July 2010 - Swinburne University of Technology

www.swinburne.edu.au
Electric cars start to rev P6
ISSUE 10 | JULY 2010
Vanishing plastics P12
People power from gran’s gift P16
Network
man
The mathematics of consumer protection

www.swinburne.edu.au
Vanishing plastics P12
Electric cars start to rev P6
swinburne JULY 2010
Contents
ISSUE 10 | JULY 2010
People power from gran’s gift P16
Network
man
The mathematics of consumer protection
06
08
UPFRONT
2
EDUCATION’S ROLE IN
DRIVING SUSTAINABILITY
Swinburne University of Technology’s sense of responsibility in
preparing tomorrow’s leaders for the challenges of a rapidly changing,
interconnected world means we are embracing a broad concept of
sustainability, one that includes interrelated environmental, socio-cultural
and financial dimensions.
We recognise that students, businesses and our communities need to be
equipped to embrace important issues as they emerge – and sustainability
is one such issue. We are passionate about sustainability and believe that
educational institutions are uniquely placed to contribute to the future.
We are especially confident that as a dual-sector university we will have
a significant role in the future of Australia through our graduates, staff,
research, skills development and organisational effectiveness.
In late 2009 we developed a university-wide Sustainability Strategy.
This embraces and interlinks teaching and learning, research, people
development, and the sustainability of our operations and communities.
We did not develop this strategy lightly. It will fundamentally change our
organisation.
Swinburne has a strategic involvement in sustainability with government
at all levels, for example through our National Centre for Sustainability’s
involvement in implementing the (national) Green Skills Agreement,
and with skilling and re-skilling Australia’s workforce to meet industry’s
future requirements. Our relationships with industry and our research,
which is highlighted in this edition, helps to transform businesses to work
successfully in a low-carbon economy. We are making a real difference.
We continue to build strong relationships with local government,
community groups and schools through programs that support their
emerging needs in knowledge, and sustainability skills. These groups
are highly influential in changing households and communities, and in
developing sustainability leaders and ambassadors for the future.
More than 6000 students have already enrolled in sustainability training
and more than three-quarters of our staff have key performance
indicators based on sustainability. Behavioural change is critical to the
success of our strategy; the high level of engagement and commitment
across the university and with our partners reinforces the university’s
international status as a leader in the sustainability agenda.
This edition of Swinburne draws together some of the research and
education developments that illustrate Swinburne’s commitment to
sustainability and environmental practice.
Join us in shaping a better future.
LINDA BROWN
Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Director, TAFE
COVER STORY
04 Switched-on
scholar masters
the power game
The delivery, affordability
and reliability of electricity
is constantly challenged.
Now comes the puzzle of
also fitting in new ‘green’
technologies BRAD COLLIS
FEATURES
03 WEB TOOL TO GET
US TANKED UP
KELLIE PENFOLD
06 CAR MAKERS HEAR AN
ELECTRIC BUZZ
Universities and other
research bodies in Victoria are
teaming up to put Australia
at the forefront of electric car
technology
BARRY PESTANA
08 FUTURE TRAVELS DOWN
A GLASS HIGHWAY
Mountains of waste glass that
would otherwise go to landfill
may soon find a home in
Victoria’s roads and footpaths
KARIN DERKLEY
09 SLOW LIFTS A LESSON
IN STEP-CHANGE
KARIN DERKLEY
11 SURPRISE FINDINGS
IN BUSINESS CARBON
CHASE
TIM TREADGOLD
12 H UMBLE SHELLFISH
MAY GIVE US ‘VANISHING
PLASTIC’
A truly biodegradable plastic
made from a renewable
resource, arguably one of
the more practical wastemanagement
goals being
pursued around the world,
is a step closer through the
research of two Australian
PhD students
CLARISA COLLIS
14 INTERNET POWER MAY
NEED COMPUTERS TO
SLEEP
DAVID ADAMS
16 HOW GRAN’S GIFT
TURNED SUNLIGHT INTO
PEOPLE POWER
This Swinburne student
actually has a lot to teach,
after interrupting his studies
to build an energy company
TIM TREADGOLD
18 OUR CANNIBAL GALAXY
In a fascinating new piece of
‘galactic archaeology’
astronomers have found that
up to one-quarter of the Milky
Way’s galactic clusters are
intruders
JULIAN CRIBB
20 QUEEN TO VIRAL PAWN
Mathematicians are
attempting to develop
algorithms to solve ‘master
equations’ that could one
day help biomedicine even
the odds against infectious
diseases
DR GIO BRAIDOTTI
22 AUSSIE AMBITIONS FOR
GOURMET TREASURE
A Swinburne horticulturalist
has travelled to the
horticultural and gastronomic
home of truffles to help
develop truffle growing in
Australia
KELLIE PENFOLD
•• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •••• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• ••
18
22
Published by SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
Editorial coordinator: Julianne Camerotto, Communications Manager
(Research and Industry), Marketing Services,
SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY, Melbourne
The information in this publication was correct at the time of going to press, July 2010.
The views expressed by contributors in this publication are not necessarily those of
Swinburne University of Technology.
Written, edited, designed and produced on behalf of SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF
TECHNOLOGY by CORETEXT, www.coretext.com.au, +61 3 9670 1168
SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY
John Street (PO Box 218), Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122, Australia
CRICOS provider Code 00111D
ISSN 1835-6516 (Print) ISSN 1835-6524 (Online)
Enquiries: +61 3 9214 8000
Website: www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
Email: magazine@swinburne.edu.au
eSubscribe to Swinburne magazine:
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine/subscribe
Cover photo: Paul Jones
The International Association
of Business Communicators
awarded Swinburne magazine
a 2010 Gold Quill Merit Award.

JULY 2010 swinburne
WEB TOOL TO GET US
tanked up
STORY BY Kellie Penfold
DR MONZUR IMTEAZ is a glass-half-empty
kind of chap. He’s not being unduly
negative, he just sees wasted opportunity in
not being able to fill to the top.
In particular he recoils at the thought of
half-empty rainwater tanks, or worse, tanks
that can’t hold any more water, just because
there’s no simple tool to help people better
match storage with catchment.
Water is again becoming our most
precious resource – as it used to be when
Australians better understood the realities of
living on the world’s driest continent – and
collecting urban water, in particular, is likely
to become crucial for our fast-growing towns
and cities.
Dr Imteaz’s interest in the re-emerging
popularity of rainwater tanks – which for
a period were actually banned by some
municipalities – stems from his research
at Swinburne University of Technology’s
Centre for Sustainable Infrastructure,
where he specialises in the development of
stormwater as a resource.
This under-used water source and the
commercial, rather than scientific, approach
to capturing it is driving Dr Imteaz to
develop a number of simple tools, building
on the STORMKIT system he has already
developed, to analyse and design stormwater
systems.
“House tanks are a good example. People
want to catch the stormwater collected on
their own roofs, but tanks are often installed
with little or no planning as to whether they
are the right size. There are plenty of tanks
that will never fill and there are plenty that
are too small to capture all the water which
is available,” Dr Imteaz says.
He says engineers and managers dealing
generally with water and drainage matters
either use tedious manual calculations
or sophisticated, large, data-dependent
programs to perform stormwater analysis
and design. The advantages of a tool such as
STORMKIT are its accuracy and simplicity.
STORMKIT was presented and
demonstrated at the 32nd Hydrology and
Water Resources Symposium, held in
Newcastle in November 2009, and is now
available to water managers and other users.
Dr Imteaz is now developing an internetbased
tool to help householders establish
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
Across Australia householders are installing rainwater tanks … without any handy way to calculate
the optimum tank size. Swinburne researcher, Dr Monzur Imteaz, has set out to rectify this.
rainfall capture capacity which, with suitable
funding to help develop the website, could
also be available this year.
Corporate and local government
stakeholders regularly employ consultants
to analyse the potential water catchment in
urban projects, but Dr Imteaz feels that this
information – often obtained at a high price
– is subsequently used by just a few people,
whereas a web-based tool would be available
to everyone and could be used over and over
again.
Using information such as contributing
catchment size, tank volume, geographic
location, weather conditions and the water’s
intended use, his proposed calculation tool
will determine the volume of water likely to
be captured each year according to different
rainfall scenarios.
He notes that historic rainfall figures are
not much help any more. “If you look at
Melbourne, it was 650 millimetres for 70 or
80 years. Yet for the past 12 years it has been
360 to 630mm. Therefore, water storages are
subject to high rainfall, average rainfall and
below-average rainfall.”
Near his office on the university’s
Hawthorn campus are two large rainwater
tanks with which Dr Imteaz has put his
theory into practice, establishing their
effectiveness and payback period. Applying
his calculations to the capture area, he was
able to measure by how much one tank was
too large to readily fill, and the extent to
which the other was too small to capture all
available rainfall.
The point Dr Imteaz makes is that better
analysis and design before constructing such
facilities would significantly improve their
effectiveness and cost-benefit.
Initially, the proposed tool is for
stormwater capturing analysis for impervious
roofs only. But it can be extended for
pervious surfaces (such as golf courses and
playing fields) by incorporating soil loss
parameters.
While the complete development of
the proposed tool depends on the success
of getting funds from relevant authorities,
Dr Imteaz is moving his focus to fog
water – to see what value there would be in
harvesting moisture created during foggy
weather conditions. ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
Key points
Swinburne’s Dr Monzur
Imteaz is developing simple
tools to analyse and design
stormwater systems.
His proposed calculation
tool will determine the
volume of water likely to
be captured each year
according to different
rainfall scenarios.
SUSTAINABILITY
3

