Connect for: A better future
Themed around the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of good health and wellbeing, reduced inequalities, climate action and partnerships for the goals, and the idea of connections, the program was a celebration of innovation and impact.
The program includes a range of:
A series of free, virtual public talks and podcasts from the future of work to rethinking the distribution of water for a more equitable and sustainable future.
Podcasts
A series of student competitions, to design solutions to real-world probelms, translate their research and help with vaccination research.
The Student Innovation Challenge supports student entrepreneurs to take their big idea to the next level.
The winners, announced on 27 August 2020, included technologies to help city planners track traffic, prevent diabetes-induced blindness and provide women with clear pathways into STEM.
Students and staff were invited to participate in a Coding Challenge to help understand vaccine related misinformation.
The Challenge will contribute to research by Associate Professor Adam Dunn, from the Faculty of Medicine and Health, on vaccine sentiment from Twitter posts.
Simon Cai and Benoit Berthelier tied for equal highest classification score for the Twitter dataset and will each receive a cash prize of $2250.
The team of Charles Hyland, Alexey Vlaskin, Xuanchi Liu, Eduardo Altmann and Lamiae Azizi will receive the Artemis Prize of $500 for using the most novel techniques and approaching the problem with revealing insights.
3 Minute Thesis is an international competition that features higher degree by research students from over 55 institutions across Australia, New Zealand and Asia. It challenges students to tell the story of their research: what they are doing, why it matters, and what they hope to achieve, in three minutes.
The winner competes against students from other universities in the Asia-Pacific final event.
Nisharnthi Duggan, from the School of Chemistry, was announced as this year's winner for her explanation of her work on developing a new treatment for stroke based on spider venom.
Visualise Your Thesis is an international competition that challenges graduate researchers to summarise their research in an engaging, 60-second visual multimedia presentation. It gives the researcher the opportunity to build essential digital communication skills so they can effectively communicate complex research to a general audience.
Francisco Garcia Bulle Bueno, from the School of Life and Environmental Sciences, was announced as this year's winner for her explanation on how to count tropical pollinators in Australia.
A series of virtual roundtable discussions bringing academics, industry and policy makers together to brainstorm solutions for key issues facing Australia - from resilience from COVID-19 and the black summer bushfires, to creating smart cities and food security.
Embedding sensing, IoT devices and nanotechnologies into our built environment provides opportunities and challenges for how we design, build, live and manage our cities. How does our notion of the smart city change in the context of the current pandemic? Will our cities ever look the same, and will these physical changes change our economy? Will we return to large office blocks?
Explore the ideas from this event, including how new technologies can be applied and adapted to a post-pandemic built environment.
Faced with the consequences of climate change and the knock-on political and economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, how will these twin crises alter the way people live, work and socialise? Post-pandemic, how will we reshape our society to improve people’s lives and livelihoods, especially for the most vulnerable? Do we need to consider how to balance short term gains and long-term resilience?
Bringing experts from mental health, economics, business and disaster response, the discussion mapped the ecosystem that’s required for a strong recovery, identify opportunities for shared value and develop unlikely coalitions for rebuilding. Shane Fitzsimmons, Commissioner of Resilience NSW, gave a keynote speech.
An exciting installation was installed on the University's Camperdown campus from 6 October - 15 November.
We brought together experts from the University community to create a free public art installation, Dhuwarr: a celebration of Gomeroi grasses, grains and placemaking, to represent this research and spark delate about innovation and sustainability.
The installation was a collaboration between:
- Michael Mossman (Kuku Yalanji) – School of Architecture Design and Planning
- Richard Leplastrier – Architect
- Jack Gillmer (Worimi Birrpai) – Graduate of Architecture
- Dr Angela Pattison – Faculty of Science
- Professor Jakelin Troy (Ngarigu) - Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research
- Callum Craigie (Gamilaraay)
- Anna Burns
- Steve Burns