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Ivano is a researcher, consultant, author, and speaker whose work focuses on the managerial and business implications of Cybersecurity.

He is the General Manager of AUSCERT, a not-for-profit organisation affiliated with UQ that delivers cybersecurity services to public and private sector organisations across Australia and New Zealand.

Ivano is also a Senior Lecturer in Cybersecurity Management with the UQ Business School and a member of UQ Cyber.

Ivano helps business leaders and executives make evidence-based decisions in cybersecurity. With a professional background in risk and security management, Ivano’s work bridges the gap between technical cybersecurity and its repercussions across organisations. He has advised ministers, policy-makers, board members, and senior executives on strategies, governance structures, policies, and training programs for effective cybersecurity management. Ivano is also an experienced facilitator in the fields of Design Thinking and Design-Led innovation, having run since 2015 more than 50 design-led workshops and longer projects for public and private sector organisations.

Prior to AUSCERT and UQ, Ivano worked as a Research Fellow with the Adam Smith Business School (University of Glasgow) and a Postdoctoral Fellow with the PwC Chair in Digital Economy (QUT). In this role, he worked with public and private sector organisations in projects aimed at facilitate their transition into the Digital Age. Ivano obtained his PhD from QUT in 2016, with a thesis on safety and security management in Australian airports. His academic career includes stints with Bocconi University and SDA Bocconi School of Management (Milan), where he worked as a faculty member and consultant for three years.

He also worked as a Deputy Venue Security Manager at the XX Winter Olympic Games - Turin 2006 and as a Police Officer for the Italian Ministry of Interior.

He has a double MSc in Management of Public Administrations and International Institutions (Bocconi University, Milan) and International Security (Sciences Po, Paris).

A father of one and an eager snowboarder, Ivano loves soccer, American football, and writing novels and poems.

Dr Liz Brogden is a Lecturer and Director of Teaching and Learning at the UQ School of Architecture, Design and Planning in Brisbane, Australia. Through her research work, she advocates for climate action in architecture and design, focusing on the central role of education in sustainability transitions through university programs and professional education.

Liz has extensive experience designing and implementing university courses focused on climate, resilience and sustainability from undergraduate through to Masters-level programs. These subjects have been developed in architecture programs and through interdisciplinary subjects that span multiple design disciplines. She received two Vice Chancellor Awards at QUT for teaching excellence and was on the winning team for the overall 2021 QS Reimagine Education Global Education Award.

A 2022 Churchill Fellow and Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, Liz currently sits on both the Queensland Education Committee for the State Chapter and the National Education Committee for the Australian Institute of Architects. Previously, she has been a committee member for the Institute's national Climate Action and Sustainability Taskforce (CAST) and the Climate Action and Sustainability Committee for its Queensland State Chapter.

Dr Sandra Brosda is a Research Fellow within the Surgical Oncology group led by Professor Andrew Barbour.

Dr Brosda was awarded a PhD in bioinformatics and cancer genetics from the University of Queensland in November 2020. Her research focused on biomarker discovery and intra-tumour heterogeneity and tumour evolution in oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC). In 2021, Dr Brosda was awarded a Cure Cancer Australia PdCCRS grant and an MSH project grant to further investigate tumour evolution to improve precision medicine in OAC.

She has been involved in research projects covering genetics, epigenetics, spatial transcriptomics, radiomics, ctDNA and quality of life assessments in the context of cancer. Overall, her research applies bioinformatics tools and approaches to cancer genomics to improve precision medicine and health outcomes for patients with melanoma, oesophago-gastric cancer and pancreatic cancer.

Experienced human factors and ergonomics researcher and consultant across a range of industries particularly mining. Current projects in the areas of mining automation human Systems integration, as well as equipment design to reduce injury risks, manual task risk management, and whole body vibration measurement and management.

Robin Burgess-Limerick is Professor of Human Factors within the Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre. He has been a member of academic staff since 1995, and prior to that has held research positions in a number of organisations including the Division of Workplace Health & Safety, and the Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit (UK). Prof Burgess-Limerick completed his Bachelor of Human Movement Studies, and Hons degrees at The University of Queensland, and returned to the University to undertake his PhD in the area of manual lifting coordination. He is a Certified Professional member, past-president, and elected Fellow, of the Ergonomics Society of Australia Inc.