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
4
Switched-on
scholar masters
the power game
We mostly take electricity for granted, but its delivery, affordability
and reliability are constantly challenged, and now comes the puzzle
of how to also fit in new ‘green’ technologies BY BRAD COLLIS*
Swinburne PhD student Mohammad Hesamzadeh is
researching the economics of energy markets.
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
PhD STUDENT Mohammad Hesamzadeh
is already highly regarded as an electrical
engineer. He is also building a reputation as
an astute, albeit self-taught, energy market
economist until he finds time for another
degree. Add to that a genius for complex
mathematical algorithms and you have a young
Swinburne University of Technology researcher
who soon may be directly responsible for
keeping electricity prices down, vital energygeneration
investment up, and the expansion
of critical infrastructure such as transmission
networks attuned to actual, not estimated, need.
These are the sought, but rarely achieved,
outcomes from the entwined engineering and
economic elements that underpin something
we take for granted – electricity at the flick
of a switch.
But keeping electricity affordable, reliable
and sustainable in a deregulated and highly
competitive national market, when pressure
is also building to make room for new
sources of ‘green’ electricity that are not
yet economic, is a gargantuan task. In fact,
finding the right balance within a system in
which demand, supply and price are changing
every few minutes, almost amounts to
guesswork. The consequence, not surprisingly,
is a suspicion that millions of dollars are
probably leaking from the economy through
inefficient energy match-ups.
One of the keys to balancing market
competition with sufficient profits to
encourage continued industry investment,
plus accommodate new resources such as
wind and solar farms, is the transmission
network that interconnects all players.
In the wash-up of electricity market
deregulation which took place in the late
1990s, the transmission network remains a
monopoly (government) infrastructure used
by a spread of highly competitive privatesector
generators, wholesalers and retailers.
Management and the timely improvement
of the transmission network is potentially the
best mechanism for ensuring fair, profitable
electricity trading, but until Mohammad
Hesamzadeh’s work there has been no
formula or modelling tool for accurately
exercising this control.
For example, an issue for the market
regulator – the Australian Energy Regulator
Key points
Electricity market
deregulation has increased
the complexity of balancing
supply, reliability and stable
pricing.
Numerous engineering
and economic factors
have to be accommodated
in investment and
infrastructure planning.
All countries with
deregulated electricity
markets have struggled
to find a functional
management model.
Swinburne PhD student
Mohammad Hesamzadeh is
researching the economics
of energy markets.
Power research
The Swinburne Power Engineering Group, led
by Dr Nasser Hosseinzadeh, focuses on two
areas: renewable energy systems, and power
system development and economics.
The group works closely with the Australian
Power Institute, the Australian Energy Market
Operator, the CIGRE Australian Panel on
System Development and Economics, and the
Australian Energy Regulator.
(AER) – is the potential for a large generator
to actually restrain supply when transmission
networks are close to capacity (such as during
a heat wave) to drive up spot prices. But how
do authorities (who represent consumers) keep
transmission capacity one step ahead of such
an unpredictable demand-supply scenario?
Transmission networks are also critical for
efficiently bringing new renewable energy
online, but again there is no ready-made
formula for accurately planning the capacity,
location and timing of new transmission
investments.

JULY 2010 swinburne
Dr Darryl Biggar, consulting economist at
the AER, says this is an issue for deregulated
electricity markets around the world. What
has been lacking is a tool with sufficient
computational power to model all of the
components of electricity generation, delivery
and consumption and the ability to measure
how investment in transmission capacity
would affect marketplace competition.
The variables that determine this are
numerous and require complex computer
modelling that can integrate both engineering
and economic factors – two quite disparate
matrices.
This is where Mohammad Hesamzadeh
steps in. Though still to formally complete his
PhD (on the economics of energy markets)
under his supervisor, Dr Nasser Hosseinzadeh,
who leads Swinburne’s Power Engineering
Research Group, Mr Hesamzadeh has already
published 15 research papers, five journal
papers and has three others under review,
bringing international attention to his groundbreaking
work.
His achievement has been to develop the
first computer model, and future software
tool, that can assimilate the engineering
parameters of electricity generation, the
economics of wholesale and retail electricity
markets, and the scale of transmission
networks needed to join them all together.
The unique aspect of Mr Hesamzadeh’s
approach is that he has been able to
conceptualise, intuitively, both the
engineering and the economic variables and
then undertake the painstaking process of
developing a mathematical model that melds
them into a functional management tool.
A measure of just how difficult this has
been, and why it has never been previously
achieved, is that Mr Hesamzadeh has been
working 12 hours a day, seven days a week,
for three years on this project, conceiving,
writing, testing, reworking and retesting
complex mathematical equations.
He quips with a wry smile that it has been
“brain eating” and that he is exhausted …
then adds that the model so far developed has
actually really only brought him to another
starting point. He feels the progressive
introduction of renewable energy from a mix of
generation sources will present more challenges
for market regulators. He would also like to test
his modelling on other complex, environmentdictated
markets, such as water.
To develop a model able to cope
with numerous, fluctuating scenarios
Mr Hesamzadeh has drawn on advanced
computer algorithms, which draw on ideas
from genetics and gaming principles (such
as those that allow optimisation based
on a sequential-move game to operate
concurrently within a simultaneous-move
game) to find the best strategies in a complex
range of interactions.
Electricity producers and sellers
effectively become dynamic ‘players’ in a
giant multi-faceted market game. And in the
real world there is also the unknown impact
of the Australian Government’s proposed
Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and
Renewable Energy Target.
While building the model, Mr Hesamzadeh
has worked closely with industry specialists,
particularly Dr Darryl Biggar at the AER,
testing his model on real-world conditions.
Dr Biggar says Mr Hesamzadeh has made
an important step towards giving regulators a
tool for more accurate cost-benefit analyses
of transmission investments and the impact
on market competition.
“The next step will be to see if what
has worked on a comparatively small-scale
network of about 20 generators will still work
with the added complexities posed by a real
world network of 200 generators,” he says.
It was the opportunity to work more
closely with the AER and Dr Biggar on
actual scenarios that encouraged both
Mr Hesamzadeh and Dr Hosseinzadeh to
move to Swinburne. Both were previously
at Central Queensland University, where
Mr Hesamzadeh started his research in
2007. His co-supervisor there was Professor
Peter Wolfs, now at Curtin University of
Technology in Western Australia.
Mr Hesamzadeh had earlier graduated
(top of class) at Shiraz University in Iran,
with a diploma in mathematics, a degree in
electrical engineering and a masters degree
in science. He came to Australia under an
International Postgraduate Research Award.
Mr Hesamzadeh hopes the Australian
electricity market will soon be the first to
benefit from what he has achieved, though
Dr Hosseinzadeh points out that others, such
as the Californian and European market
regulators, are also interested.
His long-term ambition is to stay in
research. “I have enjoyed the challenge of
the past three years. What we have achieved
will be good for Australia … and it is
rewarding to have created the beginning – a
new approach to modelling – that will be
good for science,” he says. ••
* Brad Collis is author of Snowy – The
Making of Modern Australia, the history of
the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
Fast facts
ADVANCED SOLAR FACILITY LAUNCHED
• The Victoria-Suntech Advanced Solar Facility (VSASF), launched in
Melbourne in June, aims to develop the next generation of solar cells.
The facility, a collaborative venture between Swinburne University of
Technology and Suntech Power Holdings, one of the world’s leading
producers of solar panels, has been partially funded by a $3 million grant
under the Victorian Science Agenda Investment Fund. The collaboration will
provide a platform for the partners to commercialise NANOPLAS,
a nanoplasmonic solar cell technology developed at
Swinburne. The new cell technology will allow for the efficient collection
of solar energy, which could make them twice as efficient as the
current generation of cells and significantly less costly to produce and
therefore use.
VOTERS AGAINST POPULATION GROWTH
• More than two-thirds of Australian voters are against population growth
according to new data from the 2009-10 Australian Survey of Social
Attitudes. The survey, held from December 2009 to February 2010 and
administered by the Australian Social Science Data Archives at the Australian
National University, drew on a random sample of 3142 voters. The data,
analysed by Swinburne researcher Associate Professor Katharine Betts,
shows that 69 per cent of voters believe Australia does not
need more people, while 31 per cent believe it does. It also shows
that: women are more likely to want a stable population than men (75 per
cent compared to 62 per cent); voters living in Queensland are more likely to
say no to growth (73 per cent) than voters in other areas; and voters living
in the ACT are the least likely to say no to growth (50 per cent). Voters who
wanted growth tended to give economic reasons, while those who wanted
stability emphasised the need to train our own skilled workers and the need
to protect the environment.
‘MISSION CO2’ GAME LAUNCHED
• Online energy and water-saving game ‘Mission CO2’ has been launched to
encourage people to reduce their impact on the environment. Swinburne and
the savewater! ® Alliance teamed up to create the interactive resource aimed
at creating real-world behavioural changes in Australian teenagers. ‘Mission
CO2’ covers the top 70 energy and water-saving ideas, giving teenagers
practical tips to use around the house. The educational resource
features seven characters, the ‘Carbon Tradies’, who
guide players through a 3-D home setting, saving water and energy,
reducing waste and choosing efficient transport. Through online play, users
learn tips to help them in conserving resources in daily life.
See www.missionco2.com
A MILLION WOMEN TO TAKE ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE
• Swinburne is a major partner in the ‘1 Million Women’ campaign, a
national initiative created by the non-profit, non-partisan group Climate
Coolers that aims to inspire one million Australian women to
take practical action on climate change by cutting one
million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), the main greenhouse
pollutant causing global warming. Women, who make 70 per cent of
purchasing decisions in the home, are encouraged to make changes to the
way they live, shop, commute, travel and buy to enable them to reduce their
emissions by at least one tonne of CO 2 within a year. The website provides
guidance on CO 2 saving activities and enables participants to track their
progress.
Women can join the campaign at www.1millionwomen.com.au
5

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
Universities and other research bodies in Victoria are teaming up to put
Australia at the forefront of electric car technology BY BARRY PESTANA
AS THE WORLD battles to keep a lid on
carbon emissions and slow the tempo of
climate change, electric cars are once more
looking like the alternative to the petrol
vehicles the world has come to rely on.
All but stalling after an initial burst
of excitement a few years ago, research
and development in electric cars is now
humming in top gear, with several research
institutions pouring talent and resources into
producing prototypes of new-generation, and
fast, electric cars.
In its 2010 research paper on electric
vehicles, the Victorian Automotive Chamber
of Commerce (VACC) says technological
advances are changing the face of the
automotive industry worldwide, in particular
giant strides in battery technology.
(Researchers at the Imperial College in
London may have developed devices that
create their own power.)
In Australia, the drive has been
championed by institutions such as Swinburne
University of Technology, Deakin University,
RMIT University, La Trobe University
and CSIRO, which are collaborating with
each other and with overseas universities to
research and develop lightweight batterycharged
electric cars.
They are supported by several sponsors,
including the Cooperative Research Centre
for Advanced Automotive Technology, the
AutoCRC. The CRC was created in December
2005 to secure an Australian position in the
global automotive industry. Its participants
are eight leading vehicle and component
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
6
Swinburne’s Professor Ajay Kapoor (left), Dr Clint Steele (second from left) and students are driving the
university’s collaboration with China’s Hefei University of Technology on electric vehicle development.

