External funds for research projects undertaken by the School received considerable boost in 2000.
In addition to a continuing funding from a Large ARC Grant (in ollaboration with the University of Sydney) and three SPIRT Grants, the School was awarded a $500,000 R&D Start Grant by AusIndustry for the development of a grain conditioning system in collaboration with A. F. Gason Pty Ltd of Ararat, and one ARC SPIRT Grant to investigate smoke spread in buildings in collaboration with Scientific Research Laboratories. The School established a collaborative Centre for Geotechnical Research in partnership with the Chadwick Geotechnical Group. The School's Engineering Research and Consultancy Centre assisted a number of companies such as Vision Systems, Patrick Stevedores, Olex Cables, Ford Product Development Group, ACI Glass Packaging, HAC Technologies. The School obtained an Equity Grant 2000 to undertake a pilot study of retention and recruitment of female students in the SBE.
The School prepared two new undergraduate engineering courses in Building Surveying and Architectural Engineering to be introduced in 2001. The School received $40,000 from Building Control Commission of Victoria for scholarships and marketing of the Building Surveying course. Undergraduate students participated in the IEAust National Warman Design and Build Competition and the National Bridge Construction Competition. The needs of UG and PG students, and staff are being served better after the commissioning of a new Mechanics Laboratory and Engineering Computing Rooms during the year.
One staff member completed his PhD undertaken at the Centre for Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering at Victoria University. The School's first female PhD student graduated in May and examiners passed other four PhD theses.
Conference Presentations in Australia and overseas:
- 10th World Water Congress 2000 in Melbourne
- AIRAH 2000+ National Conference in Melbourne
- Asian Conference on Unsaturated Soils, Nanyang University in Singapore
- World Timber Conference in Canada, the Australian Institute of Packaging National Conference, Gold Coast (invited paper)
- 20th Symposium of the International Association of Packaging Research Institutes, San Jose, California
- 2nd Global Congress on Engineering Education, Wismar University in Germany
- 2nd International Society for Structural and Multidisciplinary Optimization, Swansea in the UK
- The Australian Institute of Building Surveyors State Conference in Melbourne
- 5th International Conference on Computational Structures Technology, Leuven in Belgium
- International Conference on Harbour, Maritime and Multimodal Logistics, Modelling and Simulation, Portofino in Italy
- 1st European Pavement Management Conference, Budapest in Hungary
- 11th Road Profiler Users Group Conference, Auburn, Alabama, USA
School's growing reputation was augmented by other activities. Dr Kodikara was Deputy Chair of the organizing committee of the International Geosynthetics Symposium held at Victoria University City Campus in November as part of GeoEng 2000 Congress. Associate Professor Turan was instrumental to bringing to Victoria University the International Symposium on Thermal Anemometry to be held in January 2001 under the auspices of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The School attracted a visit by Professor Isaac Greber of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio who presented a lecture on "Molecular Dynamics Simulation of Unsteady Diffusion". The School's 3rd Annual PG Research Conference was held in October.
Published the "School of the Built Environment 2000" in November. The publication documents the School's profile, achievements and potential as evidenced by staff and students success in School's short three-year history.
