2014 ATSE Clunies Ross Medals

John Nutt helped design and analyse the sails of the iconic Sydney Opera House early in a career that saw him pioneer the use of computers in engineering, and contribute to the first fire code for buildings.

Kevin Galvin’s invention of the Reflux Classifier has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in benefits to the Australian economy, and revolutionised mineral processing around the world. It maximises mineral recovery by improving the recovery of fine, but still valuable, particles.

Ezio Rizzardo, Graeme Moad, and San Thang invented a new way of making plastics called RAFT.

Their techniques are being used by DuPont, L’Oréal, IBM, 3M, Dulux and many other companies. Their work has been cited more than 12,000 times in the scientific literature and is integral to more than 500 patents.

There’s still room for innovation in railways as Ravi Ravitharan, Peter Mutton, and Graham Tew have shown through 40 years of work at the Institute of Railway Technology at BHP then Monash University.

Operators of heavy-haul and metro railway systems around the world rely on them to solve issues from track wear and design to maintenance and safety.

Eugene Ivanov and Michael Tobar have created the world’s lowest-noise oscillators, now used in radar, astronomy and industry.

For more information: Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, www.atse.org.au/atse/about/clunies-ross-award/content/about/previous-recipients.aspx