News Archive

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WINTHROP PROFESSOR

Winthrop Professor Cai-Heng Li (Centre for Mathematics of Symmetry and Computation, School of Mathematics and Statistics)

Winthrop Professor Li commenced with the University in 2003.  In 1998 he was awarded the Kirkman Medal of The Institute of Combinatorics and its Applications, and in 2012 ranked by the ISI as 482 of 1263 researchers comprising the top 1% of mathematicians worldwide in terms of total citations over the past ten years.  His specialisation is algebraic combinatorics and  in a relatively short time he has established himself as a world authority on a variety of topics - including primitive permutation groups, the isomorphism problem for Cayley graphs, and various classes of transitive and primitive graphs.

Professor Li has an outstanding record of high quality publications, far above the world average.  In total he has published more than 120 papers over a period of 19 years (an average of more than 6 papers a year), a very high record for a research field in pure mathematics.  In addition, he has published on an impressively wide range of topics including self- complementary graphs and factorisations of complete graphs, edge-transitive and highly symmetric graphs, symmetric maps and various aspects of finite abstract and permutation groups.

He has given several keynote and invited talks at international conferences in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia.

RESEARCH  PROFESSOR

Research Professor Livia Hool (School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology)

Professor Hool is an ARC Future Fellow and Head of the Cardiovascular Electrophysiology Laboratory in the School of Anatomy, Physiology and Human Biology.  She commenced with UWA in 1998.  Her laboratory is internationally recognised for its research into cellular mechanisms of cardiac pathology.

In addition to lecturing to undergraduate students, Professor Hool supervises undergraduate and postgraduate research students, trains early career researchers and provides mentoring to young scientists pursuing a career in research.

Her invitations to present internationally and nationally are extensive and her international collaborative links involving researchers based at highly prestigious institutions are at such institutions as UCLA, Washington and Harvard.  She has been elected to commence a three year term as President of the International Society for Heart Research (ISHR Australasia) from August 2013 and has been appointed to the World Council of the ISHR for a similar term.

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Research Associate Professor Melinda Fitzgerald (School of Animal Biology)

Associate Professor Fitzgerald commenced with the University in 2006.  She is an independent researcher with a career interest in designing and assessing clinically relevant strategies for treatment of neurotrauma. Together with her team she has demonstrated metabolic and structural changes associated with spreading damage following neurotrauma and is assessing the efficacy of treatment strategies including pharmacotherapies, light treatment and nanoparticles.  Dr Fitzgerald has established a research profile at local and State level and the evidence suggests that there is growing recognition at the national level.

She is active in the area of research related service having organised a number of local symposia, been the State Representative on the Australasian Neuroscience Society Council for two terms and been an active contributor to local reviews including those associated with animal ethics.

She has numerous collaborative relationships both locally, interstate and internationally, including with Bath University, UK, whereby undergraduate placement students conduct one year research projects at UWA and in so doing contribute significantly to her laboratory work.

RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Research Associate Professor Clelia Luisa Marti (Centre for Water Research)

Associate Professor Marti commenced with the University in 2006. Her research objectives are to quantify mixing and transport processes in the stratified standing water of wetlands, lakes reservoirs, estuaries and coastal seas within the field of "physical limnology". Her outstanding scholarly work in this connection has developed world-class expertise in field studies relating to this subject. She has participated in thirty-nine Australian and international field experiments contributing to globally important science.

Her role as Deputy Director of the Centre for Water Research has involved supporting the Director in running a state of the art field facility for real-time process fieldwork. As well as this responsibility she is a committed teacher and has taken on an active role in mentoring and supervising postgraduate students and international intern students.

PROFESSOR

Professor Marie-Eve Ritz (Linguistics, School of Social Sciences)

Professor Ritz commenced with the University in 1996.  Her research is located in the field of linguistics with her doctoral training more specifically in the area of formal semantics.  Her current work focuses on the semantic analysis of temporal categories but also involves theoretical developments in historical linguistics, and the semantics/pragmatics interface.  She has worked on Australian English, French, and more recently several Australian Indigenous languages.  She has published a number of papers and book chapters within the framework of two main projects and is building an international reputation for this work evidenced by citations.  She was invited to write a paper in the Oxford Handbook of Tense and Aspect (published in June 2012), and to present a keynote address at a conference in Paris in September 2012.

