About
The UWA System Health Lab (SHL) operated from 2015 to 2023. It's mission was to “to imagine a richer university experience for digitally savvy students” by “bringing a start-up mentality and technologically curious students to industry-motivated research projects." It was funded by BHP, a global resource company, through the BHP Fellowship for Remote Operations awarded to Professor Melinda Hodkiewicz for 5 years in 2015 and renewed for a further 3 years to 2023. The initial funding was associated with a major donation of ~$10M to the UWA EZone. The UWA EZONE complex has transformed the way the Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Schools educate students, undertake research and engage with the community. The work done in the SHL under the BHP Fellowship has supported this transformation by providing a supportive environment for engineering, computing and mathematics students to work on multi-disciplinary projects aimed at improving the maintenance of physical assets. The SHL has been a meeting place, leveraging the industry links of the Lab's leadership team, supporting current students meeting practicing engineers and engaging in industry workshops and conferences.
The SHL's overarching aim has been to assist young engineers and coders to gain competence and confidence that will enable them to transition smoothly into the workforce, research roles or start their own companies.
We have demonstrated a strong commitment to open source hardware and software, where possible, openly share data and models we create to encourage interaction. Code remains available on our GitHub https://github.com/uwasystemhealth
The hardware platforms we developed use low-cost interfaces, removing barriers to entry for researchers interested in data collection. Many of the projects involved rapid prototyping of sensing or test systems, data analysis and visualization.
Funding for the System Health Lab came from the $2M BHP Fellowship for Engineering for Remote Operations via BHP's Social Investment group. These funds were used to employ students as UWA Casual Staff, paying them for their work in the SHL as part of a novel work-integrated-learning approach. It also allowed for the purchase of equipment and parts and the development of web sites and other digital infrastructure. Videos were made of a number of projects and these are available on the SHL's YouTube site https://www.youtube.com/@systemhealthlabuwa9925
The SHL was led by Professor Melinda Hodkiewicz and Adjust Professor Dr. Ben Travaglione. Melinda was appointed the BHP Fellow for Engineering for Remote Operations in 2015. Prior to joining academia Melinda worked as an engineer in industry and uses this experience and her industry links to drive collaboration and innovation aimed at improving asset maintenance. Her interests span engineering, data analytics and data collection. Dr. Ben Travaglione is a Senior Research Scientist with the Defence Science and Technology Group and an Adjunct Professor at UWA. He leads the BlueBox project in the SHL and is the go-to person for our questions on DAQ (data acquisition), MEMS and coding for embedded systems. He is developing our capability to use open source collaboration tools and encouraging us to use Linux. He is a technical mentor to students and staff alike. Ben’s background includes a postdoctoral research fellowship in Quantum Information Systems at the University of Cambridge.
The SHL benefited from a number of people external to and internal to UWA who gave their time and experience to projects and to assist our students. Quenten Thomas is a software and mechatronics engineer with more than a decade of industry experience designing and building hardware, firmware and software. He is one of the founders of WearHawk – a start-up that is developing technology to monitor conveyor belts in the mining industry to predict and thereby prevent costly failures. Through the MO4U arrangement with UWA he works alongside, and collaborates with, the System Health Lab team and the Living Lab project. Dr.Jo Sikorska developed the SHL’s Prognostic Data Library project and worked for 18 months as a Research Fellow bringing a wealth of experience in data management for asset health prognostics to the SHL. Jo is now the Lead Reporting and Analysis Specialist for Integrated Operations at Fortescue Metals Group. Caitlin Woods has a Masters in Software Engineering and worked in the SHL during her PhD at UWA. Caitlin's PhD research combines techniques from Human-Computer Interaction, Organisational Psychology and Ontology Engineering to transform the way that maintenance procedures are created, managed and used in industry. Caitlin led ontology development work in the SHL. She is founder of Equanto, an ontology services group and works as an ontologist for Grundfos Pumps. Emily Low graduated with a Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Mathematics and Philosophy and along with Marcus Handley assisted with ontology projects. Emily now works for Social Ventures Australia in Melbourne. Marcus completed a BA in Computer Science at Cambridge University and now works at Jane Street in London.
Dr. Michael Stewart completed his PhD in computer science. His webdev skills were integral to development of SHL related websites including the PDL since 2015. Michael has led work on knowledge graph development in the SHL as part of his role as a Post-Doctoral Researcher with the Centre for Transforming Maintenance through Data Science.
