Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship
The legacy of one of South Australia’s greatest ambassadors, the late Maurice de Rohan, will continue through a scholarship bearing his name awarded by the University of South Australia. Maurice was committed to the development of a strong, mature, relationship between South Australia and the United Kingdom. This scholarship, reflecting Maurice’s passion and achievements, will enable others to carry on his legacy.
- Maurice de Rohan, AO OBE
- Scholarship details
- 2009 scholars
- 2008 scholars
- Fundraising Committee
- How to donate
- London launch function
- Adelaide launch function
- Donor honour board
Maurice de Rohan, AO OBE, civil engineer and diplomat (1936 – 2006)
Maurice John de Rohan was born in South Australia and studied civil
engineering at the South Australian Institute of Technology, one of UniSA’s
former institutions. He was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor in 2003 in
recognition of his contributions to UniSA.
In 1960 Maurice embarked on his spectacular career when, at the tender age of 23, he co-founded Kinnaird Hill de Rohan and Young, which became Kinhill Engineers, and later Kellog Brown & Root in Asia. In 1976, for business reasons, he moved to the UK.
In 1982, he was elected a fellow of the British Institute of Management and, relishing the company of like-minded Australians, established Australian Business in Europe. A freeman of the City of London and a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Engineers, he was the driving force behind the establishment of the Australia Day Foundation in 2003 and so ensured that it was proudly celebrated in the UK.
In January 1998 he was appointed South Australia’s Agent General in London. This role, which pre-dates Federation by some 50 years, is now part-diplomatic and part investment, trade and tourism orientated, in a primarily South Australian context.
As Agent General Maurice was also Patron of the Combined UK Chapters of South Australian University Alumni Associations. Among his many other roles and awards were chairman of the Cutty Sark Trust, chairman of Disaster Action, member of the council of the Maritime Trust, chairman of the Cook Society, and member of the supervisory board of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies. In 2003 he was awarded a Centenary Medal for his services to the public sector as Agent General for South Australia.
Maurice worked at a formidable pace, but managed to draw the best out of those around him. His calm authority and warmth enriched the lives of those who knew him. A keen Australian rules footballer in his youth, he remained a fervent supporter of Port Adelaide throughout his life.
Scholarship
Valued at $17,500 the Maurice de Rohan scholarship provides the opportunity for higher degree research students undertaking either -
- a Doctoral degree (PhD or Research Professional Doctorate),
- or upgrading to a Doctoral degree from a Masters by Research degree
to gain an international perspective and improve their theses by having the opportunity to undertake research, data collection or work with institutional or industry partners in the UK or USA.
2009 scholars
Three Maurice de Rohan International Scholarships were awarded in 2009 to
Gavin Smith, Jessica Paterson and Matthew Simon.
Gavin Smith is currently in the second year of his PhD candidature in the School of Computer and Information Science.
His research aims to help teach computer algorithms
to recognize objects within images by providing large quantities of automatically generated training data. Focusing on utilizing data created as a
by-product of searching
for images on the web, the research aims to create high quality, tagged, image sets with the added property that they are semantically distinct,
e.g. pictures of animal
jaguars are in a different training group to pictures of Jaguar cars.
The final stage of the work looks at implementing and evaluating appropriate learning algorithms to
make optimal use of this resource to achieve the goal of automated object recognition.
The scholarship has enabled Gavin to accept offers to work with leading
researchers at two high profile Universities in the UK.
Jessica Paterson is currently in the third year of her PhD candidature within the School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy.
Based at the Centre for Sleep Research, Jessica’s research is concerned with the effects of sleepiness and fatigue on mood regulation
and the recovery of mood after a period of disturbed sleep. As well as laboratory based sleep studies, Jessica is currently conducting
field research investigating mood change, workload and sleep patterns in midwives at Adelaide hospitals.
Jessica hopes to apply the findings
of her PhD to the profiling of individuals’ affective responses to fatigue to enable safer rostering and work practices for shift workers.
In July Jessica will travel to Cornell University in New York to complete data collection and work on the final presentation of her PhD thesis.
