Institute for Infrastructure Engineering

IIE Events

• The SCEM and IIE Joint Research Future Forum
• The Institute hosts Visiting Research Seminars 
• IIE 2012 Annual Conference

IIE News

SCEM & IIE Joint Research Futures Postgraduate Forum

The School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics (SCEM) & IIE Joint Research Futures Postgraduate Forum was held on 4-6 June 2013 at Penrith (Werrington South) Campus. The Forum opened with a welcome from the Dean of School, Professor Simeon Simoff and Director of IIE, Professor Kenny Kwok. The Opening Address was by the Associate Pro Vice Chancellor (Research) Professor Deborah Sweeney and a panel discussion entitled ‘Students and Academic Perceptions on PhD and MHons’.

Over the three days, there were four workshops, student session presentations, panel interviews, and the 3 Minute Thesis competition.

During the Forum, the HDR students from IIE each had a 10 minute session on the topic of their thesis:

Steve Lamb – A longitudinal study of the effects of wind-induced building motion on tall building occupants
Kwok-Shing Wong – Effects of wind-induced tall building vibrations on tracking task performances
Ali Razzazzadeh – Heat transfer analysis of hybrid stainless-carbon steel beam-column joints

Mohammad Yousuf – Utilising high performance steels for critical infrastructure protection against extreme loads
Brendan Kirkland - Composite steel-concrete beams subjected to axial load
Kamrul Hassan – Behaviour of hybrid stainless-carbon steel composite beam-column joints
Mohamed Ghannam – Experimental fire tests of concrete filled stainless steel columns

During the Forum students from the School and IIE competed in a Three Minute Thesis Competition. Kamrul Hassan was selected from IIE to compete in the Competition. Three Minute Thesis Competition is a research presentation competition developed to challenge PhD students to communicate their thesis topic to an audience in just three minutes.

The Dean Prof. Simeon Simoff presented the Best Presentation Prize Certificate together with a $200 UWSConnect Book Voucher to the four winners.  Steve Lamb, HDR student from IIE was awarded one of the Best Presentation Prizes of the 2013 Forum

• Awards

A/Professor Sergiy Kharkivskiy was recognized as 2012 Outstanding Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.

A/Professor Sergiy Kharkivskiy was awarded US patent no.: 8,212,573; July 3, 2012; filed: Jan. 15, 2009; Mohamed Ahmed Aboukhousa, Reza Zoughi, Sergiy Kharkivskiy “High frequency analysis of a device under test”.

A/Professor Sergiy Kharkivskiy was also co-author of the following paper, which has received the 2013 Harold A. Wheeler Prize Paper Award from among papers published in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation in 2012:

Ghasr, M.T., M. A. Abou-Khousa, S. Kharkovsky, R. Zoughi and D. Pommerenke, “Portable Real-Time Microwave Camera at 24 GHz”, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 60, no. 2, pp. 1114-1125, February 2012.

• Student Engineer Robert Salama - May 2012

Robert Salama, School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, has received the International Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference (I2MTC) 2013 Graduate Student Best Poster Award - Second Place for the paper entitled "An embeddable microwave microstrip patch antenna module for civil engineering applications." Mr. Salama's supervisory panel is Dr Ranjith Liyanapathirana, A/Prof Sergiy Kharkivskiy (IIE) and Dr Upul Gunawardana.

I2MTC 2013 was held in Minneapolis, USA, during May 6-9, 2013 (http://imtc.ieee-ims.org/i2mtc-2013).  It focused on research, development and applications in the field of instrumentation and measurement science and technology. A selection committee carefully considered the technical quality of the papers submitted for the Student Best Poster Awards and selected ten papers for the final competition. There was no distinction between papers that were presented in a poster or oral session. Therefore, for this purpose these papers were grouped and presented in the Best Student Poster Competition Session. A team of five unidentified (to the students) judges visited the students during the poster session to observe their interactions with interested attendees, ask questions about their work, etc. Subsequently, based on several factors including, but not limited to, the technical quality, poster clarity and quality of presentation, and ability of the student to engage in technical discussions the First and Second place papers were selected.