Associate Professor Adriano Polpo is a statistician who likes to develop new methods and study statistical theory underlying practical approaches. He has been mainly working with the SHL on reliability/survival analysis, regression models for counting data and Bayesian nonparametric methods. Dr. Débora Corrêa is a computer scientist working with machine learning, nonlinear time series analysis and complex networks. She has helped SHL students in applying these techniques to remote sensing and environmental data, streaming sensor data, and audio signals. Associate Professor Tim French works in modal logic and has co-supervised all the cognitive computing projects in the SHL. He provides ontology, reasoning, machine learning and much other advice and has worked on many theoretical and industry use case challenges. Tim has been a regular mentor in Unearthed Hackathon events. Associate Professor Wei Liu from the UWA School of Computer Science and Software Engineering collaborates with us on cognitive computing projects out of the SHL. Along with Tim she has cosupervised many of the SHL NLP projects and worked on industry use cases.
Professor Tim Sercombe made time to contribute his technical expertise as a materials engineer while being Dean and Head of School of Engineering at UWA to support a multi-year degradation project on UV testing of SLS vs conventional nylon. Associate Professor Adrian Keating provided assistance to many SHL student projects using COTS and MEMS sensors and in the analysis of these signals. Dr. Cristina Vulpe gave her experience in geotechnical monitoring to collaborate on student projects associated with remote sensing..
Given the number of software tool and digital infrastructure developed by the SHL team over the 8 years. A number of students are engaged post-2023 in managing and maintaining these artefacts and systems as well as those developed as part of the UWA NLP-TLP group. These students are listed under the 2024 Alumni cohort.
Peer-reviewed Research Papers published by undergraduate and Master of Professional engineering students based on their Masters and Honours research projects (student names in bold)
Scaffidi, H., Hodkiewicz, M., Woods, C. and Roocke, N., 2025. GraphRAG on Technical Documents-Impact of Knowledge Graph Schema. Transactions on Graph Data and Knowledge, 3(2), pp.3-1.
Lau, A., Feng, J., Hodkiewicz, M., Woods, C., Stewart, M. and Polpo, A., 2025. Generating Authentic Grounded Synthetic Maintenance Work Orders. IEEE Access.
Van Den Broek, J., Hodkiewicz, M. and Polpo, A., 2025. Liner Wear Prediction Using Bayesian Regression Models and Clustering. International Journal of Prognostics and Health Management, 16(1).
Hershowitz, B., Hodkiewicz, M., Bikaun, T., Stewart, M. and Liu, W., 2024. Causal knowledge extraction from long text maintenance documents. Computers in Industry, 161, p.104110.
Wu, H., French, T., Liu, W. and Hodkiewicz, M., 2024. Automatic semantic knowledge extraction from electronic forms. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O: Journal of Risk and Reliability, 238(5), pp.933-944.
Griffiths, T., Corrêa, D., Hodkiewicz, M. and Polpo, A., 2022. Managing streamed sensor data for mobile equipment prognostics. Data-Centric Engineering, 3, p.e11.
Jordan Makins, Melissa Aspinall, Wei Liu, Michael Stewart, and Melinda Hodkiewicz, 2022, Problem, Remedy and Item Identification from Maintenance Long Texts, ESREL 2022, The 32nd European Safety and Reliability Conference, Special Session S29: Natural Language Processing, Knowledge Graphs and Ontologies for RAMS, Dublin, 28 August-1st September 2022. https://www.rpsonline.com.sg/proceedings/esrel2022/html/S29-01-168.xml
Leman, R., Travaglione, B. and Hodkiewicz, M., 2021. Beamforming using Digital Piezoelectric MEMS Microphone Array. arXiv preprint arXiv:2111.10087.
Moffatt, J., Zaitouny, A., Hodkiewicz, M.R. and Small, M., 2021. Detecting asset cascading failures using complex network analysis. IEEE Access, 9, pp.120624-120637.
Castle, P., Ham, J., Hodkiewicz, M. and Polpo, A., 2020. Interpretable survival models for predictive maintenance. In 30th European Safety and Reliability Conference and 15th Probabilistic Safety Assessment and Management Conference (pp. 3392-3399). Research Publishing.
Bartels, A., Cripps, E., Keating, A., Milne, I., Travaglione, B. and Hodkiewicz, M., 2020. Framework for Validation of Permanently Installed MEMS-Based Acquisition Devices Using Soft Sensor Models. CivilEng, 1(2), p.7.
Gao, Y., Woods, C., Liu, W., French, T. and Hodkiewicz, M., 2020. Pipeline for machine reading of unstructured maintenance work order records. In Proceedings of the 30th European safety and reliability conference and 15th probabilistic safety assessment and management conference.
