As chair of Arup’s Global Buildings Board, Tristram Carfrae oversees some 4000 employees. He is a member of the company’s global Group Board, and design and technical executive.
Carfrae combines these management roles with a wide range of technical interests. He has an affinity for architecture and experience in integrating multidisciplinary teams on major projects. “What I enjoy the most is being a structural engineer,” he said.
Carfrae was part of the team that designed the Water Cube, the aquatics centre for the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He has also worked on the City of Manchester Stadium, the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre and the San Nicola Stadium in Bari, Italy.
In recognition of his expertise, he was made one of nine Arup Fellows out of the company’s global staff of almost 10,000 staff. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Royal Designer for Industry.

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Curiosity about how things work and a desire to create things that make a difference prompted Dr Hugh Durrant-Whyte to pursue a career in engineering. He is now the research director at the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR) which is based at Sydney University. In this role, he directs strategic and applied research for companies including Patrick Terminals, L3-Communications, BAE Systems, and the US Air Force, Navy and Army.
He is responsible for 200 staff including 100 research students and an annual research budget of $12 million. Durrant-Whyte is also an ARC federation fellow, research director for the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems, research director for the Rio Tinto Centre for Mine Automation and research director for the DSTO Centre of Expertise in Uninhabited and Autonomous Systems.
The ACFR has about 30 different projects in progress, from unmanned air vehicles for defence applications to autonomous subsea vehicles for biological diversity monitoring.
Durrant-Whyte’s personal research is focused on how robots interpret sensor information and understand the world around them.
He has a bachelor of science in nuclear engineering from the University of London. He also has a master of science in engineering (systems engineering) and a PhD in systems engineering which are both from the University of Pennsylvania.
Outside of work, Durrant-Whyte devotes time to his four children and a “neverending” house renovation.

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In his current role, Prof Anton Middelberg oversees 25 research staff and an annual research budget of $1 million. He is responsible for conceiving and executing engineering research projects in biology and chemistry. He is also professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Queensland.
He has been researching chemical self-assembly processes and new process technology for the manufacture of vaccines including for avian influenza.
One of his major achievements was the development of pepfactants, which are biodegradable peptide surfactants that allow the creation of a stable emulsion for specialised applications like drug delivery and water treatment.
“The realisation that we could challenge a 100-year-old dogma about what controls the stability of everyday emulsions, establish experimental proof for our hypothesis, and then translate this new science into technology through a spin-out company was immensely rewarding,” he said.
He has an honours degree and PhD in chemical engineering from the University of Adelaide and a master of arts from Cambridge University.
A major highlight in the past year was seeing his son walk for the first time.

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Chris Nicol is the chief technology officer for embedded systems at National ICT Australia (NICTA). He is responsible for the research direction in embedded systems which represents about a quarter of the organisation’s total research. His research is fed into spinout company OK Labs.
Recently he secured $4.8 million in federal funding to transfer a silicon chip design team at LSI Australia to the NICTA team developing 60GHz gigabit wireless chips. This project aims to provide wireless links that can carry several gigabits per second of data for high definition television products.
He is on the NICTA Research Strategy Group responsible for millions of dollars of research allocation every year. He is a member of the Innovation Australia Board IT&T Committee which oversees the federal Commercial Ready and Commercial Ready Plus programs. He is also chair of the Embedded Systems Australia industry cluster which has over 60 companies. of Wesfarmers. He was appointed chairman of Wesfarmers in 2002.

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Philip Venton is a consulting engineer specialising in high-pressure oil and gas pipelines. He has played a leading part in the design of most major pipelines in Australia.
The work he typically receives involves pipeline process design, optimised replacement cost/design, pipeline safety study facilitation and specific assignments such as pipeline fracture control plans. A recent challenge and highlight was leading the committee revising the Australian Standard for Oil & Gas Pipeline Design and Construction.
Among his achievements are working as a principal engineer with Slurry Systems in the design, construction and commissioning of one of the world’s first high-pressure ironsand slurry pipelines, at Glenbrook in New Zealand.
This was followed by one of the world’s first successful sand bypassing systems installed at the Nerang River Entrance on the Gold Coast. Both of these pipeline systems are still in service and have proven to be highly successful. Venton began his career with Associated Pipelines as a pipeline engineer, then moved to consulting work in the developing field of high-pressure, long-distance slurry pipelines.

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Chris Vonwiller has been developing world-class computer-based speech and language technology. Appen, of which he is the chief executive officer, supplies the technology to major international software companies. He is in charge of 100 staff from disciplines of computer science/engineering and linguistics.
Vonwiller finds the engineering challenge in researching, creating and applying advanced technology to be satisfying. The company recently delivered software products for text analysis and content extraction to US government agencies, after winning the contract against international competitors.
He has a bachelor of science and an honours degree in communications and electronics engineering from Sydney University and a master of business administration from Macquarie University. Previously he served in senior executive positions with Telstra.
Away from work, Vonwiller enjoys spending time with family, walking in national parks and learning about the diversity of international cultures.

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