Research Interests

Prof Burgess-Limerick has eclectic research interests ranging across the broad scope of human factors and ergonomics from visual perception and movement control, through workplace interventions to prevent injuries due to manual tasks, and the design of mining equipment to reduce injury risks. His research has been funded by grants from the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission, ARC, NHMRC, Workcover Queensland (QComp), the Coal Services Health and Safety Trust (NSW), and the Australian Coal Association Research Program.

My research explores how Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies enable users to better understand and interact with complex data. I also focus on the engineering and evaluation of interactive visualisation systems and the design of Augmented Reality interfaces for industry applications. I have authored 60+ publications in top-ranked Human Computer Interaction and Information Visualisation conference proceedings and journals, including in ACM CHI, ACM UIST, ACM ISS, IEEE InfoVis/TVCG, IEEE VR.

In 2021 and 2022, I was nominated Australia’s Field Leader researcher in Computer Graphics (The Australian Research magazine yearly ranking).

Michael Dickson’s research is focused along four broad themes: design and practice and developing design propositions through built work, design pedagogy and creativity, timber construction and timber resource maximisation and finally the confluence between craft and industrial production using CAD and fabrication technologies.

Michael is a lecturer in design, technology and communication at the School of Architecture, University of Queensland. Michael graduated from The University of Queensland in 1993 and has been practicing through a range of offices situated in Brisbane, Malaysia, Ireland and Latvia up until 2006. His most recent practice experience in Latvia was through his own private practice operated in collaboration with Mara Francis from 2001. During this time in private practice, Dickson Francis Architects worked on a range of projects from major reconstructions of post soviet infrastructure through to reconstruction of residences of heritage significance.

Having recently entered academia, Michael’s research straddles teaching, research and practice with projects focusing on prototyping, experimental installations and developing research interests via consultancies through Uniquest.

Skye Doherty is expert in using creative and design-led research methods to explore alternative futures and address wicked problems. Her work has addressed issues in journalism, law, education, and disaster resilience, among others and has led to both conceptual and practical outcomes. Her design artefacts include the NewsCube, an award-winning storytelling tool and Vim, a tangible energy story. She has developed frameworks for journalism innovation and used codesign to design media for bushfire resilience and to improve the experiences of injured workers, a project that led to legislative change. Her current project – Wicked Thinking – uses speculative news to envision the futures of complex issues.

She leads the Global Change Scholars Program in the UQ Graduate School – a year-long PhD experience focused on research collaboration and impact. She also leads the Advocacy and the Public Good theme within the Centre for Communication and Social Change and is a member of the Human-Centred Computing research group in the School of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. She came to academic research after an international career as a journalist and her experience spans leading international media companies and as well as startups.

Dr Fred Fialho Teixeira is an architect, media artist and senior lecturer at University of Queensland, School of Architecture, Design and Planning. He has been working in the fields of computational architecture and immersive environments for the last 20 years. He has been awarded the Dean's Fellowship from the University of California and Media Arts and Technology Fellowship where he initiated is PhD on innovative biological-based design strategies at the California Nano Systems Institute. Additionally he co-established and developed an international research program on the studies of Perception of Space in Architecture and Culture and the UQ Visualisation Lab with a focus on the used of immersive technologies and extended realities (VR/AR/XR). With over 50 publications on design methods and research in digital design and fabrication, his research focuses on bio-augmented spaces through the experiential traits of immersive media and spatial computing strategies. He's an alumni of the Architectural Association, School of Architecture (AA) and accredited architect by Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) and Portuguese Chamber of Architects (OA) and also practiced for high profile offices such as Zaha Hadid Architects. Through his innovative strategies he designed over 30 projects from which he was internationally awarded within biology, art and architectural domains. Presently his research work on spatial computation combines the use of mixed reality and advanced manufacturing to enable the next generation of built environments.

Memberships

Architectural Association, School of Architecture (UK),Royal Institute of British Architects (UK), Chamber of Architects (PT), Australian Smart Communities Association (AU).

Susan is an architect, educator and researcher at the University of Queensland with expertise in architectural design histories and theories, heritage and sustainability, and design governance and policy. Susan has experience in leading cross-disciplinary research involving stakeholders in academia, industry and government. She has been involved in large-scale national and international funded research projects and has ongoing collaborations at the University of Ghent, supported by the UQ-UGhent Strategic International Partnership. At UQ she is a member of the ATCH Research Centre (Architecture, Theory, Culture, History).