Ziegelaar, A.J., Travaglione, B.C. and Hodkiewicz, M.R., 2020. Sensing system for low cost condition monitoring of remote assets. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 53(3), pp.60-65.
SHL Alumni
The SHL is all about the students. Here is a list of those that have been part of the SHL story. They are now off in the 'real' world doing great things. This list is in reverse chronological order. Students who did paid work are marked with a \*.
Students who worked as staff (indicated with a \*) and/ or did Honours and Masters projects with the SHL
(in which case the title of their thesis is provided)
2025
Heidi Leow\* Heidi is just completing her Bachelor of Advanced Computer Science (Honours, Artificial Intelligence). She did her honours thesis with the lab and is working with us to turn her thesis into a peer reviewed publication. Her thesis title is 'Keep Facts as Facts: Hybrid Graph-Based RAG for Semi-Structured FMEA Spreadsheets'.
Torry Hogan\* Torry is working as an IT Systems Developer in the SHL alongside his undergrad BSc Computer Science & Cybersecurity degree.
Ethan (Yifeng) Dai completed his Bachelor of Advanced Computer Science (Honours) project as a CEED project funded by South32 on 'Representations Matter: Language Models for Enterprise Data Classification'.
Cohen Rafiq completed his BPhil (honours) project as a CEED project funded by South32 on 'Find the Right Rows - A Selection Criteria Framework for Evaluating Tabular Retrieval Approaches'.
Davis (Ye) Huang completed his Masters of Professional Engineering (Software Engineering) project as a CEED project funded by MRIWA on 'Structuring domain knowledge and semantic links to support mineral exploration'.
2024
Jadeyn Feng\* completed her BEng Honours project (1st class) Artificial Intelligence on 'Semantic and Engineering Knowledge based Embedding for Maintenance
Work Order Clustering'. She now works as a Junior Software Developer for Sentient Computing. She is working on a peer reviewed paper based on her honours thesis (with Allison as co-author). She also worked on a number of SHL projects.
Allison Lau\* completed her BEng Honours project (1st class) Artificial Intelligence on 'Generating Authentic Grounded Synthetic Maintenance Work Orders'. She now works as a Junior Software Developer for Sentient Computing. She published a peer reviewed paper based on her honours thesis (with Jadeyn as co-author). She also worked on a number of SHL projects.
Henri Scaffidi\* completed his BEng Honours project (1st class) Software Engineering as a CEED project funded by MRIWA on 'Retrieval Augmented Generation on Large Technical Reports'. A paper based on this work was published in a peer review journal (see details below). Before joining Commonwealth Bank in their Technology Engineering Graduate program in 2026 Henri worked on a number of projects funded by the SHL.
Chayanika Gangopadhyay\* did the Honours project of her BPhil (Honours) Artifical Intelligence as a CEED project funded by Rio Tinto on 'Tree-to-Tree Translation for Functional Hierarchy Standardisation'. She also worked on SHL projects with us. She joined Commonwealth Bank in their Technology Engineering Graduate program.
Dylan To\* did the Honours project of his BPhil (Honours) with the SHL on 'Automatic Knowledge Graph Construction from
Incident Reports using Large Language Models'. He also managed the SHL IT infrastructure for a couple of years. He joined Commonwealth Bank in their Technology Engineering Graduate program.
Callan Brogan completed his Masters of Professional Engineering project as a CEED project funded by Rio Tinto with the title 'Ore Car Bogie Dynamic Performance Assessment with Wayside Data Analysis'. He joined Aurecon's graduate mechanical engineering program.
Dean Kezurer did the Honours project of her BPhil (Honours) Data Science as a CEED project funded by Rio Tinto with the title 'Brake System Fault Detection'. He is now working for JP Morgan Chase in the UK as an AI & Data Associate.
Anfernee Alviar completed his Master of Professional Engineering (Software Engineering) doing his thesis on 'Adapting SPIRES to Maintenance Texts'. He joined Capgemini in their Cloud Internship group.
2023
Briana Davies-Morrell\* completed her Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) in Software Engineering and Mathematics and Masters in Software Engineering. She has been working the SHL on ontology projects, developing training materials and testing. Her thesis title was `Exploring Human-computer interaction in ontologies - a case study'. Briana is moving to Sydney to join Canva as a Data Analyst.
Brad Hershowitz completed his fourth-year Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) in Computer Science and Software Engineering. His thesis title was `Causal knowledge extraction from long text maintenance documents'. It was a CEED project funded by BHP Nickel West. Brad's thesis was published in the prestigious Computers in Industry journal in 2024. Brad now works as a Data Scientist for Chrysos Corporation.