JULY 2010 swinburne
manufacturers, two state governments and 10
research institutions, with a total investment
in research and training of $100 million over
seven years.
Swinburne’s key electric vehicle (EV)
projects are principally funded by the
AutoCRC, which in January this year signed
a memorandum of understanding with Hefei
University of Technology (HFUT) in Anhui,
China, to establish a collaborative research
project with Swinburne. HFUT is regarded
as a leader in EV research in China, with
extensive links to that country’s automotive
industry.
The collaboration will include specific
research in battery charging, control systems
and retrofitting, and will see the exchange of
PhD students and research staff between the
universities.
Professor Ajay Kapoor, Associate
Dean, Research, of Swinburne’s Faculty of
Engineering and Industrial Sciences (FEIS),
along with colleagues Professor Zhihong
Man, Dr Mehran Ektesabi, Dr Clint Steele
and Dr Weixiang Shen, are the drivers behind
the collaboration.
Dr Shen heads a group developing a
battery capacity indicator, similar to the
petrol gauge in conventional cars, and a
battery charger that can re-charge batteries
in 30 to 60 minutes, while Professor Man
and Dr Ektesabi are well known for their
research on control systems for electric cars.
Dr Steele and Professor Kapoor are working
on retrofitting existing cars with battery and
motor systems.
Via Swinburne’s Electric Car Drive Train
group, Dr Ektesabi and Ambarish Kulkarni
are refining the development of a prototype
electro motor wheel design they believe
will lower the cost of electric cars. They are
collaborating with CSIRO, the Victorian
Partnership for Advanced Computing (VPAC)
and La Trobe University, with the focus being
CSIRO’s switch reluctance motor within the
wheel hub, which eliminates the need for a
separate motor and drive-train assembly. The
weight and energy savings gained could lead
to greater efficiencies in terms of kilometres
per electrons.
For the researchers, the overarching
challenge is to develop a strong, but light
electric car that can cover longer distances at
acceptable speeds. To this end, via another
AutoCRC project, Swinburne has joined with
Deakin University, RMIT University and
VPAC to investigate and produce a lighter car
structure.
The AutoCRC’s project leader on this study,
Dr Matthew Dingle, says although engine fuel
efficiency has steadily improved over the past
decade, fuel economy of typical vehicles has
Key points
With other universities
and CSIRO, Swinburne is
collaborating to research
and develop lightweight
battery-charged electric
cars.
The challenge is to develop
a strong, but light electric
car, which can cover longer
distances at acceptable
speeds.
New and retrofitted electric
cars will reduce emissions
and help the environment.
,,
Background
gains to come
from the
research will
be increasing
public
awareness of
advances in
electric cars and
a generation
of university
graduates able
to supply the
automotive
industry
with skills in
electric car
development.
largely plateaued due to increasing vehicle
mass. “A key enabler for reductions in fuel
consumption is reduced vehicle mass, which
determines the mass of many other components
including suspension and powertrain,” he says.
Swinburne’s contribution to this work
is spearheaded by Dr Tracy Ruan, Dr Yat
Choy Wong and Professor Chris Berndt. The
research focuses on the structural response
and energy-absorbing performance of
sandwich structures – two composite skin
sheets and aluminium foam/honeycomb cores
– a technology used in the aircraft industry.
Professor Berndt is optimistic that the
weight reductions will be dramatic without
compromising road-worthiness or crash
resistance, with associated benefits including
fuel savings, reduced carbon ‘wheel print’
and materials recycling.
But perhaps the most marketable of the
many projects has been the student electric
car project, initiated by Professor Kapoor
and Dr Ektesabi and supervised by Ambarish
Kulkarni. Last year, 15 undergraduates
produced an electric car that can reach a top
speed of 100 kilometres an hour, with enough
battery power to last two-and-a-half hours.
Dr Steele, who joined Swinburne this
year and is a senior lecturer at the FEIS, is
academic adviser for a project to design and
build an electric Formula SAE (Society of
Automotive Engineers) race car.
Dr Steele is confident the team of students
and graduates will soon have an electric race
car that is competitive with a petrol race car
and which will also regenerate the energy that
is recovered during braking. Construction of
this car is about to start.
Background gains to come from the
research will be increasing public awareness
of advances in electric cars and a generation
of university graduates able to supply the
automotive industry with skills in electric car
development.
Dr Steele can already see the skill sets
required in the auto industry changing. “We
will also see an increase in the need for
qualifications in robotics and mechatronics.
And we will need engineers who are part
mechanical and part electrical.”
Professor Kapoor says the team is
optimistic about its work and its future
impact. “Road transport contributes an eighth
of total carbon dioxide emissions in Australia.
New and retrofitted electric cars will reduce
those emissions and help the environment. We
are very excited by these projects.” ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
Electric cars drive industry
training opportunities
Growing interest in electric cars has seen a wide
range of small operations across Australia taking
up the electric car slack and offering to switch
petrol or diesel cars into electric models.
According to industry website GoAuto.com.au,
the drive for electric cars is happening at the same
time as a boom in electric scooters, and bicycles
with electric motors, as city commuters look for
green and cheap transport.
“When it comes to the electric car industry, some
organisations trying their hand at the new technology
are backyard outfits doing the odd conversion,
while a handful of operations are planning serious
production levels,” the website says.
All this opens up opportunities for institutions
such as TAFEs to offer structured courses.
The Victorian Government, through its
Department of Innovation, Industry and Regional
Development (DIIRD), has recognised the benefits
of developing a ‘green collar economy’ and has
provided financial support to institutions such as
Swinburne to develop training programs.
Swinburne TAFE’s Wantirna campus is
collaborating with the Centre for Education and
Research in Environmental Strategies (CERES) to
develop two electric vehicle (EV) courses.
The project has attracted $140,000 in funding
support from DIIRD, which includes $40,000 from
Skills Victoria for course development.
The structure and content of these are based
on work that students and staff at Swinburne
Wantirna have done in ‘building’ a working
electric vehicle from a Holden ‘Combo’ van using
100Ah lithium batteries and a water-cooled,
three-phase 60kW motor. The courses are aimed
at both professionals – mechanics and auto
electricians – as well as passionate hobbyists.
Lecturer Martin Lewis, an electrician by
training, became involved in the project after
converting his own vehicle in 2008. “The idea is
to smooth out the process by avoiding common
mistakes and hazards. Being aware of the latest
technology and methods not only saves time but
produces a better result,” Mr Lewis says.
Two courses have been developed: Battery
Electric Vehicle (BEV) Servicing and Maintaining
and BEV Retrofitting. The first is currently being
accredited and will be available later this year.
The second is on hold until new Australian Design
Rules regarding EV conversion are in place.
The courses will be driven by Swinburne’s
National Centre for Sustainability and its TAFE
School of Engineering, Technology and Trades, with
involvement by CERES.
CERES researcher Rhys Freeman believes
the growing interest in EVs opens up all sorts of
opportunities for a range of participants. “The
business opportunities for universities in training
contractors is already looking very positive,”
he says.
– BARRY PESTANA
SUSTAINABILITY
7

