.
Her memory of those experiences encouraged her
to try to get more primary school-age children
interested in science.
Of course, inspiring kids, and particularly girls,
to consider a career in science is part of the goal,
but it’s also much more than that. “Science involves
vital life skills that everyone should be trained
in, no matter what their career goals,” Associate
Professor Maddison says.
“Science is not just about memorising facts – the
order of the planets, elements in the periodic table
… It’s about teaching the scientific process: how to
be critical, how to gather evidence, how to test a
hypothesis or an assumption.”
New views of the world
Sharon Kenyon-Smith, a teacher at St Joseph’s
primary school in Hawthorn, says the message is
getting across, sparking an interest in the wider
world. “The children see science now as part of their
everyday life.”
A moon project conducted by Associate Professor
Maddison at Hartwell, St Joseph’s and Footscray
primary schools involved using scientific methods to
analyse and learn about the phases of the moon. “It
was about getting the kids to actually go outside and
look up,” Associate Professor Maddison says. “We did
it over two lunar phases. I would go to school each
week and take them through the scientific process.
We would discuss what they observed, what records
they took and have debates over the shape of the
moon. We would also discuss how to improve their
observations.”
According to Kenyon-Smith, “The students know
that they can be scientists by observing, collating
information, wondering, posing questions and
problems, and finding solutions. They can do this now,
today, and make a positive difference to their world.”
It’s about teaching
the scientific process:
how to be critical,
how to gather
evidence, how to test
a hypothesis or an
assumption.
Associate Professor Sarah Maddison
When not in schools, Associate Professor Maddison
is working on improving our understanding of
how the planets form. She has made a number of
impressive astronomical discoveries and regularly
travels overseas to conduct further research.
Her research looks at how tiny dust grains grow to
become something as big as planets – objects more
than a trillion times the size of these tiny objects.
By analysing the chemistry of these dust grains,
their interaction with each other and their evolution
into planets, Associate Professor Maddison hopes
to better understand some of the mechanisms that
shaped our universe. Using the Australia Telescope
Compact Array – six 22-metre radio telescopes near
the remote town of Narrabri in central New South
Wales – her work has demonstrated that these dust
grains grow extremely fast. The results have been
combined with results from the new giant Atacama
Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in
Chile – a vast field of 66 telescopes located more
than 5000 metres above sea level in the Atacama
Desert – and have confirmed her model predictions.
The next generation of scientists
Finding the time to stay engaged in the Scientists
and Mathematicians in Schools program is not
always easy. “Some days I have to really juggle
tasks,” Associate Professor Maddison explains.
“However, some of the teachers I work with are
really into their science and I find their energy and
enthusiasm contagious.”
Of course, there is also the instant feedback of the
students to spur her on. “I try to get them to answer
… their own questions. When they work their way
to an answer themselves, their faces light up with
excitement and pride in their own ability. That is a
priceless moment.
“I think outreach is extremely important and this
feeling is supported by Swinburne. While such
outreach activities might seem to cut into research
time, I think it’s extremely important to share our
science knowledge with the public and to help
engage the next generation of scientists.” l
16 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

education
the science of now
The brainchild of former Australian chief
scientist, Dr Jim Peacock, the Scientists
and Mathematicians in Schools program
(SMiS) began in 2007. It has been so
successful that it now reaches more than
one-tenth of Australia’s schools.
Dr Peacock, who remains the program’s
patron, says that it “promotes science
education in primary and secondary
schools, helps to engage and motivate
students in their learning of science, and
broadens awareness of the types and
variety of exciting careers available in
the sciences.”
The program involves scientists
and mathematicians partnering
with individual teachers in ongoing,
professional partnerships. According
to Marian Heard, director of the CSIROmanaged
program, there have been a
total of 3088 partnerships established
in 1373 Australian schools to date. The
list of participating scientists includes
2011 Nobel prize-winner for physics,
Professor Brian Schmidt.
In Victoria there are almost 300
active partnerships, with more than
100 schools on the waiting list for
a scientist.
Each partnership is unique, with the
teacher and scientist together able to
decide how it will work. There are no
fixed hours. Scientists may visit the
school once or twice a year, a couple of
times a term, or once a week or month.
Other partnerships use email and
video conferencing almost exclusively.