Prior to her academic career Susan worked in architectural practice for over 10 years in Australia and the UK, gaining experience on a range of project scales and types including community, civic, housing and urban design. She maintains strong connections to industry and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects and has contributed to its education and gender equity committees, and regional and state awards programs in urban design, public architecture, residential design and art-architecture. She currently contributes to the AIA National Gender Equity Committee Research and Publication Taskforce.

Susan’s current research follows three themes, which are explained further under Available Projects:

• Material Values of the Built Environment: Heritage, Maintenance, Demolition, Salvage, Storage;
• Design Expertise, Design Governance and the Architecture Profession; and
• Quality in Architecture: Statements, Settings, Substance.

Susan is an author, editor or contributing author to 9 books. Her research and criticism is widely published in academic, professional and industry journals including Journal of Architecture, Interstices, European Journal of Creative Practices in Cities and Landscapes, AA Files, Leonardo, Fabrications and Architecture Australia. She regularly presents her research in national and international forums, including academic and industry conferences, at cultural institutions, and for continuing professional development. Susan has been an invited guest lecturer, guest critic and RHD guest critic at Ghent University, Monash University, and Griffith University. She has also been an invited chair and contributor to expert panels at the SCCI Architecture Hub Sydney, Museum of Brisbane, the UQ Art Museum and for the Committee for Brisbane. In 2012 Susan was a Visiting Professor in the VAMA (Visual Arts Media and Architecture) Masters Programme at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. In 2013 she was an invited scholar at the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte in Paris. In 2018 and 2023 Susan was a visiting researcher at UGhent. Susan has extensive experience in research collaboration, research mentorship and research leadership, and she regularly co-authors with academic and industry collaborators and students.

Susan has been the recipient of a number of competitive awards and grants for her research. She was a Chief Investigator on the ARC funded Discover Project Is Architecture Art?: A history of categories, concepts and recent practices(2016-2022) which analyses the changing place of architecture in culture and cultural administration. This project produced three books: Pavilion Propositions: Nine Points on an Architectural Phenomenon (2018), Trading Between Architecture and Art: Strategies and Practices of Exchange (2019) and Valuing Architecture: Heritage and the Economics of Culture(2020), numerous academic and industry publications, and convened two conferences. Susan was also a Chief Investigator on the ARC funded Discovery Project Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities (2016-2020), which brought together experts from five Australian Universities in an inter-disciplinary team to research the landscape, architecture, planning and heritage of modern univeristy campuses in Australia. She is a contributing author to Campus: Building Modern Australian Universities (UWA Press, 2023). In 2021-24 Susan is leading research on the participation and career experience of women in design leadership roles in Australia, with support from the Australian Institute of Architects. Her ongoing research with UGhent collaborators has recieved support from the UQ Global Strategy and Seed Funding Scheme.

Susan has contributed extensively to the leadership of the Architecture, Design and Planning School at UQ, most recently as Chair of Research (2022), Chair of Teaching and Learning (2018-21) and Academic Advisor for the Master of Urban Development and Design Program (2021). Her research also informs teaching and curriculum development in the Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology at UQ. In 2021 Susan contributed to two projects to develop Indigenous and inter-cultural content for built environment and design education, as part of teams led by indigenous experts.

Awards

2023 UQ Global Strategy and Partnerships Seed Funding (with Ashley Paine and John Macarthur)

2019 UQ Promoting Women Fellowship

2010 David Saunders Founders Grant Award (SAHANZ) (with Jared Bird)

2000 QIA Medallion (Australian Institute of Architects, Qld Chapter)

2000 Board of Architects Prize (Board of Architects, Queensland)

Memberships

Registered Architect, Board of Architects Queensland

Fellow, Australian Institute of Architects (FRAIA)

Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ)

Dr. Amrita Kambo is a multi-disciplinary researcher at The University of Queensland. Her work borrows and applies theoretical constructs from concepts such as ‘social acceptance’ and ‘social licence to operate’ (SLO). These modules can be applied to assess the extent to which a business, or industry or technology gains tacit support from the wider public. Additionally, the SLO concept can be applied to understand standards of responsible behaviour, transparency and accountability in a wide range of settings. To date, Amrita has applied the SLO concept to understand community expectations in the context of renewable energy technologies such as hydrogen and biogas under a project funded by the Future Fuels CRC using familiar methods in social sciences such as surveys, interviews, focus groups and participatory research.

