51 newly promoted and recruited Professors are taking part in the 2018 Professorial Inaugural Lecture series at UNSW Sydney to mark their achievement and showcase their specialist knowledge.
Please join us for the first Inaugural Lecture for the 2018 series.
Lecture 1: Professor Gabriel Lodewijks
Back to the Future
The aviation and transport landscape is changing rapidly caused by significant technological innovations. Today, passengers have to deal with new self-service systems at airports. Pilots and car drivers have to adjust to a future world with automated or autonomous vehicles. One may wonder however, what is driving what? Have we redesigned the way we travel and found the technology to enable that? Or have we simply adopted new technologies and now struggle to handle the new practices? In order to answer these questions, we may have to go back to the drawing board before we can go back to the future.
Lecture 2: Professor Pall Thordarson
Chemical Complexity and Life
Chemistry has two great powers. It helps us to explain the world around and it allows us to make things. My work is driven by the desire to understand and learn from nature how chemicals interact with each other and then go on to form complex systems with function. This knowledge then allows us synthesise new materials to support cell growth and treat diseases. Ultimately it should also answer one of the greatest questions in science – How does chemistry become biology? This seemingly straightforward question holds the key to understanding what life is and what was the origin of life.
Location: The Chancellery, Council Chambers, Gate 9 UNSW (Building C22) Google map
Professor Lodewijks commenced as the Head of School of Aviation at UNSW in 2017. After completing his PhD in The Netherlands 1996, he moved to the USA where he worked for a small engineering company. Following on from that role he returned home, and in 2000 was appointed Professor of Transport Engineering & Logistics at Delft University of Technology, and by 2003 he was made Head of the Department of Marine and Transport Technology. He also concurrently undertook the role of scientific director of the university's Centre of Aviation from 2008, as well as being Chief Technology Officer of the Schiphol Group between 2007 and 2010. Professor Lodewijks was then appointed Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering from 2011 to 2015.
Pall Thordarson (Palli) was born and raised on a farm in Vopnafjörður, Iceland. Following a B.Sc. at the University of Iceland and a PhD at the University of Sydney in 2001, he obtained a Marie Curie Fellowship at the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands and then returned to Australia in 2003 to the University of Sydney. In 2007, he took up a position as a Senior Lecturer at the School of Chemistry at UNSW. In 2012 he was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship. He was promoted to the position of Associate Professor in 2013 and then to the position of a full Professor starting in January 2017. Professor Pall Thordarson is the current Deputy Head of School of Chemistry, UNSW.