Proving that distance is no barrier,
Interested
teachers, scientists
or mathematicians can
register online at either
www.scientists
inschools.edu.au or
www.mathematicians
inschools.edu.au
a group of students in
the Northern Territory
partnered with a Queensland
scientist and discovered a unique
tarantula species. An Antarctic scientist
in Hobart has formed a long-distance
partnership with a primary school in
Townsville, and a Hobart-based ice-core
analyst has partnered with a school
in Darwin.
In Victoria, a Swinburne-based
mathematician, Professor Geoffrey
Brooks, has inspired students through
regular brainteasers, tutorials and
lectures using applied mathematics and
a tub of very cold water. His teaching
even includes the all-important ‘maths
of football’.
“We’re not trying to turn every child
associate professor
sarah maddison and
some of her primary
school students.
into a scientist, that is not
the goal,” says Dr Louise
Emmerson, a Tasmanian-based
scientist. “What we want to do is make
them find science palatable, make them
understand they can be a scientist if
they want to, just continue to keep
them engaged in science.”
It’s not just the students that get
inspired either, according to Marian
Heard. “It inspires and motivates the
teachers and scientists.” Of course, with
access to working scientists it can also
give what Dr Jim Peacock describes
as, “The science of now, not ... the last
couple of centuries.”
The program has Australian Government
funding through to June 2016.
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 17

usiness
Keeping it
in the family
Succession planning in family
businesses can be fraught with
difficulty but a new study could
make the process easier.
By carolyn boyd
Family businesses form the backbone
of the Australian economy – around
70 per cent of the nation’s companies
are family owned and operated.
However, when the time comes to hand
over the reins to the next generation,
things do not always go smoothly.
“Often there is a fair degree of secrecy and nontransparency
around succession planning,” says
Michael Gilding, Executive Dean of the Faculty
of Business and Enterprise at Swinburne. “It is
something that family businesses consistently
struggle to deal with. The more they put it off, the
more difficult it becomes.”
Gilding is one of five researchers conducting a
two-year study into how families decide who to pass
their businesses to and when to make the transition.
Working with national accounting firm Pitcher
Partners, the team has interviewed 43 Australian
family businesses, ranging in age from less than two
decades to more than 160 years of family operation.
The researchers haven’t just spoken with CEOs, who
are typically male, but have also interviewed their
spouses and other family members to get a more
in-depth understanding of succession planning.
The influence of wives
“Wives of family business CEOs are often deeply
overlooked and we think that they are very
underestimated,” says Gilding. “Wives have a unique
outlook on the whole succession planning process
and they often have a huge influence on whether
the planning process works or it doesn’t work.
Unless you have an understanding of all the different
players in the process, you haven’t got a very
good model.”
PhD candidate Barbara Cosson conducted the
spouse interviews and says the hardest part was
hearing the stories of families who were “completely
riven by trying to sort their relationships out”. “I have
spoken to numerous families where they don’t speak
to different arms of the family, and actually haven’t for
many years,” she says.
Despite the difficulties involved in handing family
businesses to the next generation, postdoctoral
research fellow Dr Sheree Gregory says continuity is
vital to many families. “Having a family continue on
in the business is quite important, so is keeping the
bloodline going and keeping a legacy,” she says.
Often there is a fair
degree of secrecy and
non-transparency
around succession
planning. It is something
that family businesses
consistently struggle
to deal with. The more
they put it off, the more
difficult it becomes.
Michael Gilding,
Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business
and Enterprise at Swinburne
The research goes global
The researchers are now conducting a global survey, in
conjunction with Pitcher Partners, to compare the way
families approach succession planning in 40 countries.
The Family Business Succession Survey is being run
in several languages, including Spanish, Korean and
Mandarin. In Australia, the team is hoping to garner
at least 1000 responses.
“When you do a survey in Australia it is interesting
but it is not as deeply insightful as comparisons with
survey data from other countries. Once you have
that data, you can then say what’s unique about us,”
says Gilding.
The research team recently had a paper based on
their research accepted by one of the world’s top
entrepreneurship journals, Entrepreneurship:
Theory and Practice. l
research.net/s/FamilyBusinessSuccessionSurvey
illustrATIOn: gregory balDWIn
18 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

usiness
handing over to the next generation
do...
l Create transparent rules
for joining the business.
l Create structures that
facilitate communication
and consultation.
l Get help if in doubt.
