Industry, students, the public and the media will have the opportunity to meet the innovators of the future at next week’s UQ Innovation Expo 2003.
The free event, an initiative of UQ’s School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE), will showcase ideas and research from some of the University’s leading information technology and electrical engineering students.
It will be held on Friday, October 31 between 11am and 8pm at the UQ Centre on Union Road at the St Lucia campus. At 3pm the Queensland Minister for Innovation and Information Economy Paul Lucas and Queensland Rail Chief Executive Bob Scheuber will join UQ Vice-Chancellor Professor John Hay on a tour of the projects.
Innovation Expo Project Manager Jon Whitty said the fourth annual UQ Innovation Expo would present leading scientific research in a fun and interactive way.
“There’s lots to see and interact with: from an automatic cocktail maker to a credit-card size electrocardiogram; a smart cricket ball to a global positioning system based aircraft collision avoidance system,” he said.
“These are just a few of the 350 research projects on show across a range of industry sectors including education, telecommunications, transport, health and medicine, science, manufacturing and energy.”
Mr Whitty said visitors would have the chance to discover the outstanding capabilities of some of Queensland’s leading technological minds, exchange innovative ideas, and collaborate on future projects. He said technologies showcased during the 2002 Expo were already being used in industry.
PhD student Jong Foo’s pulse transit time monitoring system for sleep disordered breathing in children, which was showcased in 2002, is currently being tested at the Mater Children’s Hospital Sleep Unit. ITEE senior lecturer Dr Stephen Wilson and sleep scientist Gordon Williams are supervising the project.
It is hoped the device will be of benefit in the early diagnosis of sleep related breathing disorders and lead to low cost screening tests. Dr Wilson said testing had recently presented very positive results in the detection of obstructive apnoea in children.
“Because the sensors and equipment are relatively inexpensive and not harmful, pulse transit time measurements are attractive to clinicians who have difficulty measuring airway obstruction in sleep, particularly in children,” Dr Wilson said.
During the Expo prizes will be awarded in eight different categories including the $250 Boeing Prize for Best Software Engineering Research. The Eagar Newcomb and Buck Patent and Trademark Attorney’s Innovation Award will cover costs from $5,500 to $7,000 to prepare, lodge and prosecute a patent application.
Sponsors include Queensland Rail, Queensland Government Department of Innovation and Information Economy and technology incubator i.lab.
For more information visit the website at www.innovexpo.itee.uq.edu.au
Media: For more information, contact Jon Whitty (telephone 07 3365 9797, email: jonw@itee.uq.edu.au) or Dr Stephen Wilson (telephone 07 3365 4449, email: Wilson@itee.uq.edu.au) or Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2479, email: c.saxby@uq.edu.au).