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
8
Future travels
down a GLASS
HIGHWAY
Mountains of waste glass that would otherwise
go to landfill may soon find a home in Victoria’s
roads and footpaths BY KARIN DERKLEY
AUSTRALIANS have become great recyclers
of glass, even though not all glass is actually
reusable. However, a purpose may just have
been found for the growing stockpile of
waste glass in many cities and towns.
Research at Swinburne University
of Technology’s Centre for Sustainable
Infrastructure is looking at ways to make this
glass suitable for use in road construction.
In Victoria alone, about 250,000 tonnes of
non-recyclable glass ends up in landfill, so it
represents a sizeable resource to supplement
materials used in roads and footpaths.
Recycled glass is already used in road
construction in Europe and the US, but
each region needs to set its own standards
according to local conditions, materials and
climate.
Key points
About 250,000 tonnes of
waste glass are stockpiled
each year in Victoria.
Laboratory testing at
Swinburne has shown that
the glass has the right
qualities to be incorporated
into road base material.
If road trials currently being
conducted are successful,
road base materials could
in future include up to 30
per cent recycled glass,
absorbing all waste glass
produced in Victoria.
In Victoria, VicRoads, which constructs
state highways and freeways, and the
Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV),
which represents local councils that look after
local roads, footpaths and bike paths, need to
be confident that the new materials would not
compromise quality and durability. Currently,
crushed glass is allowed, but only up to a
maximum proportion of three per cent.
Roads generally have three levels: a subbase
pavement, a base pavement and an
asphalt top. The sub-base is the main loadbearing
layer of the pavement;; its role is to
spread the load evenly over the earth beneath.
The quality of the sub-base is crucial – poor
construction or use of the wrong materials
can cause the upper surface to crack.
Materials used in a sub-base must
comprise particles of a shape and size
that interlock tightly when compacted to
eliminate air gaps and movement.
Traditionally quarry rock has been used.
Authorities such as VicRoads require proof
that any new material like crushed glass can
withstand at least 20 years of heavy traffic.
This is where Swinburne comes in.
Dr Arul Arulrajah, an associate professor
in Civil and Geotechnical Engineering
at Swinburne’s Centre for Sustainable
Infrastructure, has previously assessed
the suitability of crushed brick as a road
construction material.
Last year, supported by a consortium of
government and industry groups including
Sustainability Victoria, Visy, VicRoads,
the MAV and the ARRB Group (formerly
Australian Road Research Board),
Dr Arulrajah led a team to compare different
blends of recycled glass, crushed rock and
concrete with traditional quarry materials.
Laboratory tests by Dr Arulrajah and his
team, including Swinburne PhD students
Younus Ali and Mahdi Miri Disfani, assessed
the mechanical properties of each blend,
including the particle density, particle
size, plasticity (ability to be shaped),
compactability, permeability and loadbearing
capacity.
The finding – that all the blends with up
to 30 per cent glass matched or exceeded
the VicRoads specifications – didn’t actually
come as a surprise to Professor Arulrajah,
“given that crushed glass is really just like
coarse sand”.
Even so, it is one thing for a material to
perform under the controlled conditions of
a laboratory, and another for it to deal with
real-world conditions. Associate Professor
Binh Vuong, a senior research fellow
with Swinburne’s Centre for Sustainable
Infrastructure and a principal engineer
at ARRB, has extensive experience in
laboratory testing and field construction of
recycled and quarry-produced materials. In
his joint appointment with ARRB, Professor
Vuong had already been involved in the
laboratory testing process for recycled glass.
His role now is to oversee the field-testing of
the blends.
ILLUSTRATION: KEN UCHIDA

JULY 2010 swinburne
Materials recycler the Alex Fraser
Group offered the entrance to its Western
Metropolitan Recycling Facility in Laverton,
Victoria, as the site for a road trial. The road
carries a large volume of heavy vehicles.
Nine sections of road, each 80 metres long,
were laid in November 2009, each using a
different blend of recycled glass and recycled
concrete or crushed rock, and designed and
constructed to the specifications required for
arterial and local roads.
After six months the test roads are showing
no visible signs of rutting or cracking, the
symptoms of a weakening sub-base.
In May 2011 the surface will be
scrutinised in minute detail using an ARRB
laser profiler. If the study shows the glass
blends are of comparable performance to
virgin quarry rock, the consortium backing
the research will submit a report to VicRoads
for its consideration. This may potentially
lead to an adjustment in VicRoads’
specifications, to allow higher percentages
of crushed glass to be used in crushed
roadmaking materials.
David Birrell, General Manager Recycling
Industries at the Alex Fraser Group, believes
glass mixes will be competitive options for
road builders. “To take on a product it has to
make both commercial as well as sustainable
sense. We have no doubt that this product
will be competitive with other road-building
materials.” ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
SLOW LIFTS A LESSON IN
step-change
STORY BY Karin Derkley
SUSTAINABILITY has become a buzzword
for the early 21st century, evoking worthy
ideals … but how are these transformed into
reality when much about the way the world
functions seems to make people inherently
wasteful or destructive?
The ideal of sustainability, and the reality
that confronts this, is the conundrum that
Professor Frank Fisher is tackling after his
appointment as Professor of Sustainability in
the Faculty of Design at Swinburne University
of Technology and as the convenor of a
graduate sustainability program at Swinburne’s
National Centre for Sustainability.
An electrical engineer, Professor Fisher
was previously an associate professor in the
School of Geography and Environmental
Science at Monash University. In his new
positions at Swinburne, ‘design’ takes on
an added dimension – an instrument for
modifying people’s behaviour.
Good design, he says, makes it easier for
people to do the right thing, and harder to do
the wrong thing.
Design students are taught to understand
that whatever they design – products, services
or systems – will have environmental,
cultural and social consequences. These days,
sustainability is often as essential to a design
brief as economics, function and aesthetics.
Taking this a step further, Swinburne has
become the first educational institution
to adopt a recently created international
Designers Accord set up to establish a new
universal standard for sustainability in design
and innovation.
In parallel with this international
benchmark, Swinburne has launched its
own university-wide Sustainability Strategy
(see page 10). The strategy aims to make
sustainability one of the key drivers in all
future planning and service delivery at
Swinburne itself. One of Professor Fisher’s
jobs is to put this into practice.
Once again, design of systems and structures
can lead the way to behavioural change, he
argues. Take the way buildings are designed.
If you are trying to reduce the use of lifts, for
example, and make stair-climbing the social
norm, the stairway should be at the centre of
any lobby. Invariably though, lifts occupy the
centre, with stairs tucked away in a corner.
Although there is not much that can be done
about existing lifts at the university, Professor
Fisher is doing his best to discourage their use
in another structural way – by slowing them to
the point where the average able-bodied person
would find it more convenient to use the stairs,
cutting energy use and increasing incidental
,,
Good design
makes it easier
for people to do
the right thing,
and harder to do
the wrong thing.
Professor
Frank Fisher CONTINUED PAGE 10
SUSTAINABILITY
9
Can you see beyond colour, beyond form?
Can you design tools and systems to better
protect our environment? Can you design a
culture of sustainability? Can you see beyond
and realise design’s greater responsibilities?
Question Everything.
CRICOS Provider: 00111D SUT1318/27/C
swinburne.edu.au/design

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
10
FROM PAGE 9
exercise among students and staff.
Professor Fisher’s approach to waste
management is similarly direct. He says
waste should be labelled for what it is: bad
design. “If a product or package cannot be
recycled or biodegraded, there is something
wrong with its design.”
Bins at the Design Centre are now
signposted: ‘Bad Design Disposed Here’. ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
ILLUSTRATION: KEN UCHIDA
Key points
Good design is the key to
changing people’s behaviour.
Sustainability is being
integrated into all design
disciplines at Swinburne.
Swinburne has joined a
global accord to encourage
sustainable design.
Swinburne Sustainability Strategy: more than just another policy document
The Swinburne Sustainability Strategy – Swinburne’s
commitment to sustainability – has a set of outcome measures
that will ensure all Swinburne courses embed sustainability
and that 50 per cent of staff are upskilled by 2015.
With these targets, Swinburne is a leader in the Australian
university sector in embedding sustainability in its core
business, its courses, its research and the skills of its staff.
For Swinburne, sustainable thinking represents an emerging
mode of inquiry, one that questions and seeks to understand
whether current products, processes or systems can be
continued indefinitely into the future from ecological, social and
economic viability perspectives.
Swinburne’s Sustainability Strategy focuses on six
interdependent priority directions:
•Culture and Stewardship
To draw on the leadership, commitment and knowledge of the
university and broader community to create a working, learning
and research culture that is the benchmark in sustainability for
all education providers globally.
New course embeds sustainability in educational practice
Swinburne’s National Centre for Sustainability has developed
and is now teaching Australia’s first accredited course in
education and training for sustainability.
The Vocational Graduate Certificate in Education and Training
for Sustainability is principally a qualification for teachers,
those in vocational education and training, higher education,
and secondary and primary schools, who wish to embed
sustainability in their curriculum, teaching and assessment, and
use education for sustainability as a tool for change.
However, for others interested in making sustainability
changes in their community groups, local councils, government
agencies, industry and non-government organisations, the
course will also enable them to design and implement effective
learning and change programs.
Over three core competency units, graduates learn to:
Tradies turn a greener shade
Through ‘green’ training on water-wise plumbing and irrigation
systems, recycled greywater and solar insulation Swinburne
University of Technology is helping to prepare Australia for a
more sustainable, low-carbon future.
Due to be completed in July 2010, Swinburne’s Green
Trades Complex will upskill and re-skill builders, plumbers
and other construction apprentices in ‘green’ trades, such as
traditional plumbing courses in certificates II and III.
Built environment manager at Swinburne TAFE School of
Engineering, Technology and Trades Stuart Hoxley says 250
plumbing students will go through the doors of the complex
this year. “These are a mix of school-based Vocational
Introductory Programs (VIPs) students, pre-apprenticeship and
apprenticeship students,” he says.
Mr Hoxley, who manages Swinburne’s plumbing, carpentry,
bricking and blocking, painting and decorating, advanced
building studies, and fire technology courses says the new
•Teaching and Learning
To ensure that the design, delivery and promotion of
education programs develops appropriate discipline-specific
expertise, skills and attributes in graduates, which assists
them to contribute to a sustainable future within the context
of their particular career, profession or trade.
•Research
To ensure that faculties and schools undertake research
in a sustainable manner and establish research areas that
contribute to sustainability globally.
•People Development
To build a positive enabling culture that embraces
sustainability in the curriculum, research and the workplace.
•Social and Community Sustainability
To maximise its dual-sector strengths to create a transformational
model for community and sustainable educational partnerships,
which embraces social inclusion and diversity.
•Business and Environmental
To be an efficient, effective and sustainable organisation.
• teach, review and design learning strategies to embed
sustainability practices within existing programs;
• plan and implement a learning-based change program for
sustainability;
• conduct action research projects to transform sustainability
practices;
• implement an education-for-sustainability learning strategy;
• facilitate a broad range of delivery and assessment
strategies to support sustainability change; and
• review business missions and/or business plans, or
educational objectives to incorporate sustainability
principles.
More information
• www.swinburne.edu.au/ncs/edutrain.html
complex is a “fantastic opportunity for Swinburne to enhance
its green training in critical trade sectors.
“It’s an opportunity to give young kids a wider variety
of prospects, plus upskill existing tradespeople and retrain
existing workers.”
The facility, funded via a $10 million Australian Government
grant, is the first of its kind in Victoria and has strong industry
support.
“ It’s an opportunity to give
young kids a wider variety
of prospects, plus upskill
existing tradespeople and
retrain existing workers.”

