Spotlight on Summer Interns

Austin Sheard

Master of Professional Engineering

“The more I studied engineering, the more I fell in love with it. The problem solving and analytical skills required to solve real world problems and challenges makes engineering really rewarding.”

Austin Sheard is chemical engineering student with a strong interest in innovative and sustainable ocean solutions expecting graduate from the Master of Professional engineering program in 2021.

His internship project, “Near-bed visibility on the North-West Shelf”, seeks to develop a method for predicting the visibility conditions for remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) used to explore the seafloor on the North-West Shelf.

The project is supervised by Dr Nicole Jones (Associate Profession, Centre for Offshore Foundation System, UWA), Dr Matt Rayson (Research Fellow, Centre for Offshore Foundation System, UWA), Dr Greg Ivey (Professor, Oceans Graduate School, UWA) and William Edge (PhD Student, UWA).

“Internal waves and ocean currents play a large role in resuspending fine particles from the seafloor. These particles increases the turbidity of the water, resulting in a loss in transparency, essentially reducing visibility,” explains Austin.

“This research excites me as it has the potential for large advancements in the economical use of ROVs for subsea exploration and analysis. Sending out an ROV is quite an expensive operation; hence knowing whether the visbility is sufficient for the desired purpose is important. Being able to predict the sea floor visibility before sending out an ROV will offer large benefits to various offshore industries.”

Passionate about innovation, having an impact in making cost effective and sustainable manufacturing or operating solutions, and working across disciplines, Austin is keeping his career options open and excited to see where his studies take him.

James Dingley

Bachelor of Philosophy

 “I really enjoy the freedom of working on my own project spanning several different engineering areas. In the first weeks I was performing calculations and conducting research... Next it was prototyping models to ensure that our ‘ideal’ boat could become a reality. Working with specialist suppliers, laser-cutting my own components and then spending long evenings putting them together allowed me to get more hands-on experience.”

James Dingley is a Bachelor of Philosophy student currently undertaking his 4^th year.  With broad interests ranging from aerospace to science communication, James is spending his summer working on a practical and highly focussed project studying the hydrodynamics of floating platforms.

“Open sea offloading of cargo in a side-by-side configuration, such as the floating Prelude Facility north of Broome, is a relatively new offshore configuration,” explains James. “It is essential to understand the hydrodynamic processes involved in this transfer to ensure that maximum uptime with minimal risk.”

The project involves validation of previous computer models using UWA’s Shenton Park facility where James will simulate deep-sea conditions on a small scale in the 50m long wave flume tank. This project is supervised by Dr Hugh Wolgamot (Research Fellow, Centre for Offshore Foundation System), Dr Ian Milne (Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Offshore Foundation System), and Dr Scott Draper (Associate Professor, Oceans Graduate School).

With a particular interest in space science as well as ocean science, James is currently the President of the UWA Aerosapce team, which competed for the first time last year in the Australian University Rocket Championships. When not in the research lab or rocket workshop, James creates science and engineering documentaries for his YouTube channel, Atomic Frontier. His successful channel features unique and diverse places such as the Murchison Widefield Array, NASA’s research labs and  Svalbard’s polar night.

“Space is an area which really excites me,” says James. “I’m drawn not just to the exploration of far-off worlds but also but also because of its potential to help us out here on Earth. I’ve made it my mission to contribute to this sector. In 2021 I’m hoping to study aerospace engineering in California; a place with opportunities to contribute to research and take part in the new space economy. After working with the leaders in their field, I hope to return to Perth to help grow our own Australian Space Agency.”

Kelly Hawes

Master of Professional Engineering Student

“I chose to study engineering initially because I thought it would be a good combination of logic and creativity (which is true, especially in research), but I’ve continued with it because I realised that I really like being able to break the world down into numbers and put it back together in ways that help us see it differently than before.”

Kelly Hawes is a Master of Professional Engineering student looking at how internal tides can potential protect coral reefs. Supervised by Dr Nicole Jones (Associate Professor, Oceans Graduate School, UWA) and Dr Matt Rayson (Research Fellow, Centre for Offshore Foundation System, UWA), her interdisciplinary internship project examines and quantifies current flows in the Scott Reef Channel, 300 km off the north-west coast of Western Australia.

A complex project that involves consolidating data that collected under adverse conditions, Kelly finds excitement in the challenges of translating figures into facts. “I find it exciting because you’re turning a bunch of numbers into something tangible that gives us some new understanding of our world. It’s so cool looking at a graph or chart and being able to imagine what it means for the processes occurring in the ocean right now.”