Amrita's wider research interests include sustainable cities, urban infrastructure, planning and place-making. These interests are rooted in the Amrita’s early career and experience in architecture and design.

Amrita’s PhD research included a review of influential topics in context of ‘sustainable’ architecture - ‘regenerative’ design and development, biophilic design, ecosystem services, ‘Geodesign’, biomimicry, green infrastructure, positive development, net-zero design and so on.

Dr Charlotte Kessler is a transdisciplinary Design Researcher and Lecturer in Design. She sees design as a powerful change-making tool relevant to addressing complex issues, and applicable across a variety of contexts.

Charlotte holds a Bachelor & Master in Product & Service Design (ENSAAMA & Ecole Boulle, France), a Master in Design Futures (Griffith University), and a PHD (Queensland University of Technology) completed in 2022. Her thesis, Developing curricula that equip designers with capabilities to enact sustainable futures: A matter of ethos, draws from the voices of academics and graduate designers from four sustainability-focused design programs internationally to propose theoretical guidelines supporting design educators to develop, enable and sustain design programs that are responsive to a rapidly changing world, in turn equipping design graduates with relevant capabilities to create change towards sustainable futures.

Charlotte has worked on a range of sustainability-focused design and design research projects internationally. Her research is situated at the nexus between design, education, and sustainability. She believes that design education has an important role to play in situating design as key, change-making practice, in the context of sustainability transitions. She is interested in research that informs academics as they develop and implement sustainability-centred curricula and pedagogies, and that supports sustainability transitions in design practice. Charlotte has recently become involved in a research project on climate literacy in architecture in partnership with the Australian Institute of Architects, and the Association of Architecture Schools of Australasia.

Charlotte is currently working as Lecturer in Design in the School of Architecture, Design, and Planning at The University of Queensland. Previously, she was the Program Convenor for Design and Educational Design Lead at Griffith College, where she coordinated the accreditation and curriculum development processes for the new design program. Charlotte has developed and coordinated sustainability-focused higher education courses in the design field across multiple universities. She has taught in award winning courses including Impact Lab 3 Studio - Planet (QUT) awarded Vice Chancellor Award for Excellence and Wharton - QS (London) Re-Imagine Education Award for Design for Transformative learning through transdisciplinary collaborations, along with the Spatial History Unit awarded QUT Faculty of Creative Industries Teaching Award for Teaching Innovation and Excellence. She is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). She specialises in developing sustainability-centred Higher Education curricula and professional development resources for academic staff.

Associate Professor Eve Klein’s compositions have been called vivid, revolutionary, inclusive, moving and must-see. Winner of the 2023 Art Music Award for Experimental Practice, Klein brings orchestral music into dialogue with immersive and interactive technologies for screen, art music and mass festival audiences. Klein's work has been experienced by hundreds of thousands of people globally at Salisbury Cathedral, Burning Man, New York University, VIVID Sydney, MONA, GOMA, Brisbane Festival, World Science Festival, the Arts Centre Melbourne and the State Library of Queensland. As Lead Composer for Textile Audio, Eve crafts City Symphony, an interactive AR music experience overlaying Brisbane CBD (available via iOS and Android app stores).

Klein creates artworks in collaboration with community groups, festivals, researchers, and NGOs to achieve community transformation goals. Recent projects have explored gendered and racial violence, climate change, disaster recovery and refugee rights. Klein's work, Vocal Womb, is an example of this practice, allowing the audience to explore the relationship between voice, identity and power by stepping into and directly manipulating the voice of another. The premier was called the "#1 coolest thing at MOFO 2018" (Timeout Melbourne) and "One of the must-see music/artworks of the 2018 festival... a deeply considered engagement with the history and traditions of opera" (The Conversation).

Klein is Associate Professor of Music Technology, leading an interactive music and spatial audio research cluster at the University of Queensland, guiding postgraduate composers on the creation of immersive, interacitve, virtual reality and augmented reality concert works and operas.

