UOW academic nominated for outstanding research collaboration

Nov 25, 2005

Collaborating with others on perfect superconductivity materials has paid off for the Director of UOW's Institute for Superconductivity and Electronic Materials (ISEM).

Professor Shi Dou was recently nominated for an award at the Business and Higher Education Round Table Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Collaboration in Research and Development, Education and Training.

Professor Dou was nominated for Best International Collaboration for his work in superconductivity with Hypertech Research, CMS Alphatech and Ohio State Univesity. Superconductors are materials that have no resistance to the flow of electricity below certain temperatures.

ISEM has been collaborating with the three groups since early 2001 to improve technologies and a range of electric power applications based on magnesium diboride (MgB2). Newly discovered superconductivity at 40K in MgB2 has opened a technical window to a range of applications previously thought accessible only with high temperature superconductors.

The team has twice received ARC Linkage funding for the research and is currently researching two-gap superconductivity materials which act as 'scatterers', increasing resistivity. The core innovation of the proposal is based on the breakthrough in magnesium diboride that was made by chief investigators in their initial ARC Linkage project.

Professor Dou has a total research team of 60 under his control and about one third of his 50 PhD graduates are now holding senior positions at institutions and industries in various countries.

Professor Dou said his team was recognised for its cutting edge research through invitations that researchers received to the most important superconductivity conferences and seminars worldwide. He was awarded the Centenary Medal for the contribution to materials science and engineering and his team was awarded the Australian Engineering Excellence award in the highly commended category in 2004.

Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, was a special guest at the awards ceremony held on Tuesday 22 November.