Outsiders are able to ask
the ‘naïve’ questions that
families need to answer.
don’t...
l Procrastinate –
it doesn’t get easier, it
gets harder.
l Be secretive –
it creates mistrust.
l Play favourites –
it creates resentment.
Source: Michael Gilding, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Business and
Enterprise at Swinburne University of Technology.
case study
c-direct
With Angela Ciliberto turning
60 at the end of this year, she
is keen to hand management
of the business she launched
in 1978 to her two children.
Even though she has insider
information on best practice
as the state chair for Family
Business Australia, Ciliberto
knows it will be tough.
“I define myself as this business,” she
says. “So, if I am not this business,
who am I? There is that journey for
the incumbents to take. That’s a really
difficult one and I think if you don’t get
an answer to that, you never want to
leave.”
Ciliberto began a photographic shop
in 1978 to create a job for herself after
quitting the public service. Soon one
store became six and her husband Peter
joined the business.
In the 1980s, the couple spotted a niche
for wholesale distribution and launched
C-Direct, which now provides sales,
marketing and warehousing of products
ranging from pre-paid mobile to
movie tickets. The Melbourne business
services 4000 clients, turns over
about $30 million a year and employs
30 people.
Angela says she and Peter always had a
code of behaviour for when they were
at work, so when their daughter and
son, now in their 30s, wanted to join the
business there was a framework in place.
As she nears retirement, Angela has
been gradually stepping out of the
business, and the Cilibertos have
engaged a business psychologist to guide
them through succession planning for
management of the company.
“My belief is you need to see it as a
journey – a process rather than an event,”
says Angela. “You can’t just suddenly say,
‘I will be 60 this year, see you later, I am
going’. The reality is that the successors
have to feel comfortable that they’ve got
all their ducks in a row.”
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executiveeducation

molecular modelling
When Swinburne’s Professor Feng Wang was a
young girl growing up in China in the 1970s,
her hero was the Nobel prize-winning physicist
and chemist Marie Curie.
Now a resident of Melbourne, Professor
Wang finds herself following in Curie’s
footsteps, bridging the worlds of physics and
chemistry through molecular modelling, making contributions on
projects ranging from drug discovery to solar panel production.
Professor Wang’s research team recently attracted international
recognition for its work with ferrocene – a compound that has long
been known about, but never fully understood. The team has identified
the structure of ferrocene conformers – specific parts of the molecular
formation – for the first time.
Discovery opens many doors
It’s an important discovery because ferrocene has increasing
application in petrochemistry, medicine, nanotechnology and, most
recently, the development of solar cells for the efficient production of
clean energy.
“Ferrocene is one of the most important
compounds in chemistry, so we are very excited
to be playing a small part in unravelling its
secrets,” Professor Wang says.
Ferrocene is an orange-brown powder
and was first synthesised by accident at a
university in the US in 1951. It is described
as a ‘sandwich’ compound because it has
a central iron atom, with two pentagonal
rings on either side consisting of five
carbon and five hydrogen atoms.
“The discovery of ferrocene in the 1950s
prompted the evolution of a whole new
branch of chemistry – but until now, nobody
has been able to conclusively prove its molecular
structure,” Professor Wang says.
After the discovery was published in the Journal of Organometallic
Chemistry, Professor Wang’s team, which includes researchers
from the University of Melbourne, has conducted experiments at two
synchrotrons – in Australia and Japan – to confirm the structure and
learn more about the compound.
The power of modelling
“My work is in molecular modelling, using quantum mechanics and
supercomputers. It’s a real strength here at Swinburne because of
our research expertise and GPU supercomputer and I don’t need to
have any of the actual compounds on hand,” says Professor Wang.
“In scientific discovery, it is often the experimental measurement
that comes first, and then the theory to interpret it. But the fact that
we have done it the other way around is in itself significant to research
practice.”
Her ultimate aim is to understand ferrocene’s two most important
conformers – eclipsed and staggered isomers (molecules of the
same chemical formula but which are arranged differently) – and
how they interchange under defined conditions.
“For the past 60 years there has been no way to conclusively
identify which conformer is the most stable and why both
conformers are ‘observed’ under different experimental conditions,
and that’s a headache for chemists trying to design the synthesised
pathways for ferrocene’s many applications,” she says.
