Industry Thought Leader Series: Innovation during COVID-19
Panel discussion
As engineers across all disciplines are critical to providing solutions for the COVID-19 recovery plan, we co-hosted a panel discussion with Engineers Australia on Thursday 11 June to raise awareness and debate around the health technology, research and innovation essential to achieving this.
Our industry experts shared insights on how industry, data, health and research sectors are working together in the fight against this new wave of infection and commented on rapid technology prototyping, research to commercialisation and showcase large-scale projects they’ve engineered in the space of weeks.
Key themes
- Provide insights around health technologies, advanced manufacturing and innovation in a time of crisis
- Combining the expertise of 3D engineering specialists, software engineers and process engineers
- Explore current research in STEMM, including dynamic data collection and use of AI Insights into the technologies which could be used in the ongoing fight against disease
Panelists
Eric Bert
Chief Operations Officer | 3DMEDiTech and SmileStyle
Eric is the Chief Operations Officer of 3DMEDiTech manufacturer of personalized medical devices applying state-of-the-art 3D Scanning and 3D Printing technologies to produce patient-specific medical devices at scale. 3DMEDiTech is a partner of the University of Melbourne’s ARC Training Centre for Medical Implant Technologies (ARC). Eric is a mechanical engineer with more than 30+ years of global disruptive technology management experience and an expert in 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. Prior to joining 3DMEDiTech he held roles in engineering, business management, and general management, in private and public companies, including a greenfield factory start-up in Thailand.
Prof David Grayden
FIEAust Clifford Chair of Neural Engineering in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Melbourne School of Engineering and the Graeme Clark Institute for Biomedical Engineering | The University of Melbourne
Prof Grayden's research focuses on understanding how the brain processes information, how best to present information to the brain using medical bionics, such as the bionic ear and bionic eye, and how to record information from the brain for brain to machine interfaces. He is conducting research in epileptic seizure prediction and electrical stimulation to prevent or stop epileptic seizures, and in electrical stimulation of the vagus nerve to control inflammatory bowel disease.
Prof Karin Verspoor
Director of Health Technologies for Melbourne School of Engineering | The University of Melbourne
Professor Verspoor is Director of Health Technologies for Melbourne School of Engineering, Deputy Director of the ARC Training Centre in Cognitive Computing for Medical Technologies, and the Deputy Director of the Centre for Digital Transformation of Health at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the use of computational and artificial intelligence techniques in the context of biomedical data analysis. She is an expert in text mining of scientific publications and natural language processing of clinical texts.
Prof Jason Monty
Head of Department and a Professor with the Fluid Mechanics Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineering | The University of Melbourne
Prof Monty is an experimental researcher in fluid mechanics and director of the Michell Hydrodynamics Laboratory. His experience ranges from turbulent pipe and channel flows to tow tank testing, air-sea interactions and ice-wave interactions. He recently worked with his team of mechanical engineers and Western Health professionals to design and produce a personal ventilation hood for use in clinical settings in response to COVID-19. This has led to novel research in aerosol generation and transport around ICU wards.