1998 Swinburne Higher Education Handbook

32 I Higher Education I Swinburne Centres
commentary on Asia and Australia. Its specialists have expertise on China, India,
Indonesia, Korea and Southeast Asia. The MRC's research and teaching deals with
change in Asia and its consequences for Australia. The diverse societies and
economies ofthe Asia-Pacific, including Australia, are being transformed through
accelerated integration on a regional and global scale. The AARC aims to develop
theoretically advanced, comparative and practical understandings of social change. It
therefore investigates most aspects of globalisation and change in contemporary
Asia: political, economic, cultural. technological, urban and regional. It seeks to
understand the emergence of new and influential modernities from the second half of
the twentieth century into the next century, and millennium. The AARC's staff and
students possess expertise from a range of social science and business disciplines.
The staff provides services in research, consulting, supervision of research degrees,
teaching in postgraduate programs, and the provision of advice, commentary and
short courses for business and government. Its members have extensive contacts
throughout Asia and Australia as well as with centres of excellence in Europe and
North America.
The main objectives of the Centre are:
• to strengthen Swinburne's research expertise and activity on Asia and
Australia-Asia relations, and to win national and international recognition for
the excellence of our achievements in research;
to develop postgraduate work on Asia and on Australia's role in the Asia Pacific
by attracting research students of high calibre, and provide a quality
environment for their tra i n i ng;
• to bring together academic, linguistic and business skills that will offer expert
consultation and commentary for business, government and the media;
• to foster collaborative research links with research institutions with
internationally recognised expertise on Asia, especially those in Asia itself, but
also in Europe and America;
to develop collaborative research within Swinburne, tapping diverse expertise
with interests in Asia across the University;
to nurture a research culture at Swinburne responsive to the highest
international standards;
to enhance the internationalisation of undergraduate teaching programs at
Swinburne.
Centre for Biomedical Instrumentation
Director
Dr. A. Wood
Telephone: (03) 9214 8867
Fax: (03) 9214 8867
Email: andrewwood@swin.edu.au
The Centre was established to provide a focus for research and consulting activities
related to instrumentation for medical and physiological use. The Centre draws on the
strengths in instrumentation and biophysics within the School of Biophysical
Sciences and Electrical Engineering and works in collaboration with the Brain
Sciences Institute.
At present. research activities include electrical impedance tomography,
instrumentation for ambulatory monitoring, instrumentation for isometric musclestrength
assessment, instrumentation for electroencephalography, biological
applications of laser scanning confocal microscopy, Raman and Mossbauer
spectroscopy, effects of electromagnetic fields on tissue and a fibre-optic based
respiratory monitor. A number of additional projects are being undertaken in
conjunction with local hospitals.
Other aims of the Centre include:
• to offer a facility enabling individuals to pursue postgraduate studies in
biomedical instrumentation
• to offer short courses serving the needs of medical and health personnel and the
biomedical instrumentation industry
• to assist in the teaching of biomedical instrumentation in undergraduate and
postgraduate Swinburne programs
• to provide a contact point for visitors from other institutions or companies to
undertake collaborative projects
• to promote the availability and commercial development of intellectual property
originating within the centre.
Brain Sciences Institute
(formerly the Centre for Applied Neurosciences est.
1985)(Tier 1 Research Centre)
Director
Professor R.B. Silberstein
Telephone: (03) 9214 8822
Fax: (03) 9214 5525
Email: bsi@mind.scan.swin.edu.au
The Institute's primary purpose is to facilitate research into the relationship between
human behavioural states and measured brain activity. The Institute also undertakes
contract research in areas consistent with its primary purpose. The Institute has
extensive collaborative research links with Australian and international research
centres.
Atthis stage, the Institute is engaged in research into:
(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(f)
(g)
(h)
mechanisms underlying brain rhythmic activity
modelling of brain electrical activity
relationship between cognitive processes and brain electrical activity
brain electrical activity and the learning process
brain electrical activity and schizophrenia
ageing and brain electrical activity
brain electrical activity and disorders of mood
monitoring of awareness and anaesthetic depth using brain electrical activity.
Other aims of the Institute include:
• to assist in the teaching ofthe neurosciences in undergraduate and
postgraduate Swinburne programs
• to offer a facility enabling individuals to pursue postgraduate studies in the
neurosciences
• to promote the availability and commercial development of intellectual property
originating within the Institute.
COTAR (Victoria) Centre for ObjectTechnology
Applications and Research
Director
Professor B. Henderson-Sellers
Telephone: (03)92148524
Fax: (03) 9819 0823
The Centre for Object Technology Applications and Research, known as COTAR
(Victoria), is an industry funded, university located centre of excellence focusing on
object technology. Industry partners offer support in either cash or kind to create an
active research and teaching environment into objecttechnology (OT) -the leading
edge of computer science and information systems thinking. Sponsored research
produces results which can then flow back directly to industry for rapid utilization.
Object technology is the newest approach to building software which offers
substantial business benefits (e.g. flexibility, maintainability and higher quality of
software) whilst incurring costs for retraining and restructuring current software
practices. COT AR has the advancement of OT in an industry context as its focus.
COTAR aims to:
• foster collaboration and communication between universities and industry in
order to accelerate the practical development of object technologies
• provide an Australian research centre in object technology
• provide quality professional development courses in object-oriented software
engineering
• provide an Australian focus for the dissemination to industry of leading-edge
knowledge on objecttechnology.
Ongoing research projects include:
development ofthe OPEN methodology - in collaboration with over 30 key
researchers worldwide
product and process metrics, funded by government and industry
usability, particularly of software CASE tools
• the use of formal methods - the FOOM project
technical and organizational issues of reuse
object-oriented project management
metamodelling - the COMMA project
Swinburne University of Technology 11998 Handbook