Fantastic work by Joshua Ince and his principal supervisor Dr Nisa Salim on exploring means of producing artifical muscles for a range of needs - from space to medical devices. The artifical muscles (or polymer actuators more scientifically stated) turn signals from electrical to thermal/heating into force across a range of directions. The exact choice of the signal/response can be tuned by the cross linking of the polymers (akin to muscle fibres) and to do this accurately with predictability is a major advantage of fibrous Liquid Crystalline Elastomers (LCEs). Josh did a great job of exploring how to manufacture these LCEs in a continuous production method, creating disulphide crosslinked LCE fibres via the technique of wet spinning.
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I’m beyond thrilled to celebrate our Space Institute PhD student Matt Shaw and his incredible win at the 3MT APAC international finals. Against entries by 54 universities from around the region his work on mining the moon to provide metals for constructing moonbases (seriously how cool is his Thesis) was found the most engaging - considering you have just Three Minutes(!) to explain three years of work, his efforts to connect with the audience are nothing short of amazing
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In the next two decades we will search the skies, solar system and space for alien life with new techniques and technologies thousands of times more powerful than all of humanity's efforts to date. I toured the world speaking to experts in this search for alien life, as well as the kinds of life we might uncover, and of course a serious investigation into the claims that it may already be here(!)
My thanks to Audible for making possible this incredible journey. I hope you enjoy listening to what I discovered with Astronomical - Looking for Life Beyond Earth
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I got a chance to speak to the space and spatial focussed Locate podcast about all things to do with space, the industry, my efforts and more. It was a lot of fun chatting with Alicia and Roshni, I hope you enjoy it too!
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I was amazed to find myself nominated as Academic of the Year in the inaugural Space Connect Australian Space Awards but to find myself now a finalist is beyond ridiculous..! Thankfully the Honour of being alongside such incredible finalists is all I need, as there's no way I'm winning against such legends.
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