A festival of innovation and thought leadership

Tuesday 23 June 5:30-8:30pm, The Paragon Hotel, Circular Quay, Sydney, Australia

A night of cool-hunting with Australia’s pioneers of scientific research. Our go-getting PhD students will get a chance to practice the art of story as means of making the complex simple and accessible to non-academics. Armed with a microphone, the challenge is to share what they’re researching, how it helps to make the world a better place and why it matters to society.

On this night of firsts, big ideas and enquiring minds meet commercial minds and venture capital. Information meets entertainment. Story meets science. You, the audience, will help the panel of academics and business folks decide to whom we should award a $5000 research grant towards their ongoing research, based on the way in which the story is told . Free to AMP staff with staff card, open to the public with a $10 door fee Bring a friend or three!

If you are a PhD student working on some seriously cool convergent or emergent stuff, and you want to participate in this remarkable night where science and art meets capital and commerce, please contact CMA Events

Without revealing all and stealing their thunder, here’s a taste of the bright minds who are grabbing this opportunity to air their research at Technology on Tap:

Altabul Biddutt from School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney

Imagine if all the chemical waste entering the environment as a consequence of the damaging chemicals used in producing semi-conductors could be eliminated without negative impact on conductivity and performance?

Nigel Hoschke, Materials Science & Engineering Division, CSIRO ICT

Imagine if robots can be used to operate like colonies of ants and swarms of bees where multiple individually interacting agents collaborate intelligently as a complex system to accomplish tasks way beyond the capability of any individual agent- like search and rescue in collapsed buildings, mid-air spacecraft repair? Imagine if navigation systems in cars could communicate with each other and with fixed infrastructure such as traffic lights? Imagine if intelligent buildings which could direct people (via their iphones) out of danger via the safest path and communicate information emergency and rescue services?

Benjamin Johnston, Faculty of Engineering and IT, Innovation & Enterprise Research Lab, University of Technology Sydney

It is said that ‘common sense is not so common’- so what if computers could develop ‘common sense’ and visualise scenarios? Most of the time, we don’t walk around thinking in terms of abstract logic, math and deduction, but this is how computers today are programmed. By combining rich simulations (like the ones you see in computer games such as ‘Grand Theft Auto IV’), ‘creative’ randomness and modern logics can enable computers to visualize and anticipate and figure out what to do in any situation, rather than following a fixed set of programmed rules. Imagine the infinite applications of that!