JULY 2010 swinburne
surprise findings
IN BUSINESS CARBON CHASE
STORY BY Tim Treadgold
A GROUNDBREAKING STUDY by a team
at Swinburne University of Technology
has found that smaller companies would
have little to fear from a Carbon Pollution
Reduction Scheme (CPRS) … if or when
Australia gets one.
Instead of incurring the heavy costs that
some commentators have predicted, smallto-medium
enterprises (SMEs) employing
less than 200 people are likely to only face
fees in the hundreds of dollars a year, which
for many would be less than typical annual
increases in existing electricity, water and
other essential services.
The study sheds a different light on
claims that an emissions trading scheme,
such as the mothballed CPRS, would impose
a significant cost burden on SMEs.
Scott McKenry, who supervised the study,
says the cost of an emissions scheme is
likely be lost against the background noise of
other cost increases. “The research suggests
there will not be a significant price incentive
to drive investor and consumer behavioural
change.”
Mr McKenry, team leader in the business
and community services division of the
National Centre for Sustainability, says
that shelving the CPRS did not affect the
importance of the results obtained by the
survey.
Despite policy backpedalling, he believes
businesses will continue to move ahead.
“Early adaptors and innovators will continue
to pursue carbon-constrained opportunities
because there are clear market opportunities
to do so. Energy and resource efficiency is
good for business no matter which way you
look at it.”
The Swinburne study originated from
work undertaken by students as part of the
Carbon Accounting course at Swinburne’s
National Centre for Sustainability. Each
participant in the course undertakes work in
their own business (or another business) to
develop a carbon inventory and report for the
workplace.
Until this information was gathered, most
of the data relating to carbon accounting
applied to large organisations, such as that
collected by the Carbon Disclosure Project.
This Swinburne research was therefore
unique because it focused on the footprints
of small-to-medium-sized enterprises with
less than 200 employees. “We complemented
the data analysis by undertaking surveys
to help us understand which businesses
were being proactive in carbon reduction,”
Mr McKenry says.
Before the Swinburne research, most
studies on the cost of emissions trading had
a macro-economic focus and examined the
impacts on various (mostly carbon-intensive)
sectors, such as power stations, aluminium
production and mining. This was partly
due to the lack of reliable data on small-tomedium-sized
organisations.
Discovering that an emissions trading
scheme would have minimal impact on
most small-to-medium-sized organisations
was a surprise to the researchers,
Mr McKenry says.
“You can chase carbon until you’re blue
in the face. So a boundary was drawn around
the process to mainly look at major factors
such as electricity, liquid fuels, gas, flights
and waste, which typically represent
about 95 per cent of an SME’s carbon
footprint.”
Mr McKenry feels much of the debate
surrounding emissions trading, especially the
potential cost involved, has been driven by a
fear of the unknown, similar to points raised
before the mid-2000 introduction of the
Goods and Services Tax (GST).
He doubts a carbon emissions trading
scheme will stay on the political backburner
and when it does re-emerge the students’
research will be a valuable reference. ••
More information
• To read the full Swinburne research report visit
www.swinburne.edu.au/ncs/Innovation/climate_
change_report.html
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
Key points
ILLUSTRATION: ARTVILLE
Smaller companies have
little to fear from a Carbon
Pollution Reduction
Scheme.
Taking a different approach
to carbon costs, Swinburne
research focused on
small-to-medium-sized
enterprises.
Researchers were surprised
to find that an emissions
trading scheme would have
minimal impact on most
small-to-medium-sized
organisations.
ALUMNISUSTAINABILITY
11

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
12
HUMBLE SHELLFISH
MAY GIVE US
‘vanishing plastic’
A truly biodegradable plastic made from a renewable resource, arguably one of the more
practical waste-management goals being pursued around the world, is a step closer
through the research of two Australian PhD students BY CLARISA COLLIS
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR Enzo Palombo
fingers a plastic bag labelled as ‘degradable’:
“… in 5000 years,” he quips, before shifting
his focus to the slightly silkier texture of a
true biodegradable plastic bag.
It’s all in the rustle – one of the only
things that immediately distinguishes a
biodegradable plastic bag from a regular
plastic bag.
Biodegradable plastic bags are still
a rarity and a long way from replacing
the tough conventional plastic variety
manufactured from non-renewable resources.
It is this toughness, or durability, that still
makes conventional bags the norm and a
worsening environmental headache. Plastic
packaging accounts for up to 25 per cent of
Australia’s municipal landfill.
Researchers at Swinburne University of
Technology believe science might offer a
solution.
The university is supporting two research
projects investigating bioplastics: one into the
use of ingredients from renewable sources,
and another into the properties of biopolymers
that determine their ‘compostability’.
The two projects have brought together
Swinburne PhD students Suchetana
Chattopadhyay and Cameron Way, who are
examining the properties of bioplastics as
part of their respective PhD studies.
The Director of Swinburne’s Environment
and Biotechnology Centre, Associate
Professor Palombo, is co-supervisor for both
students and describes their work as among
the most exciting applied projects he has
encountered during his 20-year research
career.
He says much of the excitement at
the university has been generated by a
composting machine (respirometer), which
allows students to gauge how a project’s
applications function in real time, over the
course of an experiment.
Anchored to a bench at Swinburne’s
Hawthorn campus with heavy chains,
the jumble of glass jars and tubes that
form the composting machine is used by
Ms Chattopadhyay to test novel, chitin-based
polymers.
Chitin is the world’s second-most
abundant natural polymer and is mostly
derived from shellfish waste, but also
includes the exoskeletons of crustaceans,
insects and spiders.
In collaboration with an industry partner,
Ms Chattopadhyay has provided the first

JULY 2010 swinburne
direct evidence of true biodegradability in
novel, chitin-based polymers.
“Fungi from compost have grown on the
chitin-based biopolymer, proving that this
material is biodegradable,” she says.
Fungi plays a key role in degrading the
most abundant biopolymers found in nature.
Ms Chattopadhyay’s objective to reduce
inorganic landfill has the added aim of
finding a biopolymer suitable for food
packaging that is derived from raw materials
that do not compete with food crops.
Up to now, the most common source
of bioplastics has been starch from grains,
but there is concern that food production
is already under enough pressure from
environmental stresses and the emergence
of biofuels, without adding a new resource
competitor.
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
External supervisor and the industry
collaborator who developed the project’s
bioplastic formula, Dr Myrna Nisperos from
a specialty food business, says the research is
driving the second generation of bioplastics,
characterised by plastics biopolymers
derived from non-food materials.
“Finding a biopolymer that is not
derived from food production is especially
significant in developing countries where
people depend on starch as a staple food,”
Dr Nisperos says.
“And we can prove that this secondgeneration
bioplastics material will degrade
in soil within six months or less, which
means it can degrade anywhere in landfill
conditions.”
Dr Nisperos says the project’s future
direction and universal commercial
,,
We can prove
that this secondgeneration
bioplastics
material will
degrade in
soil within six
months or less,
which means
it can degrade
anywhere
in landfill
conditions.”
Dr Myrna
Nisperos
Associate Professor Enzo
Palombo (centre) with
PhD students Cameron
Way (left) and Suchetana
Chattopadhyay.
Key points
A new formula is being
researched for improved
biodegradable plastics.
Shellfish waste is an
alternative to starch from
food crops for making the
bioplastics.
Researchers are close to
balancing the competing
needs of strength
and compostability in
bioplastics.
potential are encouraging, with prototype
biodegradable plastics possibly just
months away.
In a parallel project, Swinburne student
Cameron Way helped develop a sophisticated
composting machine at CSIRO’s Materials
Science and Engineering division in
Clayton, Victoria, under the supervision of
Dr Katherine Dean. Mr Way’s machine has
allowed him to examine the composition,
and mechanical and biodegradation
relationships of polylactic acid (PLA)–
lignocellulose biocomposites.
Since completing the new respirometer
at CSIRO, Mr Way has been refining
a technical balancing act between a
biopolymer’s competing mechanical and
biodegradability properties. In other words,
ensuring the bioplastic is strong enough to be
used in plastic packaging and then composts
when discarded.
His research has led him to use a cornstarch-based
biopolymer that is reinforced
with lignocellulose fibres.
Mr Way says the project exploring the
properties of biopolymers since mid-2006
focused on the larger biodegradable plastics
picture.
“Overall understanding of consequences
for the future design of biodegradable
plastics is frontier science which improves
understanding to encourage more direct
applications.
“An ideal balance of the competing
mechanical and biodegradable properties
in the biocomposite would involve
improvements in both areas and finding
a key bacteria or enzyme that kicks off
biodegradability,” he says.
Mr Way says biodegradable plastics are
essential to reducing the mounting dilemma
of plastics waste: “The petrochemicals used
to create plastic packaging will run out one
day and we need to find alternatives that are
sustainable.
“From an environmental perspective,
both the PLA and wood fibres are 100 per
cent sustainable, so they reduce the need to
use crude oils and conventional plastics, and
potentially eliminate long-term waste issues
with landfill.
“With very strong uptake into the market
and demand outstripping supply in the
US, the best use for polylactic plastics is
food and beverage packaging because it
can be simply thrown into the compost,”
he says. ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
SUSTAINABILITY
13