Jacob Van Den Broek graduated with a Master of Data Science. His thesis title was `Linear wear prediction using Bayesian regression models and clustering'. It was a CEED project funded by Metso Outotec. A paper on Jacob's thesis was presented at the World Mining Congress in Brisbane in 2023. Jacob now works as a Data Scientist for Newmont Corporation.
Nick Sadovnikov\* will graduate with a Bachelor of Philosophy student studying Electrical Engineering and Finance. He worked in the SHL on the ADAQ and Living Lab projects. He is now working as a Project Management Intern at BHP.
Peter Tanner\* will graduate with a Bachelor of Philosophy student studying Electrical Engineering (Hons) and Computer Science. He worked in the SHL on the ADAQ and Living Lab projects. He is currently working as a Systems Engineer Intern at Orexplore Technologies.
Patrick Morton\* is a Fogarty Scholar and graduated with an MPE in Mechanical Engineering. He worked in the SHL on the Living Lab project. His thesis title was `A standard framework for assessing reliability of IoT devices in the resources and agricultural industries'. Patrick continued to work part-time as a Embedded Sofware Developer with GeoMoby while studying medicine at UWA.
Yashraj Sabnis completed his MPE in Electrical & lectronics Engineering. His thesis title was `Beamforming using a 6-Channel Piezoelectric MEMS Microphone Array coupled with a Commercially Available Data Acquisition System'. He is now working as a Electrical Engineer at Alcoa.
Paul Rogers completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Modelling and Simulation of Maintenance Strategies for Conveyor Idler System'. He is now a Mechanical Engineer at Gold Fields.
Daniel Santosa completed his MPE in Software Engineering. His thesis title was `Increasing Inter Annotation Reliability: Approaches to Improve Inter Annotator Agreement Measurements'. He is now a Data Analyst with Avanade.
Luke Fortuna completed his MPE in Chemical Engineering. His thesis title was `Deep Learning for Automatic Identification of Erroneous Functional Locations in Maintenance Work Order'. He is now a Metallurgist at Pilbara Minerals.
Thomas Morton\* is a UWA Winthrop Scholar majoring in Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. He worked in the SHL on the Living Lab project. He is a Software Engineer at GeoMoby.
Ivy Bui\* completed her Masters in Software Engineering. Ivy worked on maintaining the SHL's IT infrastructure. She is now a Software Developer at EnerCloud.
2022
Frinze Erin Lapuz\* graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Software Engineering and Data Science. Frinze maintained (and continues to help to maintain) the IT infrastructure of the SHL for many years and developed the INDEAA web site (for the Mechanical Industry Advisory Panel to review units for Engineers Australia accreditation) and the Living Lab web sites. Frinze is now a Software Engineer with Atlassian.
Clancy Blenkinsop completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Measurement and characterisation of dust deposition on an underside in field and dust chamber environments'. He is now an Engineer with Santos Ltd.
Taku Mtabeni completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Dynamic Cost of Quality in Lubrication'. It was a CEED project funded by BHP Nickel West. He is now a Mechanical Engineer with Newmont Corporation.
Toby Digney\* was a UWA Winthrop Scholar and graduated with an MPE in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering. He worked in the SHL on ADAQ projects. He is now an Engineer with Cochlear working in Sydney.
Eddie Atkinson\* completed his Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) in Computer Science and Data Science. Eddie was instrumental in the development of the Makers Lab at UWA and helping with EE and IT projects in the SHL. On graduation Eddie joined GridCognition and in 2023 joined Atlassian.
2021
Aiden Taba\* completed his MPE in Electrical Engineering. He worked at the SHL since his first year of university creating hardware/software for networked sensors. One of his final projects at the SHL was to lead the development and delivery of an IOT training course for the Nobel Prize Winner. Professor Barry Marshall and his team. Aiden is now working for Cochlear in Sydney.
Charlie Schumacher\* completed MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `UV degradation of 3D printed materials'. He worked in the SHL on the Living Lab project. After working as a graduate engineer for Roy Hill, Charlie is now working at Rio Tinto.
James Dingley\* was Fogarty Scholar and BPhil in Mechanical Engineering. He is also the creator of the Science YouTube series www.atomicfrontieronline.com with recent videos having more than 500,000 views. He made a number of videos for the SHL. James was awared a Fulbright Scholarship for a Masters in Space Engineering at MIT. He is now a Research Engineer at the MIT STAR lab in Cambridge Massachusetts.