Matthew Simon is currently in the second year of his PhD candidature in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering.
Based in the Defence and Systems Institute, Matthew’s research concerns forensic computing. Forensic computing is the investigation of
activity, criminal or otherwise, that may have left digital evidence.
Digital evidence is any information stored in an electronic format
that can be used as evidence in the investigation. In recent years, the landscape of forensic computing has changed. Computers and computing
devices are becoming more prolific, the internet has grown faster and more pervasive and criminals become better equipped to hide their activity.
The recovery of digital evidence is now more difficult due to these factors.
Matthew’s research focuses on recovering digital evidence from the
physical memory of a computer – akin to the short term memory of the brain – rather than conventional sources such as hard drives. While this is a
less tangible source of evidence it may hold a remnant copy of data that has been deliberately hidden, encrypted or stored elsewhere on the internet.
In this case, conventional methods used to recover digital evidence are less effective.
The scholarship will enable Matthew to travel to the UK to visit BT Innovation who are leaders in the field of communications and internet technologies.
2008 scholars
Three Maurice de Rohan International Scholarships were awarded in 2008 to
Rosie Roberts, Vinay Sriramn and Ananthakrishnan Kollengode Subramanian.
Rosie Roberts is currently in the second year of her PhD
candidature within the School of Communication. Her research investigates issues of home,
belonging and professional identity for skilled-migrants from a range of countries who
have settled on a long term or permanent basis in Australia or who are Australian-born
citizens who have moved abroad on a long-term basis.
Rosie leaves South Australia in September to travel to the UK and the USA to collect
further data for her research. She will also spend time at the University of Sussex and
University College London working with international experts in the field of skilled migration.
Vinay Sriram is a research fellow at the Defence and Systems Institute. He is currently also pursing a PhD in Information Technology at the School of Computer and Information Science at the University of South Australia. His PhD involves the design of a high performance computer using FPGAs and the acceleration of computationally complex defence sensor target threat simulations using the high performance computer. Later this year, he plans to visit Imperial College London to enhance key capabilities of his high performance computer. Vinay has published 4 journal papers and over 10 conference papers.
Ananthakrishnan
Kollengode Subramanian (or Krishnan for short) is studying
full time for a doctoral degree at the University of South Australia and his
field of endeavour is the application of signal processing to co-chanel speech
separation. The practical application of Krishnan’s research could lead to
better hearing aids and very advanced recording of conferences where every
speaker can be identified.
Very little work has been reported in Australia on Krishnan’s research topic and it is essential for the field research to be able to access speech data from ‘multiple talkers’. Such a database for ‘two talkers’ is available at the University of Sheffield.
Krishnan will use the Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship to visit the UK and interact with the University of Sheffield speech processing research group, that created the database and is internationally recognised for the speech separation and transcription research. The collaboration will enable Krishnan to gain new insight into advanced speech separation techniques and to network with respected international researches in this and related areas.
Fundraising committee
UniSA has committed one Maurice de Rohan scholarship per year to be awarded in perpetuity. In addition to this scholarship a fundraising committee has been appointed to raise $600,000, which will provide a further two scholarships each year in perpetuity. Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship fundraising brochure (PDF 32kb – download Adobe Acrobat).
The members of the Maurice de Rohan Fundraising Committee are spread across the globe:
Australia
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Creagh O’Connor (Chair) |
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Greg Boulton |
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Dr Leon Davis AO |
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Dr Malcolm Kinnaird AO |
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David Klingberg |
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Yvonne Clark (Executive Officer) |
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London
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Bill Muirhead |
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New York
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Chris Colbourne |
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For further details please contact:
Yvonne
Clark
Deputy Director: Development
University
of South Australia
Tel. :
+61 8 8302 0972
Email : yvonne.clark@unisa.edu.au
How to donate
Gifts made in Australia are tax deductible as the University of South
Australia qualifies as a tax exempt organisation under section 78 of the Income
Tax Assessment Act. The University accepts the following:
- cash
- cheques/money orders - please make cheques out to University of South Australia
- telegraphic transfers
- credit card -Visa, MasterCard and Bankcard.
