Women who are transforming lives with sensors
Women researchers are using sensors in an inspiring and diverse range of applications, the audience at last week’s Women in Sensing event at ANU heard.
The four researchers from ANU discussed how they use sensors to date indigenous rock art, for the early detection of diabetes, to find bushfire-causing lightning strikes and monitor space junk. They also disclosed a variety of research challenges, such as finding industry collaborators, translating research into real world applications, and dealing with intellectual property.
(From left): Panel moderator and NSW Smart Sensing Network Digital & AI Theme Lead, Dr Ayu Saraswati; Professor Marta Yebra, Professor Lan Fu; Professor Penny King and Professor Céline d’Orgeville.
Director of the Bushfire Research Centre of Excellence, Professor Marta Yebra, described how she is developing and testing smart sensors to detect small bushfires in remote locations: from satellites, the ground, drones and fire towers.
The Professor in Environment and Engineering described how she is incorporating indigenous knowledge – such as how people read the landscape before performing a prescribed burn – into the building of these bushfire prevention technologies.
The remote-sensing expert is also building a public database of images captured by cameras on fire towers to develop open-source algorithms to automatically detect smoke from fires on images and to benchmark existing detection methods.
“We are doing this because we know that in Australia, the growth of deployment of this technology is being slowed down by high cost. Companies are asking for extremely high fees for those AI algorithms that automatically detect smoke, and there is lack of transparency regarding their performance” Prof Yebra said.
“If we provide Open Access algorithms, we also democratise access to that technology to any local council, any area in Australia that wants to use that technology.”
Head of the Department of Electronic Materials Engineering in the Research School of Physics, Professor Lan Fu, is developing nano sensors for nitrogen dioxide air pollution monitoring, which will help prevent health issues such as asthma.
The professor is also developing the prototype Ketowhistle device, which uses acetone gas detection for the early diagnosis of diabetes, and is working with two companies to develop the applications so that it can be used to detect diabetes not only in human, but also in cats, dogs and cows.
Some members of the audience at the Women in Sensing event.
Professor Fu said she is driven to work with nanostructures, detectors and sensors as she wants her research to change people’s lives.
“The things that will transform our life is sensors,” Prof Lan Fu said.
“Think about digital health, the sensors that improve bushfire monitoring and which enhance people’s health and help with agriculture.
“I think it is something really exciting to work with.”
Leader of the Earth Systems Chemistry group in the Research School of Earth Science, Professor Penny King, is using spectroscopy to understand how rocks on Earth can store carbon, and to evaluate coatings on Aboriginal rock art.
The geochemist is also using spectroscopy to better understand the products of active volcanoes such as gases and sulphates, and to examine minerals on Mars.
She described how she set up a micro-infrared spectrometer laboratory that led to another woman scientist asking her to develop a short course on laboratory techniques, remote sensing and exploration.
Speakers on the panel (from left): Professor Marta Yebra, Professor Lan Fu, Professor Penny King and Professor Céline d’Orgeville.
“It was totally out of my comfort zone, and I had to go and read a lot of textbooks,” Prof King said.
“I had to push myself, but I learned about remote sensing through that process. It was worthwhile in the end, because I got an understanding of new fields and could use my laboratory to play in areas relevant to those fields too.”
Director of the Advanced Instrumentation & Technology Centre in the Research School of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Professor Céline d’Orgeville, is an engineer whose field of research is optical and infra-red instrumentation for large ground-based telescopes and space missions.
These cutting-edge instruments enable new fundamental discoveries in astronomy. Astronomical instrumentation technologies also have broad applications in Earth observation, such as the detection of bushfires from space.
Prof d’Orgeville uses adaptive optics not only in astronomy but also to enable space situational awareness so that space junk can be tracked and debris-on-debris collisions in space avoided, and for laser communications which we may depend on in the future.
She described how she helps astronomers with their important work by designing and building innovative and bespoke instruments for them, a complex and lengthy process which may take between five and 25 years to complete.
“When you get to the end and that instrument is finally installed and that telescope is finally gathering data, you know it’s being used for its intended purpose by the astronomers and that exciting new discoveries will be made,” Prof d’Orgeville said.
“One of my greatest joys was to make it possible to gather the data that led to the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics about the super massive black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
“These images were taken with adaptive optics on the largest telescopes on Earth…I’m really proud that I contributed to make that possible.”
The NSSN Women in Sensing event series is going strong and we are working on something bigger for 2025. Stay tuned to see what we have in store.