The Royal Society of New South Wales Awards
The Royal Society of New South Wales announced its award winners on 4 December 2019. Professor Kourosh Kalantar-Zadeh, an ARC Laureate Fellow of the School of Chemical Engineering at UNSW Sydney, received the Walter Burfitt Prize.
The Walter Burfitt Prize is awarded every three years to a resident of Australia or New Zealand for research in the pure or applied sciences that is deemed to be of the highest scientific merit. The award is granted according to scientific output published during the preceding six years.
Professor Kalantar-Zadeh is renowned for his research and development in the areas of liquid metals, atomically thin materials and ingestible sensors. A revolutionary tool to analyse the gastrointestinal gases, the ingestible sensing capsule loaded with gas-sensing technology detects gaseous biomarkers as it passes through the gut.
Traditionally, testing and measuring of the various gases has ranged from the non-invasive in vitro (i.e. in the laboratory) gut simulators and indirect breath testing through to colonic or small intestine tube-insertion, a much more invasive method used to capture stool or gas samples.
The capsule developed by Professor Kalantar-Zadeh and the team gets around the problem of invasiveness while also ensuring the gases can be analysed in their natural environment. The ingestible capsule can simultaneously detect oxygen and hydrogen concentrations as it moves through the gastrointestinal gut and wirelessly transmit the data to an external receiver.
Image courtesy of Peter Clarke/RMIT University.
Professor Kalantar-Zadeh is internationally recognised for his work on ingestible sensors, two-dimensional semiconductors and liquid metals and has been awarded the 2017 IEEE Sensor Council Achievement Award and 2018 ACS Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship Award (Asia-Pacific region).
Sensors, by their very nature, detect, diagnose, monitor and respond to the world around them allowing pre-emptive and predictive responses in a vast range of settings. The market for smart sensing across a broad range of industries is immense and growing.
The NSW Smart Sensing Network (NSSN) brings together the world-class research taking place in NSW and ACT universities with state government agencies and industry to develop innovative solutions to key challenges and, at the same time, position NSW as a leader in sensing technology.
The other NSW Royal Society award winners include: Scientia Professor Matthew England of the UNSW Climate Change Research Centre — James Cook Medal; Professor Dietmar Müller of the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney — Clarke Medal and Professor Si Ming Man of the Australian National University — Edgeworth David Medal and Professor Evelleen Richards of the University of Sydney — History and Philosophy of Science Medal.
The NSSN is a consortium of nine leading universities across NSW and ACT including the University of Sydney, UNSW and the Australian National University. Working with the NSSN simplifies the process of engaging with universities by creating a single point-of-contact for the leading research-intensive universities in NSW & ACT.
Learn more about NSSN’s capabilities here.