"This is contemporary music at its most relevant – it is simultaneously inward and outward focused in addressing the challenge of its existence and its capacity to produce something great.” - Melonie Bayl-Smith, Cyclic Defrost, Issue 31

“Excellence in Experimental Practice was awarded to Eve Klein for City Symphony, a Brisbane sound walk revolutionising audiences' engagement with urban environments, underpinned by an ethos of collaborative inclusivity and accessibility.” -Australian Music Centre

“One of the must-see music/art works of the 2018 festival was Eve Klein’s Vocal Womb … a deeply considered engagement with the history and traditions of opera.” - Svenja J. Kratz -The Conversation

Lorna Macdonald delivers courses at the intersection of design, technology and humanity at The University of Queensland. Her interaction & technology interests lean towards the tangible and physical. Her research focus is on location-based systems & reinventing the value of design frameworks for education.

I study design as a collaborative process that materialises alternative social futures. Those futures are sometimes new products, systems, services, infrastructures and technologies. But they can also be social contracts, agreements, processes, ways of working and new possibilities for our collective lives together.

I currently lead research projects in three broad domains: designing advocacy, designing the materials of participation, and augmenting skill and expertise through design.

The designing advocacy project has worked with a range of stakeholders with reduced agency such as people with mental health needs, chronic illnesses, injured workers, and other stigmatised or at-risk groups. We have developed methods for the inclusion of their perspectives in design processes, insights about their specific conditions and needs, critical analyses of how they are conceptualised from the perspectives of technologists and service providers, and design proposals for services and technologies that amplify their agency.

The designing the materials of participation project develops formats and processes for participatory design—the inclusion of stakeholders in the design of systems that will affect the organisation of their work and life. In this project we study how technologies and systems are used in microanalytic detail, analysing how tools and materials shape people's interactions. We use this understanding as a basis for the design of new methods and processes (and sometimes new matierals) for involving people in the design process, and giving them greater autonomy over the systems they will use.

The augmenting skill and expertise through design project studies specialist work practices for the purposes of developing technology support for that work. We have worked with aeromedical teams, audiologists, passport officers, emergency first responders, quick service chefs, primary school teachers, and other professional contexts of use to understand the local and particular skills that enable those workplaces to function effectively and collaboratively. We use these understandings to inform the deisgn of technologies and work practices that support, and preserve, those core professional skills.

The constants across these projects relate to the design process—the methods used to understand people, identify design opportunities, facilitate collaboration between project stakeholders, champion users' contexts and requirements, prototype early solutions, evaluate concepts in the field, and build new technologies. This results in a variety of research contributions: new design methods and perspectives that have been tailored for specific contexts of use, identification of the potentials and limitations of different approaches to design and analysis, the discovery of context-specific issues for the design of new systems, new understandings of people, their work and contexts of use, and the design and evaluation of bespoke technologies.

Dr Mehrnoosh Mirzaei is an interdisciplinary designer, design researcher, and educator. She is an Associate Lecturer in Design at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning. She obtained her Bachelor's and Master’s in Industrial Design (University of Tehran), focusing on Product Design. She completed her PhD at The Queensland University of Technology in 2023. The core of her PhD thesis revolves around the exciting potential of experiential learning and embodiment. Her research delves into the realm of disaster risk reduction education for children, exploring the efficacy of employing experiential learning and embodiment concepts within design-driven education. Through the framework of Research-through-Design, she embarked on a journey that involved collaboration with children as informants. The outcome of her research is a well-defined three-step model for devising initiatives that are both child-friendly and accessible to non-designers and practitioners.

Her research is transdisciplinary, exploring complex topics, developing innovative solutions, and outlining strategies for preferable futures. Mehrnoosh's extensive design background enables her to apply design-led approaches to investigate multifaced complex issues across healthcare and resiliency and risk perception domains with a focus on enhancing learning experiences. Her research interests lie in health and well-being, resiliency making, and Research through Design. Beyond her academic pursuits, Mehrnoosh has practical experience as a designer, boasting a noteworthy portfolio that includes collaborations with industries spanning the automotive, home, and toy sectors. She secured the Bronze A' Design Award in 2017 for her work "Escher". Her expertise extends to partnerships with government organisations, where she devises design-driven Risk Awareness programs tailored for children in Southeast Queensland. Additionally, she actively collaborated with hospitals and health services across Queensland, employing co-design to facilitate collaboration and incorporate the voices of healthcare practitioners in identifying the current system flow of the inter-hospital transfer system. Mehrnoosh applies these skills in the teaching area of interdisciplinary Design practice.

Dr Lisa Ottenhaus is a structural engineer and senior lecturer, with expertise in design of timber connections. Lisa's research interests encompass the theory, analysis, design and performance of timber connections, including detailing for timber durability. Lisa and their team research offsite timber construction using both engineered wood products and light timber framing, design for adaptability, disassembly and reuse, and reversible timber joints.