She has had a number of nominations for Excellence in Teaching and Supervision Awards, and was nominated for all three units she taught in 2012 and also selected to apply for the Faculty award. She has supervised 38 HDR students to successful completion.

Professor Ritz has made a significant contribution to the University community, initially during her time in the Faculty of Education as coordinator of the Master in Applied Linguistics program, Chair of the Ethics Committee and Acting Chair of the Research Committee. She is currently a member of the Faculty of Arts and chairs the Linguistics Discipline Group in the School of Social Sciences.

PROFESSOR

Professor Roberto Togneri (School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering)

Professor Togneri commenced with the University in 1998.  His research activities include signal processing and robust feature extraction of speech signals, statistical and neural network models for speech and speaker recognition, audio-visual recognition and biometrics, related aspects of communications, information theory, and pattern recognition.   His international research leadership has been recognised by an invited article in a special issue edition of the prestigious IEEE CAS magazine published in 2011, being invited to serve as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Signal Processing magazine and on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Transactions in ASLP from 2012.  He was invited to give a research seminar and discuss future collaboration at Temasek Labs, NTU, Singapore in November 2012 and to be an ARC Discovery Project grant assessor (twelve occasions), Hong Kong Research Grants Council assessor (five occasions), PhD thesis examiner (thirteen occasions)  and reviewer for ERA ranked A/A* journals (thirty three occasions), since 2007.

He has been Deputy Head of the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering and has taken on various tasks such as organising conferences, research grants co-ordinator and executive member of the Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association and is currently editing a book on speech and audio processing.  He has contributed widely to his students and the wider engineering education community.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Associate Professor Gregory Brush (Marketing, UWA Business School)

Associate Professor Brush commenced with the University in 2011.  His most recent and ongoing research focuses on important theoretical and managerial issues in industrial, services and international marketing.  In industrial marketing, this relates to small  high-tech companies and how their business relationships can assist them to enhance their business performance.  The work considers strategic supplier sourcing and evaluation, supplier contribution to innovation and financial performance, and governance issues for small businesses.  A second steam of research in industrial marketing considers factors influencing customer attractiveness and how they can contribute to a company's competitive advantage.  An additional stream of research combines services and international dimensions.

He has received both national and international awards in recognition of his standing and contribution to his research.  He was nominated for a teaching award in 2012 and has won several best paper in track/or best conference paper awards.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Associate Professor Pieter Poot (School of Plant Biology)

Associate Professor Poot commenced with the University in 1998.  His research is focussed on using his skills in plant ecophysiology to enhance the understanding of plant species distribution patterns, especially relevant to the many threatened plant species in SW Australia.  Their continued persistence in a much warmer and possibly drier climate is largely dependent on our understanding of these species' habitat requirements.  His research also aims at providing basic knowledge on the evolutionary drivers of plant species rarity and commonness.

Associate Professor Poot has contributed to nine FNAS units ranging from plant physiology, ecology and conservation biology to biometrics.  He is currently the Program Coordinator for the Conservation Biology major, and the Deputy Coordinator for the Botany major.  He was awarded with the FNAS Excellence in Coursework Teaching Award both in 2008 and 2010.

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

Associate Professor Gregory Brush (Marketing, UWA Business School)

Associate Professor Brush commenced with the University in 2011.  His most recent and ongoing research focuses on important theoretical and managerial issues in industrial, services and international marketing.  In industrial marketing, this relates to small  high-tech companies and how their business relationships can assist them to enhance their business performance.  The work considers strategic supplier sourcing and evaluation, supplier contribution to innovation and financial performance, and governance issues for small businesses.  A second steam of research in industrial marketing considers factors influencing customer attractiveness and how they can contribute to a company's competitive advantage.  An additional stream of research combines services and international dimensions.

He has received both national and international awards in recognition of his standing and contribution to his research.  He was nominated for a teaching award in 2012 and has won several best paper in track/or best conference paper awards.