You can make a gift to the Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship by printing the Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship fundraising brochure (PDF 32kb – download Adobe Acrobat) mailing or faxing it to the following reply paid address:
For donations made outside of Australia
University of South Australia
GPO Box 2471
Adelaide, South Australia 5001
For donations made within Australia
University of South Australia (6)
Reply Paid 2471
Adelaide, South Australia
5001
Fax: +61 (8) 8302 0970.
You can also make your gift by phoning +61 (8) 8302 0972 with your credit
card details.
London launch function
Over forty guests attended a private Maurice de Rohan Fundraising dinner held at Lord’s Cricket Ground on 5 September. The Maurice de Rohan Scholarship was launched at this function and the inaugural scholar was announced.
 Creagh O’Connor & Sir Ron Brierley |
 Alison de Rohan & Alan Brideson |
 Guests at Maurice de Rohan dinner |
 Jonathon de Rohan, David Klingberg,
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Adelaide launch function
A cocktail function was held on 22 November 2007 in the Hawke Building, City West Campus, University of South Australia. Over 70 people attended and special guests included Mrs Margaret de Rohan, The Hon. Dr Jane Lomax-Smith MP, The Hon. John Olsen AO, The Australian Consul General to New York, Sir Eric Neal AC CVO, Chancellor, Flinders University and Maggie Beer.
The inaugural scholar, Krishnan Kollengode, gave a presentation about his research and recent visit to the University of Sheffield.
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Professor Peter Høj, Kollengode
Ananthakrishnan, Margaret de Rohan & |
David Klingberg, Sir Eric Neal & Kollengode Ananthakrishnan |
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Creagh O'Connor & Krishnan Kollengode Subramanian |
Ganesh A Krishnan, Kollengode Subramanian, Dr Anna Ciccarelli & Dr Kutluyil Dogancay |
Donor Honour Board
The following have generously donated to the Maurice de Rohan International Scholarship and their gifts ranging from $100 to $35,000.
The University of South Australia Foundation thanks every donor who has made a contribution.
Frances Adamson
Adelaide Brighton Cement
Adelaide Warehouse Distribution Services
Dr Rick Allert AO
Michael Angelakis AM
Sir Christopher Benson FRICS DL
Charles Binks
John Bishop AO
Alan Brideson
Sir Ron Brierley
Dr Judith Brine AM
Built Environs Pty Ltd
Ted Byrt
Campden Hill Limited
Dr Ian Chesterman AM
Dr Chew Kia Ngee
Dr Chow Pok Yu
Dr Anna Ciccarelli
Codan Limited
Chris Colbourne
William Cooper OAM
Peter Costain
Alan Crompton AO
Dr Leon Davis AO and Mrs Annette Davis
Tony Dawson
Margaret de Rohan
Bill Dickson
Trevor Ellis
Charles and Jane Fry
Mark Gilbert
John Gillett
Gliderol Garage Doors Pty Ltd
Government of South Australia
Hon K Trevor Griffin and Mrs Val Griffin
Dr Barbara Hardy AO
John Heard AM
Don Hill
Bob Hill-Ling AO
Professor Peter Høj
The Hon Graham Ingerson AUA MPS
Dr Norton Jackson AM
Brian Jones OAM
Bir and Gerlinde Kathuria
Dr Malcolm Kinnaird AO
Dr David Klingberg AO
Hon Dr Jane Lomax-Smith MP
Rod Marsh
MHM
J Raymond Michell AM
Julie Midworth
Ric Mollison
Franco Moretti
The Hon Dr Kemeri Murray AO
A.G. O'Connor Pty Ltd
Creagh O'Connor
O'Loghlin Consultants Pty Ltd
Tony Read
Peter Scales
Grant Spence
St Aloysius College
Oliver and Sally Stocken
URS Australia Pty Ltd
Ian Wall OAM
William Woodhead
Yalumba Wine Company
Howard Young