Kelly is equally devoted to marine matters in her personal life. “Pretty much everything I do is related to the ocean to be honest,” she confesses. “I love freediving and while I was getting my rescue certificate on Guam, I got the chance to dive to one of their university’s coral growth stations along the reef. I also volunteer with Sea Shepherd. We do a lot of beach clean-ups, educational stuff, and fundraising events.”

Now entering the second year of her Masters program, Kelly is keeping her options open when considering her future career, although a career in research is definitely on the horizon.

“ Right now I’m definitely leaning towards a career in oceanographic research. I’m pretty excited about the movement a lot of research has had lately towards conservation. No matter what field of engineering you look at, I feel as though the most exciting areas are those that are aiming to reduce carbon emissions, mitigate the effects of climate change, or help make our planet greener.”

Master of Professional Engineering Student

“At the heart of it, engineers are problem solvers. I like the challenge of seeing interesting problems and finding novel solutions to them. I also like that engineers are leaders in the community and have the responsibility to be at the forefront of innovation while still maintaining safe structures.”

A final year Master of Professional Engineering student, David Gellé is spending is last summer vacation as a student studying the lifecycle of pile foundatons, a crucial and common type of foundation structure for offshore hydrocarbon facilities.

“The project has me excited because it can have instant industry impact,” says David. “The research was commissioned by Shell for specific platforms in Brunei had this shows the clear interest of industry in the outcomes. Stronger foundations mean longer production lifetime and the ability to increase the production capacity of the hydrocarbon facility.”

“This research could have a significant economic benefit for offshore facilities worldwide. With so much work being done in WA (in particular on the North-West Shelf), I find it incredibly interesting to be at the frontier of advances that can help to expand the industry’s ability to manage the challenging environment for offshore developments.”

Expecting to graduate this year, David is excited for new adventures on the horizon. David currently has an internship at a structural design firm and immediate plans to work in industry. Equally interested in achieving impact through research, David is also considering pursuing a PhD in the future.

Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons)

“This project is exciting because it provides a real demonstration of an application of emerging technology. Being able to work on the forefront with a growing startup and discovering what their technology is capable of is something which is highly motivating.”

Ryan Malone is keeping busy this summer with two projects relating to submarine telecommunication cable.

The first project involves the development of a business case for branch cabled observatories. Submarine telecommunication cables serve as the primary data transmission method for the internet, with hundreds of different cables operating on the ocean floor. One of the primary submarine telecommunications cables runs from Perth to Singapore. This project aims to investigate whether it would be feasible to make another line from this backbone cable to points along the Western Australian coastline, providing the ability to setup ocean observatories in otherwise extremely difficult locations.

“WA having such a large coastline with largely clustered populations makes it unique to most other countries,” explains Ryan. “Consequently, this could be a unique, innovative solution which helps to develop and provide more information regarding WA's complex marine ecosystem”.

The second project focuses on measuring wave heights using fibre optic cable through the Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) process. DAS operates by measuring small changes in the strain of a fibre optic cable, and can be resolved to provide information in acoustics, pressures or temperatures.

“The purpose of this project is to assess the relevance of the technology for measuring wave heights,” says Ryan. “This project is exciting because it provides a real demonstration of an application of emerging technology. Being able to work on the forefront with a growing startup and discovering what their technology is capable of is something which is highly motivating.”

Expecting to finish his studies in 2020, Ryan is interested in pursuing a future career that unites his interest in data science and sensor application with improvements in safety, reliability and conservation.

Ryan’s work is supervised by Dr Phil Watson (Professor, Centre for Offshore Foundation System), Robert Pemberton (Business Support Manager, UWA Oceans Institute) and Dr Lyndon Llewelleyn (Science Impact and Stakeholder Development Lead, Australian Institute of Marine Science)

Master of professional Engineering Student

“I chose to study engineering as I have always had a strong desire to be the one to produce and present viable solutions to fix real word problems.”

Navin Latchman is a chemical engineering student in the final year of his Master of Professional Engineering program. His thesis focuses on the remediation of wastewater containing elevated ion concentration levels, an important problem to solve that can be applied to a range of industrial activities, including fracking, geothermal energy production and tailings dams.

Navin’s internship project looks at the validation of a gas dominant hydrate model against experimental data and is a collaboration between UWA and CSIRO.

“I hope to improve my understanding of flow assurance and develop my technical modelling skills,” says Navin.”The main challenge revolves around whether the available software has been developed to a state to effectively provide meaningful data.”

As a committee member of the Univeristy Enginers Club (UEC) at UWA, Navin is dedicated to representing the engineering student interests and enriching student experience with a range of career, welfare and education events.