swinburne JULY 2010
SUSTAINABILITY
14
INTERNET POWER MAY NEED
computers to sleep
STORY BY David Adams
ON ANY GIVEN DAY the amount of energy
used to power Facebook pages, recipe
searches, news sites and all that the internet
entails is about 20 or 30 gigawatts – in terms
of greenhouse gas emissions, this is roughly
the same as the airline industry.
That equates to two or three times as
much as Victoria’s total peak electricity
generating capacity and although it only
accounts for two or three per cent of the
energy consumed around the world, the rate
at which the internet is growing means this
figure is starting to climb – and fast.
Dr Lachlan Andrew, associate professor
at the Centre for Advanced Internet
Architectures (CAIA) at Swinburne
University of Technology, is researching
ways in which the efficiency of the internet
can be improved to lessen its environmental
impact.
He is motivated not only by the influence
the internet’s power use is already having on
the environment but also by the finite nature
of the world’s energy supply.
“The total rate of extraction of oil is
approaching its peak and the total rate of
energy generation will also reduce,” says
Dr Andrew, who joined Swinburne in 2008
after spending three years at the California
Institute of Technology (Caltech) in the US.
“The current mindset of ‘x’ per cent growth
per annum will have to change. We simply
can’t keep increasing our activity because
the rate at which we use one of our most
basic raw materials (oil) is going to have
to decline.”
Drawing on funding he will receive over
the next four years after being awarded
an Australian Research Council Future
Fellowship, Dr Andrew is proposing a
number of projects to investigate ways in
which the internet’s energy efficiency can
be increased and what effects this has on its
performance.
One of the projects already underway
is looking at how a computer’s processing
speed can be better regulated to minimise
energy consumption.
Computers can already slow down the
rate at which they process information to
save energy, but it is generally only done in
an ad-hoc fashion, according to parameters
set by the manufacturer. Together with
Caltech’s Dr Adam Wierman, Dr Andrew
is examining how the mechanism within
a computer responsible for controlling
processing speed can be manipulated to
make PCs’ energy use more efficient,
while holding the time a computer takes to
complete a job within reasonable limits.
Dr Andrew says the point of the research
is not necessarily to encourage more people
to adopt the most energy-efficient way of
processing but to make them more aware of
the trade-offs that are involved.
“We’re saying ‘Here’s the trade-off: if
you want to be putting a lot of emphasis on
going fast, then you will save this much less
Key points
Worldwide, the internet
currently draws as much
as 20 or 30 gigawatts of
power.
Swinburne researchers are
examining how internet
use can be made more
efficient, for example at
how improved regulation of
computer processing speed
could save energy.
Other investigations focus
on the effects on energy
use of shutting down
components of some
switches in routers and
placing computers used in
peer-to-peer file sharing
networks in sleep states.
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: JUSTIN GARNSWORTHY
energy;; if you want to put the emphasis on
saving energy, then you will run this much
slower’. So we’re quantifying the trade-offs
for the designers.”
Other projects include one in which
Dr Andrew and his Swinburne colleague,
Associate Professor Hai Vu are looking at how
components of some switches located within
routers used to provide internet connectivity can
be shut down at certain periods to save energy.
In a separate initiative, Dr Andrew is also
proposing to examine how putting computers
used in commercial peer-to-peer file sharing
networks into a ‘sleep state’ for a period of
time will affect energy consumption and the
network’s performance.
Dr Kerry Hinton, a senior research
fellow at the Institute for a Broadband-
Enabled Society (IBES) at the University
of Melbourne, says Dr Andrew’s research
is particularly needed given the looming
‘energy bottleneck’ – a term used to describe
the problems many industry experts foresee
developing as the amount of power the
internet needs to function continues to grow.
“It is essential that the internet and
the equipment it relies upon continuously
become more energy efficient,” he says.
“Without this, the internet’s growth will
ultimately result in an energy bottleneck.
If this is not resolved, future growth of
the internet may be retarded. This could
negatively impact on social and economic
developments that rely on the internet.”
Dr Hinton says one of the most important
aspects of the work surrounds working out
how to use computer ‘sleep states’ to reduce
energy consumption.
“Get it right and we can make good gains
in energy efficiency. Get it wrong and the
energy consumption may actually increase.”
Dr Mung Chiang, an associate professor
of electrical engineering at Princeton
University in the US and someone aware of
Dr Andrew’s work, says that working out
how to trade-off technology performance
with energy consumption is a demanding
challenge to researchers globally.
“I believe Lachlan’s research work and
collaborations present one of the most
promising efforts to meet that challenge,” he
says, noting that it will complement work
being done elsewhere around the world – in
Asia, the US and the European Union – to
‘green’ the IT industry. “Lachlan’s research
program on this topic will naturally form
partnerships with some of these.” ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

GOT A BETTER IDEA?
A different tomorrow starts with a
Swinburne research scholarship.
Swinburne University of Technology has the academic support,
the facilities and the commitment to help realise great research ideas.
Applications close 31 October 2010.
RESEARCH SCHOLARSHIPS
1800 794 673
research.swinburne.edu.au/scholarships/
SUT1316_30_C
CRICOS Provider: 00111D

swinburne JULY 2010
ALUMNUS PROFILE
16
How gran’s gift
turned sunlight into
people power
Key points
Former Swinburne
student’s experiences in
business make for lessons
worth sharing.
Persistence is as necessary
as ideas for success in
business.
Banks and governments
can test entrepreneurial
nerves.
Clear Solar’s
Paul Wilson.
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
This Swinburne student
actually has a lot to teach,
after interrupting his studies
to build an energy company
BY TIM TREADGOLD
PAUL WILSON will not be the oldest student
on campus if he goes through with plans to
finish his engineering studies at Swinburne
University of Technology, but he will be one
of the more successful, and for that he can
thank the community’s rush into sustainable
energy – and his granny.
Clear Solar, an Australian leader in rooftop
electricity production using photovoltaic
technology, is 38-year-old Mr Wilson’s latest
and biggest contribution to the environment.
An earlier effort, when he was much
younger, involved planting 10,000 gum trees
to lower his personal carbon footprint.
“I’ve always been passionate about the
environment,” he says. “What I’m doing
now is part of a 20-year journey.”
What he is also doing is creating a
business with an astonishing growth rate.
As Australians embrace photovoltaic power
production, and make use of generous
government subsidies, Clear Solar’s sales
have rocketed up from $3 million two years
ago to $100 million this year.
That success has encouraged Mr Wilson
to recruit a chief executive for the business
to ease his workload, and to plan a return
to Swinburne to complete what he started
in 1990 before discovering opportunities
in the business world while on an industry
placement in Germany in 1992.
“The challenge has been to find a chief
executive for Clear Solar who I could trust
more than I trust myself,” he says. “Now
that I’ve done that, I should have time to
do things I want to do, rather than things I
have to do, and one of those is to finish my
degree. If asked, I might even have some
useful knowledge to pass on in a lecture of
my own.”
If Swinburne takes Mr Wilson up on that
suggestion a lot will be heard about how

JULY 2010 swinburne
a yet-to-graduate engineer has applied his
knowledge to the business world, especially
sustainable business, with some advice on
dealing with banks and handling the cashflow
challenges of rapid growth.
Mr Wilson’s shift into business started
in Germany when he saw two innovations:
advanced video-surveillance systems and
photovoltaic electricity production.
On his return from the overseas industry
placement, Mr Wilson decided to pursue
business opportunities rather than return
immediately to Swinburne. The first venture
was in video-surveillance systems with the
creation of Clear Security, part-funded with a
gift from his grandmother.
“Granny gave me my $7000 inheritance
early to see what I would do with it,” he says.
What he did was buy a second-hand
Toyota HiLux and a fax machine, before
visiting a shopping centre and asking every
shop owner whether they wanted video
surveillance. None did, bar one. “He said
he probably didn’t, but if I kept asking he’d
buy, and he did.” His business was launched.
For business students it is a priceless
lesson in how perseverance can be as
important as a bright idea. While building
his successful video-surveillance business
Mr Wilson tried to find a way to do the same
with solar electricity production, but “there
was no way I could get the numbers to add
up,” he says.
That changed three years ago when the
Australian Government introduced its solar
panel rebate scheme, which slashed the price
of installing a photovoltaic power system,
sparking a householder stampede that is
getting stronger by the month.
The reason for the rush is that more
people are seeking to make a personal
renewable-energy contribution.
There also is a sizeable financial incentive.
A photovoltaic system costs between $10,000
and $15,000 and is installed at a cost to the
homeowner of between $2000 and $2500.
Because the systems generate power for the
home and sell surplus electricity into the
grid, even the cost of the initial outlay can be
recovered in about five years, and it will be
less when a new generation of more efficient
photovoltaic cells is introduced.
Understanding the financial intricacies of
the renewable energy industry has been as
important to Mr Wilson as the technology
itself, starting with the way Renewable
Energy Certificates (RECs) are created,
acquired and traded.
Then there is the challenge of finding a
bank that understands a renewable-energy
business. The first bank he approached
did not. “They told me pretty early on that
the business wouldn’t work.” Fortunately,
another bank had a different perspective and
accepted his business ideas.
Then came the challenge of dealing with
the Australian Government, a rhetorical
supporter of renewable power, but
inconsistent at putting up the money, creating
cash-flow problems for companies like Clear
Solar, which rely on government payment
to cover their own bills, especially for the
imported solar panels.
“Slow government payments have been
a problem,” Mr Wilson says. “At one stage
payments had blown out to 120 days. More
recently it’s been around 90 days. They are
promising to get back to 42 days.”
When Mr Wilson makes his return to
Swinburne, students of sustainability might
hear some unexpected observations from a
man who has emerged as a clear leader in the
field of renewable energy. In particular, he is
not sad that the Carbon Pollution Reduction
Scheme (CPRS) has been deferred by the
Australian Government.
“The issue I had with the CPRS and the
Emissions Trading Scheme is that it puts all
the responsibility into the hands of major
producers and consumers,” Mr Wilson says.
“There’s no reward for the end user.
“What we have with our solar power
business is a way for people in the
community to get a chance to be masters
of their own energy use … make their
own power, and feel good about their
contribution. What we’re doing at Clear
Solar is providing a sense of individual
ownership of the sustainability issue.” ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
IMAGINE
WITH
ACCOUNTANTS.
How can calculators and balance sheets
be used to combat crime?
Accounting Professor Suresh Cuganesan is a leading
researcher in performance measurement who is helping
Victoria Police and the Australian Crime Commission
combat organised crime. Read all about it in the back
issues of Swinburne Magazine, available when you
subscribe online at swinburne.edu.au/magazine
For more fascinating Swinburne
University of Technology discoveries,
subscribe online for free.
QUESTION EVERYTHING
1300 275 788
swinburne.edu.au/magazine
CRICOS Provider: 00111D