One such application is solar energy. Here, ferrocene seems
destined to play an important role as the electrolyte in organic dyesensitised
solar cells, which are much cheaper to produce than
silicon-based solar cells.
Science in the family
Professor Wang first came to Australia in 1989 as a visiting
researcher at the University of Newcastle, where she won
scholarships to undertake her PhD in theoretical chemistry. She has
been at Swinburne since 2003, when she became a senior lecturer
in computational science. She is now Professor of Chemistry in the
Faculty of Life and Social Sciences.
“My father was a chemistry professor, my mother was a high
school chemistry teacher and one of my two brothers is a chemist,”
she says. “Our parents always pushed us towards science and I could
recite the entire periodic table of the elements at the age of seven.
“In China we used to read a lot of stories about Marie Curie, who
became a role model for many girls of my age.”
Professor Wang has three daughters who are at secondary schools,
where they all are “pretty good” at science. They are also well versed
in the story of Marie Curie – even though they need look no further
than their own mother for an inspirational role model. l
model discovery
Working on the previously mysterious compound ferrocene,
Professor Feng Wang has made the kind of scientific
breakthrough she has dreamed of since she was a young girl.
by Steve Packer
20 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

Ferrocene is one of
the most important
compounds in
chemistry, so we
are very excited to
be playing a small
part in unravelling
its secrets.
Professor feng wanG and
dr dom appadoo at the
australian synchrotron.
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 21

Q&A
Swinburne sociologist Associate Professor
Karen Farquharson talks about her research on diversity
and participation in Australian children’s sport.
Sport for all
Q: Sport is a big part of the Australian way of life. What benefits does
it bring for society?
A: Recreational sport is increasingly being seen as a solution for serious health
problems, such as diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, associated with a
sedentary lifestyle. It is also a potential source of social connection – a way
for new migrants to become part of Australian society. Recreational sport
participation is seen as good for individuals and for broader society, but most
of us stop participating when we are still children.
Q: What brought you to sport as an area of research?
A: I’m a sociologist who has a strong interest in sport. I’m also a migrant and a
woman who is not very good at sport and stopped participating as soon as I could.
While I’m fairly fit, it is not via organised sport.
So I’m interested in how sport can be made more attractive to a broader
constituency: how can people such as me, who like sport but who are not very
talented, be better engaged in sport over their life span? How can migrants be
attracted to sport?
For sport to be a solution to health issues and contribute to social inclusion,
people need to want to participate. Sport needs to attract kids
and keep them involved.
Q: Tell us about your research
A: I’m part of a team made up of researchers from a number of
universities, investigating diversity in junior sport in Australia.
Our research is interested in how junior sports clubs manage
diversity of all sorts, including ability, culture and gender.
Led by Ramón Spaaij (La Trobe University), and including Ruth
Jeanes (Monash University), Dean Lusher (Swinburne University
of Technology) and Sean Gorman (Curtin University), we recently
conducted a pilot study in the greater Melbourne area.
We were interested in finding out whether clubs incorporated
people of diverse backgrounds and, if so, how they achieved this.
Q: What were your findings?
A: The results were mixed. Some clubs
were interested in attracting participants
from migrant backgrounds and
developed strategies to do so, but
others were not.
‘They know where we are’ was one response from
the latter type of club. And often the clubs that
had strategies did so because one leader had a
keen interest in attracting people from diverse
backgrounds, not because the club had a
particular policy around the issue.
Clubs that courted culturally diverse
players often did so in search of talent,
believing that attracting people of
different backgrounds would increase
their talent pool. Research into diversity
management suggests this way of thinking is
For sport to
be a solution
to health
issues and
contribute to
social inclusion,
people need
to want to
participate.
right: if you broaden your scope, you will find a larger number
of talented people.
Q: What about diversity in terms of gender
and disability?
A: There was little discussion of gender diversity. Junior
sport, and sport in general, is very much gender-segregated,
and the need to improve female participation rates is tied up in
ideas we have about girls (and women) playing sport that makes
girls’ sports less important than boys’ sports. Indeed, much research
has shown that girls tend to stop playing sport at puberty. Girls from diverse
backgrounds are particularly likely to drop out.
A number of clubs had dedicated programs for people with a disability and
strategies to reach out to this constituency, but many clubs also did not. Access
and appropriate programs are key barriers for people with a disability in terms of
sport participation, and for many clubs the infrastructural access issues seemed
too great to overcome.
