Fire Starters

• Congratulations to a number of NBE staff members on some outstanding achievements over the past few months:

• to the team of Dr Delene Weber and Associate Professor Ian Clark on receiving the 2009 UniSA Award for Teaching Excellence.
• to Associate Professor Julie Mills and Mr Stefan Hornlund on receiving 2009 UniSA Supported Teacher Awards.
• to Mr Stefan Hornlund on receiving Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC) Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
• to Prof Steve Hamnett on receiving the Planning Institute of Australia (SA) Lifetime Achievement Award and to Sessional staff member and former student Lisa Tregilgas, who was the winner of the SA Young Planner of the Year Award. Two former students, Melanie Paul and Zoe Pfeiffer, also received commendations for SA Young Planner of the Year.

• Third year Bachelor of Sustainable Environments (GIS) students, Russell Eckert and Ben Clark won the Overall Best Map at the International Spatial Sciences Conference 2009 held in Adelaide on September 28 – October 2. Their entry, for undergraduate work in mapping Mawson Lakes suburb for Delfin, overcame all other entries in the national category and will be presented at the 2009 Global Cartographic Conference in Chile in November. Congratulations!

• Simon Beecham has been awarded a $30,000 research grant from the Mawson Lakes Innovations and Economic Opportunities Group (IEOG), which will be used in an experimental investigation into clogging of permeable pavements.

• Higher Degrees by Research student, Cathryn Hamilton won the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) Research Award for her work on the Carbon Neutral Communities project. Cathryn's paper will be published as part of the monthly RICS e-news and on their international website. The paper will be used under the brand of the RICS as a knowledge source for graduates and will promote to student membership via RICS internal publications.

• Dr Lia Bryant, Dr Matthew W Rofe, Prof Guy M Robinson have bee awarded a Linkage grant of approx $160K for their study, "People, Pumps and Pipes: A social study of change in the collaborative supply of irrigation services", in conjunction with (PIRSA), Renmark Irrigation Trust , Social Inclusion Unit – SA.

• Prof Rob Short, Assoc Prof Linda Y Zou, Dr John A van Leeuwen, Dr Christopher W Chow et al have been awarded a Linkage grant of approx $900K for their study, "Materials Engineering Solutions for Tomorrow's Water Resources", in conjunction with SA Water.

• Assoc Prof Linda Zou, Prof RD Short, Prof Dr H Song, and Prof Z Hao have received a Discovery Project Development Grant of approx $190K for their study, "Composite conductive electrodes for low energy desalination".

• Dr Christopher W Chow, Dr John A van Leeuwen, Prof Dr Dongsheng Wang et al have received a Linkage grant of approx $570K for their study, "Development and Modelling of Advanced Coagulation and Oxidation Processes".

• Assoc Prof Linda Zou has received a Water Quality Resarch Australia (WQRA) research grant application. WQRA has approved $90,000 total of funding for the project "Capacitive deionization in brackish water desalination". This project is supported by Dr Con Pelekani and Mr Jason West (in-kind support) from SA Water desalination team.

Congratulations on behalf of all staff and students of the School of NBE.