Lisa holds a PhD from the University of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, on the seismic performance of connections in tall timber buildings, a Masters of Science in structural engineering from Delft University of Technology, and a Bachelor of Science from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

As part of the ARC Advance Timber Hub, Lisa co-leads Node 3 on Extending Building Life, and project 1.2 on timber connections. Lisa is a steering committee member of WG1 a COST Action Helen (Holistic Design of Taller Timber Buildings), and a founding member of the International Association for Mass Timber Construction.

Lisa is a committee member of TM-010 (Australian Standards technical committee on Timber Structures and Framing), and a steering committee member of the Australian Timber Construction Educator Network.

Lisa has been an invited speaker at the prefabAUS Offsite conference, the Brisbane Architecture and Design Festival, the International Holzbau Forum (Innsbruck, Austria) and has been interviewed by the Guardian, ABC Radio, Built Offsite, and the Holzmagazin.

Dr Karla Straker is an educator, researcher, and above all a designer. Being an alumnus of The Queensland University of Technology, having completed a Bachelor of Design (with honours) in Industrial Design in 2011, and PhD in 2016. She has expert knowledge in the area of design innovation, most notably through the recent publication of the books Design Innovation and Integration (2021), Design Innovation for Health and Medicine (2020) and Affected: Emotionally engaging customers in the digital age (2018). She has a strong track record of high-quality research outputs, with over 30 journal articles published in a variety of design, business, and technology journals.

Her research is in the field of Design Innovation, which is the application and adoption of design innovation methods into industry-led research projects. Her specific focus and contribution to the field is the continuing application and investigation of design methods in driving innovative digital solutions. Her publications appear in a range of disciplines including design, business, management, and medicine journals, disseminating the value of design to a variety of readers. Most notably in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Energy Policy, California Management Review, ASAIO Journal, and Journal of Cardiovascular Nursing.

She is currently a Senior Research Fellow at The University of Queensland. Her previous position involved being a lecturer and program director of the Design Major at the University of Sydney. During her time as Program Director, she led the growth of the program from 59 students in 2018 to 139 students in 2020. The units on offer also increased to 12, including subject areas which were directed by student interests, including ‘Design for Social Impact’. These units were offered to students from 17 different degrees to combine their expertise and work collectively on a range of projects. She has developed and implemented new curriculum across 4 units of study which has been directly related to her research, seeing the scholarly development of all teaching resources. The complexity of these units is designing teaching resources and project which enable the diverse group of students to all learn and benefit.

She has a Graduate Certificate in Educational Studies (Higher Education) and has taught in undergraduate and postgraduate programs at the University of Sydney and Queensland University of Technology. Being nominated for the VC Award for ECR Outstanding Teaching (USYD, 2020) and won the Most Inspiring and Influential Teaching Practice award (QUT, 2011).

Karla was an Early Career Research Ambassador for the Sydney Nano Institute (2019-2021) working with the Deputy Director of Member Engagement. In this role she engaged with researchers at all academic levels, across disciplines and faculties to develop programmes and initiatives for ECRs across the university. She successfully developed and facilitated an ECR workshop with participants, which resulted in two projects being funded by the Nano Institute.

She became the Deputy Co-director of the Design Innovation Research Group in August 2020 and worked in a multi-disciplinary team in the Sydney Nano Institute to develop a low-cost method to capture enough water from the atmosphere to alleviate the effect of drought.

Securing over $1M in competitive grant and industry funding, Karla has been a Chief Investigator on three industry-supported projects. She currently supervises 2 Ph.D. students and has completed 1 Ph.D. and 6 honours students across the fields of design for health and medicine, science and business innovation. Her students have won awards including an Australian Good Design Award (2021), Sydney Nano Institute Publication Award (2019), the Nosé International Fellowship Award (2019), and the Top 5 Abstract at the ASAIO Conference (San Francisco USA, 2019).