swinburne JULY 2010
ASTRONOMY
Our cannibal galaxy
In a fascinating new piece of ‘galactic archaeology’
astronomers have found that up to one-quarter of the Milky Way’s
galactic clusters are intruders BY JULIAN CRIBB
Key points
18 TO SEE ITS STARFIELDS hung in radiant group of star clusters, averaging about elements, pointing to formation processes
Astronomers have long
suspected that galaxies
comprise remnants of other,
earlier galaxies.
New research has found
that a quarter of the Milky
Way’s galactic clusters
were ‘born’ elsewhere and
at a different time from the
majority of other clusters.
Some clusters are as young
as two billion years – less
than half the age of the
Earth.
splendour across the night sky, you would
scarcely suspect the Milky Way of being a
cannibal, a gigantic buzz-saw of a galaxy
that has chopped its neighbours into bits and
ingested their fragments into its own clouds
of stars.
But that is what a fascinating new piece
of ‘galactic archaeology’ by Swinburne
astrophysicist Professor Duncan Forbes and
his colleague Dr Terry Bridges, of Queen’s
University, Canada, has revealed.*
In a painstaking analysis of the age and
metallic composition of almost 100 galactic
clusters – groups of one million or so stars
– out of the 160 clusters that comprise our
galaxy, the researchers conclude that up to a
quarter are aliens … born elsewhere and at
a different time to the majority of clusters in
our own Milky Way.
Astronomers have long suspected that
the galaxies we see today are accretions
consisting of the remnants of other galaxies,
but the true extent of this intergalactic
churning and star-exchange has never before
been quite so evident. In fact, say Professor
Forbes and Dr Bridges, about a quarter of
the galactic clusters in the Milky Way today
may themselves be the remnants of between
six and eight smaller galaxies which it has
chewed up and partially absorbed over time.
Investigating the age and iron abundance
of each cluster, the team detected two
distinctive signatures – that of the main
12.8 billion years of age that make up the
bulk of the Milky Way, and of a second
group, which are significantly younger.
Notable among the youngsters are clusters
with a strong family resemblance to the
remnants of the dwarf galaxies Sagittarius
and Canis Major, both of which appear to
have been torn apart by the vast tidal forces
of gravity in the past. It now seems they
passed close enough to the Milky Way, the
dominant local galaxy, for it to rob them of
large clusters of their stars, some of which
are only half the general age of the clusters
in our galaxy.
“A great circle in the sky connects
the Fornax, Leo (I and II) and Sculptor
galaxies,” Professor Forbes says. “One
possibility is that some clusters were tidally
stripped from the Fornax galaxy as it
crossed the orbit of the Milky Way. Another
possibility is that these clusters came from
the remains of a completely disrupted dwarf
galaxy that was torn to pieces.”
Another set of star clusters in our Milky
Way exhibit a contrary motion to most of the
others, making it quite likely they have been
drawn in from outside.
The cluster known as Omega Centaurus
and another called M54, may indeed be the
remnant nuclei of ruined dwarf galaxies
which our own has devoured.
Yet another group of star clusters has
signatures unusually rich in helium and other
somewhat different to those of clusters in our
galaxy as a whole.
The team found some galactic clusters
as young as a mere two billion years – less
than half the age of the Earth – suggesting
that the process of disruption and accretion is
proceeding more or less continuously, as star
clusters are born from gas clouds in dwarf
galaxies past which the Milky Way hurtles,
absorbing some of them on its journey.
Similar star-stripping it appears is now
starting to befall the Magellanic Clouds,
large and small, which have approached
close enough to the Milky Way to be feeling
the power of its gravitational hunger,
Professor Forbes says. And a vast event, the
collision of the Milky Way with the giant
spiral galaxy Andromeda, is due to take
place in five billion years from now.
“The universe seems in some ways
to be a very violent place, with all these
interactions, mergers and collisions taking
place, as the giant galaxies cannibalise the
smaller ones. But on the other hand, so
vast are the distances that even when two
galaxies collide the stars do not come into
contact with one another, although they
are subject to each other’s gravitational
influence.”
Instead, he says, astronomers speculate
these mergers may bring about the change
from the classic spiral-shaped galaxy to the
larger and more chaotic elliptical form – and

JULY 2010 swinburne
,,
Previously
astronomers
considered our
galaxy might
have absorbed
stars from a
couple of others.
These latest data
provide evidence
that the Milky
Way may be far
hungrier than we
imagined, and
has swallowed
pieces of as
many as six or
eight.
Professor
Duncan Forbes
ASTRONOMY
19
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
in some cases possibly back again.
The team’s galactic archaeology has
yielded the largest high-quality database
recording the age and chemical properties
of each of the Milky Way star clusters,
revealing ‘layer by layer’ the deep history of
our own star system and its neighbours.
“Using this data from the Hubble Space
Telescope we’ve been able to identify key
signatures in many of the galactic clusters
that differentiate them from the bulk of
the population and point to an external
origin,” Professor Forbes says. “This led
us to conclude that tens of millions of the
stars we can see each night in our own
galaxy are outsiders, drawn in from other
galactic bodies.
“Previously astronomers considered
our galaxy might have absorbed stars
from a couple of others. These latest data
provide evidence that the Milky Way may
be far hungrier than we imagined, and
has swallowed pieces of as many as six
or eight.” ••
* Professor Forbes and Dr Bridges’ paper,
‘Accreted versus in situ Milky Way globular
clusters’, appears in a recent issue of the
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society. Professor Forbes’ research was
carried out in Canada as part of an Australian
Research Council International Fellowship.
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine

swinburne JULY 2010
BIOMEDICINE
20
Mathematicians are attempting to develop algorithms to solve ‘master equations’ that could
one day help biomedicine even the odds against infectious diseases BY DR GIO BRAIDOTTI
INFECTIOUS-DISEASE SPECIALISTS call it
the ‘Red Queen strategy’ and viruses are
particularly good at it. By constantly changing
their molecular identity through genetic
trickery, viruses keep the immune system
perpetually running after an ever-elusive
opponent … much like the Red Queen’s race
in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-Glass,
where the Red Queen and Alice run faster and
faster just to remain in the same place.
The human immunodeficiency virus, HIV,
which is responsible for AIDS, is a master
practitioner of the strategy. So is influenza.
Molecular biology has developed
the means to even the odds against the
viruses, but to make the most of these
biotechnologies there is a need to understand
how infections unfold in human patients. At
stake are the principles that determine how
individual viruses infect, reproduce, mutate,
spread – or better yet, become extinct –
within diverse and unique human hosts.
But while an infection’s predator/
prey-like dynamics matter when designing
therapeutic counter-strategies to the Red
Queen, explaining these dynamics presents
enormous problems to mathematicians.
At Swinburne University of Technology,
Professor Peter Drummond and Dr Tim
Vaughan from the Centre for Atom Optics
and Ultrafast Spectroscopy (CAOUS) know
first-hand what biomedicine researchers are
up against. There are so many interacting
health, lifestyle and genetic variables
affecting immune systems and viruses across
the human population, creating so many
infection scenarios, that tracking them all is
extraordinarily complex. Professor Drummond
says the timeframes needed to run calculations
could potentially exceed the lifespan of the
universe. In other words, the calculations are
solvable, but not in a realistic timeframe.
The complexity is not just due to the
evolving, self-organising nature of living
organisms. There are also reasons that relate
to millennia-old mathematical conundrums
posed by dynamic systems that change
seemingly chaotically or unpredictably.
“In natural populations humans respond
to infection differently, the viral population
can mutate as it increases, and this results
in an astronomical number of possibilities,”
Professor Drummond says. “That’s what
we mean by ‘computational complexity’ –
situations where the number of states that a
calculation needs to track is astronomically
high.”
While statistics has solved some issues –
notably in the case of thermodynamics and
quantum mechanics – Dr Vaughan wants to use
new techniques never before applied to biology
to efficiently solve population/infection.
“Currently researchers are using
supercomputers to run simulations that
track every cell death and birth, in a brute
force calculation,” Dr Vaughan says.
“These computations are driven by the
‘master equation’ – a raw mathematical
description of how a probability distribution
changes over time. So our goal is to find
more efficient ways of solving the master
equation, borrowing from techniques used in
statistical physics.”
To make the leap to a biological system,
however, the project needs data representative

