Inventors and innovators celebrated with Australia’s top awards for tech and engineering

A scientist making Aussie guts healthier, a solar cell inventor at the centre of a global solar boom and a collaboration between the Eastern Pilbara Martu people which explains an environmental phenomenon that western science couldn’t, are among the winners celebrated at the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering’s annual national Awards tonight.

The awardees have been recognised for making major breakthroughs that are changing the way Australians work, live and play, during a ceremony at the 2024 ATSE Awards Gala Dinner at Metropolis Melbourne.

Professor Andrew Blakers FTSE FAA was named the winner of the prestigious Clunies Ross Technology Innovation Award for his contributions to the renewable energy transition. Andrew helped develop the PERC (Passivated Emitter and Rear Contact) solar cells which make up half of all solar cells world-wide and are mitigating an estimated 2% of global greenhouse emissions. He also created a global atlas of about one million possible sites for off-river pumped hydro energy storage with the potential to power about one trillion electric vehicle batteries. 

Linyji or ‘fairy circles’ are patches of bare earth that polka-dot Australia’s arid grasslands in desert country. A collaboration between the Eastern Pilbara Martu people through Indigenous organisation Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa and ethnoecologist Dr Fiona Walsh has taken home the Traditional Knowledge Innovation Award for upending the notion that Australia lacks climate data for our desert regions. The groundbreaking project reveals linyji’s foundational role as homes for termites and important water spots for people and desert ecosystems, as well as centres of art, culture and gathering. The project has been hailed for the way it respectfully weaves together Traditional Knowledge with western science, uplifting Aboriginal voices, expertise and communities. 

Professor Sara Couperthwaite has won the David & Valerie Solomon Award for her research transforming mining waste into high purity alumina for safer lithium-ion batteries. By commercialising a pathway to reuse and transform the mining waste filling tailings dams across Australia, she is helping open up new export markets and develop new sources of sustainable critical minerals.

ICM Agrifood Award winners Dr Kristy DiGiacomo and Dr Vivien Rolland are making Australian food more nutritious and sustainable. Kristy is changing the kid rearing and feeding regimes of Australia’s largest goat dairies and is demonstrating how a diet of insects can benefit animal growth, health and meat quality. Vivien is creating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and imaging tools to enhance the productivity and sustainability of key food, oil and fibre crops, tools already being used by commercial breeders and researchers.

Dr Scott Menegon, a structural engineer who is earthquake-proofing Australian infrastructure and informing our building standards, has won the Batterham Medal for Engineering Excellence. Scott is improving the design of multi-storey buildings across Australia – from hospitals to 60-storey apartment blocks. 

Professor Lyn Beazley AO FTSE FAA, a neuroscience researcher who went on to become Chief Scientist of Western Australia, has taken home ATSE’s President’s Medal for her contributions to the Academy, championing of applied sciences and her focus on getting young people into STEM. 

ATSE President, Dr Katherine Woodthorpe AO FTSE, said the winners are emblematic of how applied science and technology are making Australian lives better.