ISER Strategic Initiatives: September to November
ISER have been very busy the last few months with so many exciting collaborations and new opportunities, our Interim Director Professor Graham (Gus) Nathan, and Deputy Director Professor Melissa Nursey-Bray, have shared some of ISER's recent strategic international activities from September till November below.
"°Õ³ó±ðÌýmulti-stakeholder Fourth High Temperature Minerals Processing Forum (21-23 Oct), an initiative of the ³ÉÈË´óƬ’s Centre for Energy attracted 165 delegates from 15 countries to the University’s National Wine Centre to address the pathway to net-zero emissions for high temperature industrial process industries.ÌýThe HiTeMP forum identified a wide range of technologies, policies and pathways that are emerging with strong potential to accelerate the net-zero transition, fostering the partnerships and identifying the further analysis that is needed to allow industry to identify which of the bespoke pathways is most prospective for their context.
The National Conference of the Heavy Industry, Low-carbon Transition Cooperative Research Centre, the HILT CRC (17-18 Oct), co-hosted by UoA as a double core partner, attracted156 delegates from 56 partners, of which 40 are from industry. The conference was very effective in discussing the priorities for the next three years and taking a ‘deep-dive’ into the wide range of decarbonisation projects.
We also worked with our colleagues from across the University to support a range of other events, including the Fourth Australia-Europe Economic Relations Dialogue, themed "Deepening Australia-EU Relations in Troubled Times for Trade.", run by Professor Peter Draper from ABLE (18-19 Nov).ÌýPrior to this, we also hosted the 2024 John F. Elliott Lecture, presented by Dr Sara Hornby, who attracted some 80 participants, of which half were from industry, addressing the topic of "The Green Steel Revolution".
ISER has been building its partnership with the FAME Sustainability Strategy, and work on socially just energy is ongoing and has included creation of a partnership with the Varduoo Institute of Sami Research, based on Sweden to consider how to work between and engage First Nation peoples in the energy transition. We also welcomed Mr Shounak Ray, who is the Business Development Manager, working to the FAME Sustainability Strategy.
Internationally, ISER hosted a delegation from IISc Bangalore via the Energy Futures Research Symposium and promoted out activities in India, Vietnam and Singapore as part of a Senior Executive Mission. This has already yielded results with the signing of a MOU, as well as an additional visit from IISc Madras to Adelaide to further build opportunities for collaboration. ISER has also supported four delegates from the University to attend the prestigious Energy Summit, led by Deakin in Melbourne this month.
We are also building our links with Europe: we hosted a delegation from Denmark as part of our role in the Danish Australian Partnership on Green Hydrogen Value. We also hosted Professor GÅ‘ran Roos (Chalmers, Sweden), in his adjunct capacity, to speak at the HiTeMP Forum and engage with our researchers, together with 16 other researchers from Europe who attended the HiTeMP Forum. This includes Professor Christian Sattler (German Aerospace).
Our team from the NSF Global Centre in Hydrogen Production Technologies, for whom the Australian lead is Professor Greg Metha, also hosted four international visitors, Professors Meng Tao and Ellen Stechel (Arizona State University), together with Professor Nazmiye Ozkan and Dr Elizabeth Shrimpton (Cranfield). Professor Tao also gave a seminar on how to reduce power conversion losses in renewable hydrogen electrolysis systems and we worked together on a couple of other new initiatives."
Interim Director Professor Graham (Gus) Nathan, and Deputy Director Professor Melissa Nursey-Bray