JULY 2010 swinburne
BIOMEDICINE
21
PHOTO: PAUL JONES
of a virus infection. So the Swinburne team
is collaborating with bioinformatics expert,
Associate Professor Alexei Drummond at the
University of Auckland in New Zealand. The
analysis is based on blood sample data from
real infections with the immunodeficiency
virus in humans and cats.
Efforts are also underway to develop a
way to model much larger virus numbers
than currently possible. Extra mathematical
wizardry is also needed to accommodate the
mutating nature of real-world viruses.
While the Swinburne campaign to
conquer computational complexity is
just getting underway, cracks are already
appearing in the Red Queen’s defence.
Recently, some early theoretical
work done with Swinburne’s Dr Hui Hu
(an Australian Research Council QEII
Fellow) and Dr Xia-Ji Liu was confirmed
experimentally by the prestigious French
laboratory, the École Normale Supérieure in
Paris. That work involved solving complex
computational problems dealing with
interacting ultra-cold atoms.
Publishing in the journals Nature and
Science, the French team compared their
results with Swinburne’s predictions
and calculations that relied on huge
supercomputers in the United States. The
Australian theoretical work came through with
flying colours: the French experiments were
found to agree with Swinburne’s predictions
to the last measured decimal place. The
supercomputers were not as accurate.
And there is also progress on the flip side
of the same problem. Dr Vaughan explains
that while the viral project involves tracking
infection scenarios into the future, once the
new techniques are in place, it should be
possible to run simulations into the past and
do so over evolutionary amounts of time.
That strategy could, for example, see the
Swinburne mathematicians use contemporary
genome sequence data to learn more about
humanity’s ancestry, and the ancestry of
human disease.
“We are making early first steps,”
Dr Vaughan says. “What we are aiming to
do is take the master equation description of
the forward dynamics, fold in current data
– such as DNA sequence – and infer earlier
states. We have algorithms that in principle
can do this. And we have tried it for simple
problems. But there is a long way to go.”
Despite the gargantuan scale of the
computations they are facing, Professor
Drummond and Dr Vaughan think the
problem of computational complexity is
well worth their concerted attention. For the
work stands to have applications wherever
a system – be it chemical, physical or
biological – is changing interactively in ways
that produce remarkable behaviours.
But rather than chase after the solution
with ever-faster computers, these scientists
are learning to stop running after more
powerful processors and instead solve the
problem mathematically. With pencil and
paper, in the first instance. ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
(From left) Swinburne’s
Professor Peter Drummond,
Dr Xia-Ji Liu, Dr Hui Hu and
Dr Tim Vaughan.
Key points
Understanding change in
nature can be immensely
complex in the context of a
dynamic, evolving universe.
A daring new approach to
computational complexity
is being developed at
Swinburne.
New mathematical
techniques are being
used to target infectious
diseases.

swinburne JULY 2010
HORTICULTURE
AUSSIE
AMBITIONS
FOR GOURMET
TREASURE
A Swinburne horticulturalist has
travelled to the horticultural and gastronomic
home of truffles to help develop truffle
growing in Australia
BY KELLIE PENFOLD
PHOTO: iSTOCKPHOTO.COM
22
PHOTOS: COLIN CARTER
A greenhouse full of young truffle-infected trees at Agri-Truffe, near
Bordeaux in France, visited by Colin on his study tour.
A natural oak forest near Bologna, Italy, produces the
famed white Italian truffle (Tuber magnatum).
A truffle hunter and his dog seek out French
black truffles at Cabó in Spain.
IT WAS WHILE TRUFFLE hunting in an ancient
oak forest in Bologna, Italy, (followed by a
simple meal in the hunter’s home of fresh
white truffle shaved over spaghetti) that
Australian horticulturalist Colin Carter
decided he had found nirvana.
Colin, a Swinburne University of
Technology horticulture team leader, was far
from the world of truffles as he knew it.
With a year-old, one-hectare, 400-oak-tree
‘truffière’ on the outskirts of Melbourne and
a nursery specialising in inoculated oak trees,
which he runs with his son Nathan, Colin has
witnessed the quite rapid development of the
Australian truffle industry. It now produces
Key points
Truffles are underground
‘mushrooms’ that grow on
the roots of trees in autumn
and winter.
Truffles were consumed
as early as 400 BC.
On a fact-finding overseas
mission to improve Australia’s
truffières, Swinburne’s Colin
Carter found the industry
steeped in tradition.
about 1.5 tonnes annually of the highly
prized edible fungus.
Awarded an International Specialised
Skills Institute (ISSI) TAFE Fellowship
(Skills Victoria) in 2008 to study truffle
production overseas, a journey to France,
Italy and Spain at the end of 2009 unveiled
to him an industry steeped in tradition and
struggling to find its way in a modern world
demanding consistent supply.
Colin travelled with Nathan, who has
studied the industry as part of his university
studies in agricultural science and commerce,
to examine the truffle from its oak forest
roots and hunter markets, to the latest
horticultural research at the University of
Bologna in Italy and a specialist agricultural
truffle school at La Montat in France.
Although the pair saw the latest
developments at the university, it was time
with the truffle hunter that inspired them.
“We were taken right back to the foundations
of the industry. At times we could hardly
believe that we were right at the heart of the
truffle world – something we are striving to
emulate in Australia,” Colin says.
Truffles are unique underground
‘mushrooms’ that grow on the roots of trees,
which either naturally host the fungi (such as
in the truffle forests of Italy and France) or

JULY 2010 swinburne
have been inoculated with truffle spores (as
with truffières in Australia).
Highly sought-after for their pungent
flavour and aroma, which is easily imparted
to other ingredients, such as oil and eggs,
truffles were called “the diamond of the
kitchen” by the 18th-century French
gastronome Brillat-Savarin. Truffle
consumption is recorded as far back as
400 BC and truffle hunting remains a
mysterious occupation, with hunters seeking
out the truffles using specially trained dogs.
However, truffle harvests have declined
substantially during the past century. In
France in 1900 truffle hunters harvested
1000 tonnes from the forests. “Now, the total
harvest is down to about 20 tonnes a year.
We went to an annual truffle auction, where
hunters arrive with their truffles in little
bamboo baskets, and at that auction last year
there was only about 50 kilograms of truffles
for sale. The year before at the same event
there was 200 kilograms,” Colin says.
In Italy and France, licensed truffle hunters
are allowed access to the forests. There are few
cultivated truffières. However, in Spain – where
truffles are not traditionally part of the local
cuisine – Colin witnessed expanding plantation
truffières, providing him with
insights into horticultural techniques
and the need for advanced farming
techniques in Australia to produce
truffles good enough for premium
export markets.
Truffles grow most
successfully in free-draining
soils with a pH of 8. In Europe,
low pH soils are not considered
suitable. However, in Australia,
Colin says growers have proven
that the addition of lime to correct
the pH of acidic soils can produce Colin Carter
truffles successfully.
“Only about eight per cent of trees in
Australia at the moment are producing
truffles. In Spain, the lowest result in a
plantation truffière would be 30 per cent. But
one guy I met claimed he was getting 90 per
cent, so we have to look at what techniques
we are using – particularly pruning,
cultivation and irrigation,” Colin says. He
adds that in Europe the mycorrhiza (the
fungus from which the truffle grows) prosper
in “hungry” soils that regularly dry out at
the base of trees that “never look luxuriant.”
This is contrary to mainstream horticultural
beliefs in Australia.
Another message Colin brings back is
the need to ensure only superior varieties
of truffles are produced in Australia –
namely the French black truffle (Tuber
melanosporum), the summer truffle
(T. aestivum) and two white truffles,
Italian white (T. magnatum) and bianchetto
(T. borchii). Inferior truffles, such as
T. indicum, which originated in China, are
being grown in Europe and are often buried
in bags of French black truffles bought by
unsuspecting buyers, with their true identity
not revealed until they are cleaned.
“Australian production is off-season to the
European truffles and our target markets are
the high-end Asian consumers who already
recognise Australia’s image for clean, green,
high-quality food production, which only
helps our industry,” Colin says.
As the local industry grows, so will
demand for knowledgeable horticulturalists,
Colin anticipates. This may provide potential
training opportunities for Swinburne, with
truffière owners – who often come to the
industry after retiring from careers in other
industries – looking for weekend and remote
learning opportunities.
Colin says he has always been fascinated
by the horticulture behind truffle growing. “I
was teaching students about mycorrhiza on
eucalypts and how it is needed to ensure good
growth when, about five years ago, a colleague
introduced me to truffles. It takes a while to
get your head around growing trees
that don’t look the best and need
hungry soils to prosper.”
Wayne Haslam, president of
the 80-member Australian Truffle
Grower’s Association, says the
knowledge gathered by Colin
in his travels will benefit all of
Australia’s growers (estimated at
140) who tend the 600 hectares of
truffières across Australia.
“There is so much about
truffles we just don’t understand.
One of the biggest unanswered
questions is what triggers the
mycorrhiza to start the fruiting process. If
we knew that, and the impact of Australian
soils and climate, perhaps production could
increase significantly,” he says.
However, Wayne predicts the Australian
industry will continue to grow because of
undersupply in Europe, and the best product
should maintain a consistently high price of
$1500 to $1800 a kilogram at the farm gate.
A 2008 report by the Rural Industries
Research and Development Corporation
says Australia’s truffle production could
reach 10 tonnes by 2013 from more than
600 hectares of mature truffières. ••
CONTACT. .
Swinburne University of Technology
1300 275 788
magazine@swinburne.edu.au
www.swinburne.edu.au/magazine
INVEST IN
EDUCATION
& RESEARCH
Sustainability, environment, biomedical
engineering, astronomy, social
inclusion: just some of the fields of
research putting Swinburne, and
Australia, on the map.
But many of our breakthroughs and
education initiatives would not be
possible without donations from our
generous supporters.
Giving to Swinburne will further the
teaching quality and cutting-edge
research, not to mention help us
establish scholarships, awards and
prizes to support students in need.
And since Swinburne is firmly
focused on professional outcomes,
every cent you give goes directly
to the people who are shaping our
future for the better.
The Swinburne Alumni and
Development team are ready to
talk to you about how you can
invest in education and research
at Swinburne. You can reach
us on 1300 275 788 or visit
www.swinburne.edu.au/giving
for further details.

SWINBURNE
15 AUGUST 2010
Open your mind to a different kind of learning
at Swinburne University of Technology.
When:
Where:
15 August 2010, 10am – 4pm
Hawthorn, Lilydale, Prahran campuses
For more information, please call 1300 275 794
or pre-register at swinburne.edu.au/openday
OPEN DAY 2010
1300 275 794
swinburne.edu.au/openday
CRICOS Provider: 00111D