News Archive

The Faculty is delighted to announce that last week, during the annual STLE (Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers) meeting in Orlando, USA, Professor Gwidon Stachowiak was awarded a prestigious STLE Fellowship for his outstanding contributions to tribology.

Only a handful of these fellowships have been awarded outside the USA, and Professor Stachowiak's fellowship appears to be the first in Australia.

Professor Stachowiak is the Head of the Tribology Laboratory at the School of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are focused mainly on wear of materials, bio-tribology, machine condition monitoring, application of fractal methods in tribology, numerical characterisation of particle morphology and angularity of particles and surfaces.

The projects currently conducted range from the tribology of advanced wear resistant materials to understanding of wear and lubrication mechanisms operating in synovial joints. A major thrust of his research is in the numerical characterisation and classification of wear particles and surfaces, erosive wear of materials, lubricating properties of vegetable oils, wear occurring in synovial joints and early detection of osteoarthritis.

He has supervised several PhD students, numerous honours and many research projects and has been the recipient of several large ARC (Australian Research Council) and biomedical (e.g. NHMRC) grants.

He was also invited to present keynote and plenary addresses at International Conferences, World Congresses and seminars at various institutions. He is the member of the Editorial Boards of several tribological journals and book series and member of several international committees. He is also a sought-after consultant for various industries on tribology related problems.
Professor Stachowiak has published extensively and wrote/contributed to several books.

Asked to comment on his recent achievement, Professor Stachowiak said "any individual success depends on the efforts and the work of many people, good working environment and the society, and my case is certainly not an exception. The University of Western Australia is unique as it creates the necessary conditions for the people to grow and develop a variety of different ideas. It strongly encourages the individuals to freely pursue their, often very diverse, interests."

This is a great credit to the UWA executive and management. Professor Gwidon Stachowiak also said that he was lucky to work for many years with the bunch of very bright students. Several of the former members of his Tribology Laboratory (he calls them ‘intellectual children') are now working at various industries and universities.

Tribology Laboratory at UWA is internationally recognised for its research. Professor Stachowiak's book, Engineering Tribology, is now a standard teaching text in tribology in many countries.