Engineering’s Professor
Liangchi Zhang has been named Inventor of the Year by UNSW’s
commercialisation arm, NSi.
He has developed a cutting tip for the rock and coal mining industry,
which dramatically improves wear resistance compared with existing
designs, and reduces cutting force, energy consumption and dust
generation.
Fifteen UNSW staff and students were finalists in the annual
competition. The winners in the main categories were Professor Peter
Gunning (Biomedical), Dr Stephen Anthony (Information and Communication
Technology), Professor Brett Neilan (Environment) and for Science and
Engineering, Professor Zhang. The winners of each of these categories
were nominees for the overall Inventor of the Year award.
The winner of the Student Inventor of the Year is Ly Mai. Her novel
solar cell manufacturing processes have been implemented by major
companies worldwide and have been used to produce record-breaking
efficiencies in solar cells.
The new CEO of NSi, Dr
Kevin Cullen, congratulated the winners and outlined his vision for the
organisation at the awards ceremony.
“The real goal of commercialisation and knowledge exchange is not all
about the money – it’s about helping our researchers and these brilliant
inventors we are celebrating here tonight to get their ideas put to work
and to make great things happen as a result,” he said.
“Through smart, effective, partnerships with industry and society, and
innovative new models, we can establish UNSW as a leading national and
global player in this space alongside our already well recognised
friends at MIT, Imperial and Stanford.”
The NSi Inventor of the Year awards
acknowledge innovative technologies of UNSW researchers and students
that benefit the community and the environment. This is the third year
of the awards, which carry a total prize pool of $28,000. Leaders from
the University, business, and research organisations and government
attended the event, which was sponsored by bWiseIP, Callaways Executive
Selection, CSIRO, Intellectual Ventures and Spruson and Ferguson.