Q: What about kids who have varying
levels of ability?
A: One type of diversity that was not actively viewed
as a concern by sporting clubs was diversity of ability
among the able-bodied. It was not
really seen as desirable. Having
less than talented players
means your teams are less
likely to win. Clubs want
to field winning teams.
Q: What impact does
this attitude have on
sport as a positive
social force?
A: This is a key
conundrum in using sport
as a solution to health
problems and lack of social
connectedness. If sport is to be
optimally beneficial to society, then junior
sports clubs need to engage all kids. However, sporting clubs are caught
in a difficult place between the desire to perform well and the desire to
encourage participation.
Q: What steps should sports clubs be taking?
A: Solutions that provide spaces for the less talented to enjoy and
excel in sport are needed. Clubs also need advice on diversity
management: why it is desirable to have diverse members and
how to achieve that.
Our research is exploring this issue from the ground up, with an
eye to understanding the clubs’ perspectives, but also with an eye
to developing strategies to improve junior sport participation. l
22 | swinburne | venture | issue ONE 2013

design
Game changers
An Ancient Greek
myth has inspired
an award-winning
video game.
We wanted to do
something with
the game that
we hadn’t
seen before.
Mitchell Brien
by virginia millen
Two honours students from
Swinburne’s Faculty of Design
have won the Game Design and
Development Award at the latest
Global Adobe Design Achievement
Awards in Toronto, Canada.
Mitchell Brien and Finnian
Millour’s winning creation is
Orpheus, a video game based on the Ancient Greek
myth about the musician Orpheus who travelled
to the underworld to retrieve his deceased wife
Eurydice.
Brien entered the competition on a whim, after
seeing a link to it on Swinburne’s Facebook page.
“It took about five minutes to enter it. But we had
the expectation that not much would come from it,”
he says.
The two 24-year-olds met while working on a group
project as part of their Bachelor of Design degree at
Swinburne. “There came a point on that project when
we realised that Mitch was doing a large chunk of
the coding work and I was doing a large part of
the design work,” says Millour. “We saw then
that we worked really well as a pair.”
They found themselves sharing a class
the next semester, and when they were
assigned an individual research project,
they saw an opportunity to build a game
and asked if they could undertake it as
a team. The pair quickly
devised a concept and
in eight weeks had built
the game Orpheus. “We
wanted to do something
with the game that we
hadn’t seen before,” says
Brien. “We decided to
have a music-playing theme,
which lent itself to the story of Orpheus.”
Visually, the five-level game has a handcrafted,
tactile feel, a quality rarely seen in traditional video
games. Players use a sequence of musical notes to
crack each level.
Ideas-driven design
Brien and Millour had a strong vision from the
beginning and credit this, in part, to the success of
the game overall. “A huge component of design
is the idea itself,” says Millour. “A fantastic idea
hopefully drives the whole thing.”
The two students laid down strict rules
to work within – for everything from the
division of work to the colour palette, to
how each level would be designed.
Clear communication was key. “I think the project
ran pretty smoothly because we’d worked together
before so we understood how we each worked,”
says Brien. “We kept communication flowing the
whole time by telling each other where we were up
to and showing each other stuff.”
By the time they found out their game had been
shortlisted, the pair had almost forgotten they’d
entered the competition. Soon after, they were
flown to Toronto as grand finalists.
Millour was convinced that Orpheus wouldn’t win.
“The other game was brilliant,” he says. “It was
very polished, very well presented, whereas ours
was rougher. But I guess the judges decided that
ours was more original.”
According to Adobe, winning entries were
chosen based on originality, effectiveness in
meeting the communication objective and in
applying Adobe products.
“When they called out our names at the awards
ceremony Finn just sat there in shock,” says Brien,
who adds that they were also very excited about the
$3000 prize.
Future plans
The pair also attended the DesignThinkers
conference in Toronto, which Brien says has made
them think more seriously about further developing
Orpheus and eventually taking it to market.
Brien hopes that commercial success of the
game will help him in a career in the games design
industry, while Millour is applying his design nous
to postgraduate studies in architecture. l
Orpheus can be found at
www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/583770
issue ONE 2013 | venture | swinburne | 23

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Postgrad study
to make you
more effective}
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The learning environment at Swinburne
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}swinburne.edu.au/midyear
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