Design of digital channel engagements

Dr Straker’s PhD thesis investigated the design of digital channel engagements, to understand how strong relationships with people can be built and sustained through a deeper understanding of customer emotions. Through her candidature she was trained by Professor Michael Rosemann, an internationally renowned Information Systems researcher, and Professor Wrigley, a leader in the field of Design Innovation. Her thesis was nominated for the Best Thesis Award (QUT) and was in the Top 40 of the International ISPIM Innovation Management Dissertation Award. This work also led to a book co-authored with Professor Wigley, titled Affected: Emotionally engaging customers in the digital age published in 2018 by Wiley Publishers. The purpose of this book was to consolidate and translate research findings into practical knowledge for companies to build deep and long-lasting relationships with customers in the digital age through design. It is distributed worldwide and sold more than 5,000 copies in the first 5 months through the Australian bookseller Dymocks. It also received industry reviews from Google, Sales Force, PwC, Accenture and the Boston Consulting Group. The front cover image is also an original artwork by internationally known artist CJ Hendry.

Since her PhD research, her work has continued exploring the design of digital channel engagements, in the medical, defence and retail industry.

Human-centred design of interactive systems

Stephen Viller is a researcher and educator in human-centred design methods, particularly applied to designing social, domestic and mobile computing technologies, and understanding how people's interactions in everyday settings inform the design of such technologies. He has over 20 years of experience in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Interaction Design, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, where he has focused on bridging disciplines and perspectives. He has concentrated on qualitative methods, particularly observational fieldwork, contextual interviews, diary studies and field trips, but also increasingly on more ‘designerly’ approaches such as cultural probes, low-fidelity prototypes, rapid prototyping and sketching.

Stephen is an Associate Professor and leader of the Human-Centred Computing discipline in the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, and UQ's Theme Leader for the Digital Worlds and Disruptive Technologies theme in the QUEX Institute. From 2016-2019 he was the Director of Coursework Studies (Chair of T&L committee) and from 2011-2016 he was Program Director of the Bachelor of Multimedia Design and Master of Interaction Design. His publications span various interdisciplinary journals and conferences in HCI/CSCW and technology design. He has a BSc (Hons) Computation (UMIST), MSc Cognitive Science (Manchester) and PhD Computing (Lancaster).

Dr Felix Wiesner is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia and an Honorary Fellow in the School of Civil Engineering at The University of Queensland and works as part of the National Centre for Timber Durability and Design Life. He was appointed at UQ as a Lecturer in Timber Engineering in 2019 to lead research projects focused on enhancing the fire performance of timber using treatments and modification techniques. His background is in structural fire engineering and the fire safety of timber structures, specifically engineered timber structures. His field of expertise are the critical evaluation of load bearing capacity of building elements in fire and the assessment of safety implications arising from the use of engineered timber as structural members in tall buildings or structures with extraordinary architectural features.

Dr Wiesner completed his Master of Engineering in Structural and Fire Safety Engineering at The University of Edinburgh from 2010 to 2015 before he successfully completed his doctoral studies on the structural behaviour of cross-laminated timber in fire between 2015 and 2019. During his undergraduate and postgraduate work, he closely worked with Arup on multiple projects regarding the fire safety of timber buildings and the effect of localised fires in large open spaces. He actively participated in the European COST Action FP 1404 for the Fire Safe Use of Bio-Based Building Products between 2016 and 2019, representing the UK as a Management Committee member. He significantly contributed to the success of the Fires in Tall Timber Structures: Large-scale Tests in Support of Tall Timber Construction project at the BRE in the UK and also worked as a member of the global Fire Safe Use of Wood research collaboration.

I am an interaction designer.

I have an interest in design research and methods and their application to the design of technology. I believe that co-design/participatory design and human-centered design are critical approaches to ensuring that technology will truly serve the people who will be using or impacted by that technology.

A significant proportion of my work involves working with people living with dementia and post-stroke aphasia. Much of this work focuses on accessibility, usability and acceptability with the aim of creating technological solutions that are not only functional but also recognise and respond to people's intrinsic needs and experiences. A key aspect of my recent work is exploring acceptability and its ties to the Social Self-Determination model of people's needs. Through this I am looking at User Experience through a different lens, seeking to develop an understanding of how this model of people's needs can support a meaningful and impactful experience.

My interests extend across design theory and practice, human-computer interaction and user experience, and the application of the theory of these domains into practical and novel contexts. When designing technology that is to be used in everyday or applied contexts, I believe it is important to think beyond the technology itself. Therefore, in my research so far, I have worked in multidisciplinary teams crossing speech pathology, occupational therapy, computer science, and psychology. I am also committed to ensuring that technology and the process of designing technology is ethical.