Researchers at The University of Western Australia share the same time zone as 30 per cent of the world's population and work in a resource-rich and geopolitically influential zone. In today's connected world our expertise, high-tech infrastructure and collaboration are driving development not only in Western Australia and Australia, but the world. Our researchers are racing to solve some of the biggest challenges that we face today by accelerating new technology to adapt to a changing environment.

Find out more about our experts

Professor Thomas Bräunl

Professor Thomas Bräunl directs the Renewable Energy Vehicle Project (REV) as well as the Robotics & Automation Lab at The University of Western Australia. He performed several Electric Vehicle conversions, including a Lotus Elise, Hyundai Getz, a Sea-Doo Jet-Ski, and operates one of Western Australia’s largest EV charging networks with 24 AC and DC stations. He also developed autonomous vehicles based on a BMW X5 and a Formula-SAE car, linking Lidar and vision sensors. His research concentrates on deep learning methods for autonomous driving and hardware-in-the-loop simulations of autonomous vehicles. Thomas has held positions with Daimler/Mercedes-Benz, BMW Germany, BMW Technology of North America, and served as Technical Director of the West Australian Electric Vehicle Trial.

Professor Fiona Haslam McKenzie

Professor Fiona Haslam McKenzie has extensive experience in population and socioeconomic change, housing, regional economic development and analysis of remote, regional and urban socioeconomic indicators. She has published widely and undertaken work for the corporate and small business sectors both nationally and in Western Australia, has conducted work for all three tiers of government, and since 2015 has been co-director of the Centre for Regional Development at The University of Western Australia.

Fiona is currently researching the socioeconomic impact of different workforce arrangements for the mining industry and uneven economic development in Western Australia, focusing on the key issues of competitiveness, resilience and spatial integration.

Dr Kirsten Martinus

Dr Kirsten Martinus has worked in city economic and business development for more than 18 years. Her work adopts a multi-scale spatial approach, focusing on the uneven distribution of resources as a means to understand the urban and socio-economic factors that increase economic competitiveness and mitigate uneven development. Since joining UWA in 2012, she has played a lead role in an industry-funded research agenda for Perth, Western Australia, and has worked with leading researchers worldwide to better understand the links between resource wealth, regional innovation and global competitiveness.

Kirsten has won several large competitive grants for her research including from the Australian Research Council (ARC) and the Federal Governments Smart Cities Smart Suburbs Program. She has an early career fellowship (DECRA) examining innovation in peripheral regions (in Australian and Japanese outer metropolitan and regional areas), and has been published widely in leading scholarly journals.

Dr Ram Pandit

Dr Ram Pandit is an Environmental Economist and a Graduate Research Coordinator at the UWA School of Agriculture and Environment. He works as an expert on values with The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) and recently contributed to its assessments on ‘land degradation and restoration’ and ‘biodiversity and ecosystem services in Asia-Pacific’. His research explores one or more dimensions of sustainability – economic, environmental and social – mainly in Australia and Nepal.

Ram’s research interest/expertise include: valuation of urban environment including greenspace and urban trees, economics of threatened species conservation and management including biodiversity offsets, protected area and tourism, economics of REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in developing countries), economics of pollution, and land degradation and restoration.

Joe Fardin

Joe Fardin is Associate Director of UWA’s Centre for Mining Energy and Natural Resources Law and sits on the Advisory Board of the World Initiative of Mining Lawyers. Joe has practiced and consulted in the areas of mining law and Indigenous rights laws since 2005 in Australia and internationally. He has been involved in reviewing and drafting mining laws, model land access agreements and procedural guidelines in support of reform processes in numerous countries, focussing on Australia and the Indo-Pacific.

Most recently Joe has completed mining reform work involving Solomon Islands, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. Joe speaks fluent Solomon Islands Pidjin and spent a year based at the Solomon Islands Ministry of Mining, Energy and Rural Electrification as Project Advisor on a World Bank funded technical assistance project to review and advise on Solomon Islands mining law and policy.