Giving knowlege
by Katrina Kalleske
Fourteen free lectures will be held in Adelaide over the next few months as part of UniSA’s drive to give the community access to valuable knowledge on key local issues.
UniSA’s annual Gift of Knowledge lecture series will this year run from July until November, presenting a range of research being undertaken at UniSA including topical Australian issues such as healthy eating, water security, climate-proofing Australian cities and marketing in a recession.
The chance to provide education to a wide range of people through the Gift of Knowledge series goes to the core of UniSA’s educational ideals.
"These lectures provide a great opportunity to showcase our excellent research and innovation to people in the community from all backgrounds," said UniSA Deputy Vice Chancellor of Research and Innovation, Professor Caroline McMillen.
"This is our chance to put something back into the community and to stimulate discussion and debate to help keep South Australia at the leading edge of new fields of thought and knowledge.
"This lecture series allows our research leaders to share their knowledge, ideas and views with people from industry, business and the community and provide different perspectives on the important issues that can shape our future."
Prof McMillen said that the lecture series also provided a wonderful opportunity for UniSA’s alumni to reconnect with the University and to catch up on the current work of its researchers.
Associate Professor Desmond Lun, Director of the University’s Phenomics and Bioinformatics Research Centre, will be hosting a lecture in October about his genomic technology work that he says is set to solve many common problems.
"Biology is being driven by exponential growth curves in technologies for reading and writing DNA which will change both how we live and how we think about life itself," Prof Lun says.
"DNA sequencing will soon be so cheap that we will easily be able to know the genome sequence of any living creature.
"This will foster the development of new technologies that can help to solve major problems associated with everyday factors such health, energy and water."
Already Prof Lun is using genomic technologies to find new renewable energy sources. He is engineering a microbe that converts solar energy and carbon dioxide into petroleum.
"We are aiming to find a solution to providing a clean, cost-competitive and carbon-neutral alternative to current methods of petroleum production," he says.
Also in the area of energy, Associate Professor Jon Kellett will be presenting a lecture in September about climate-proofing Australian cities. His long-standing research interest in natural resources and planning, especially renewable energy, has led to research into how cities can face up to the threat of climate change.
"The physical impacts on cities such as Adelaide include changing rainfall patterns, coastal changes and increasingly lengthy periods of high temperatures," Prof Kellett says.
"All these have implications for the way we live and our quality of life. Major challenges for policy-makers now include how and where we live, how we design our buildings to deal with climatic extremes, how we secure water and energy supplies, and how we adapt our cities to be climate proof."
Prof Kellett’s lecture will look at the nature of Australian cities and provide a broad overview of climate change issues for each city. He will also talk about energy and water use in the home, and how people can be more sustainable.
Associate Professor Linda Zou will also be discussing water use in her August lecture, in particular, new water technologies. She is working on a number of water technology projects.
"In 10 years time, the mindset of people will have changed from thinking that freshwater comes free with unlimited supply, to a more cautious and planned attitude," she says.
"Desalination, along with other new technologies to remove trace-level organic pollutants, will be better understood and accepted at different levels."
For more information about the Gift of Knowledge lecture series, please visit the Gift of Knowledge website.
Registrations for the lectures are essential and can be made online.