Issue 17 – September 2015
From the Associate Dean Research In March last year the Faculty commenced a conversation about possible research areas to prioritise for future investment. Coming out of a forum where a number of great ideas were presented and discussed came two initiatives which have consumed much energy over the last 15 months, namely urban informatics and high performance architecture. With both these areas leading to successful submissions to the Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) for new strategic hires, it was timely to revisit the exercise of looking ahead and identifying additional areas which might form the basis of more detailed investigation and support. To that end on Friday 21 August we held a second forum to enable staff to present ideas about particular areas/initiatives with the potential to significantly advance the quantum, quality and impact of BE’s research mission. The invitation to be part of this forward planning exercise was accepted by seven colleagues who each gave short presentations which scanned the horizon of different disciplines and – even more excitingly - the crossover between them. My thanks to A/Professor Linda Corkery, Catherine Evans, Dr Hoon Han, Dr Hank Hauesler, Dr Scott Hawken, Professor Alan Peters, and Professor Chris Pettit for making vital contributions to the workshop. Various ideas were discussed by participants with reference to parameters such as current support, feasibility, staffing needs, likely resourcing, synergies between them, likely industry connections and linkages to existing and new teaching initiatives. The topics discussed spanned landscape and urban design, digital computing, smart technology, informatics, infrastructure and geospatial analysis. The next step will be to consider some of the more specific ideas a little more intensively and feed that into consideration into the ongoing strategic planning for the Faculty
Rob Freestone Associate Dean Research