Bumsoo Park completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Design of MEMS IoT lightweight sensor for vibration analysis'. He now works as a Mechanical Engineer for Worley.
Jordan Makins completed his Masters of Data Science. His thesis title was `Problem, Cause and Remedy Identification from Maintenance Text'. It was a CEED project funded by the Water Corporation. A paper on his thesis was published at ESREL 2022 the European Conference on Safety and Reliability.
James Royer completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Design of a MEMS Microphone Array For High Performance Beamforming With A Commercially Available Data Acquisition System'. James was part of the Living Lab team. James is now a Mechanical Engineer with Fortescue.
Haolin Wu\* completed his Bachelor of Science with Honours in Computer Science and Data Science. His thesis title was `Automatic Semantic Knowledge Extraction from Procedural Forms'. A paper on his thesis was published in the IMEchE Journal of Risk and Reliability. Haolin is now working as a Software Engineer for Telstra in Sydney.
Ricky Leman completed his MPE in Electrical Engineering. His thesis title was `Beamforming Performance of a Stand-Alone Digital Piezoelectric MEMS Microphone Array'. His thesis was published on ArXiV. He now works an Electrical Engineer for Subsea Controls.
Sufyan Shafiek completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Accelerated Testing of Camera Dust Mitigation Methods'. He now works as an Engineer at Fortescue.
2021
Aseem Maroo\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `A methodology for accelerated life testing of deep groove ball bearings through contamination failure'. Aseem was the co-Project Manager for the Living Lab and the participated in the 2017 SHL Unearthed Hackathon team. Aseem is now a Consultant Mechanical Engineer with the Wood Group.
Carlin Lapuz\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Low-cost, WiFi-enabled, Portable MEMS accelerometer for Vibration Analysis'. Carlin was part of the Living Lab team. Carlin continues to support education of engineers at UWA through participation as an external expert in the GENG5507 unit. Carlin is an Electrical and Control Systems Engineer at Rio Tinto.
Drew Georgiades\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. He was the co-Project Manager for the Living Lab at UWA SHL. Drew is now a Mechanical Engineer with Engineering Dynamics Consultants.
Toby Griffiths\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Managing Streamed Sensor Data for Mobile Equipment Prognostics'. His thesis was published in the Data-centric Engineering Journal. Toby was part of the Living Lab team. Aseem is now a Solution Consultant with the Wood Group.
Jaymin Moffatt\* completed his MPE in Electrical Engineering. His thesis title was `Detecting Asset Cascading Failures'. His thesis was published as a journal paper in IEEE Acccess. He was a facilitator for the GENG5507 unit Risk, Reliability and Safety and worked on the Living Lab Project. Jaymin is an Electrical Engineer with Horizon Power.
Dr. Paul Castle completed his Masters of Data Science. His thesis title was `Blockage risk in vitrified clay wastewater pipes: A comparison of frequentist and Bayesian method'. His thesis was published as a paper as a conference paper for ESREL. Paul is now a Data Analyst for the Telethon Kids Institute.
Dmitry Kozlov\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. Dmitry was part of the Living Lab team. His is now an Asset Performance Engineer at Fortescue.
Sophie Giraudo\* completed a double degree Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Statistics (Honours), and Data Science. She is collaborated on developing a Python based reliability analysis tool. Sophie now works as a Data Impact Officer with the Department of Communities WA.
Amit Patel\* completed his MPE in Mechanical Engineering. His thesis title was `Detection of Ragging in Wastewater Pump Stations using Condition Monitoring' and was sponsored by the Water Corporation through the CEED program. Amit was part of the Living Lab team. Amit is now an Engineer with the Wood Group.
Laura Peh completed her Bachelor of Philosophy in Computer Science and Software Engineering (Hons). Her thesis title was `Learning Grammar from Technical Language'.
2019
>Fraser Bullock completed his Bachelor with Honours in Computer Science. He set up a number of the SHL's IT systems. Fraser is now a Principal Software Engineer for SpacetoCo.
Arush Karla completd his MPE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. His thesis title was 'Assessing & Improving Data Readiness Levels', a CEED project funded by the Water Corporation. On graduation he joined BHP as an Electrical, Instrument and Control Engineer. In 2023 he started an MBA at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Luke Warner completed his MPE in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. His thesis title was `MEMS-Based Sensing System for Condition Monitoring of Industrial Equipment'.
Bryan Trac completed his MPE in Software Engineering. His thesis title was `Making Machine Readable Sentences From Unstructured Maintenance Records'. He now works for as Senior Associate with Scyne Advisory, and before that with PwC Australia.
Sarah Connor completed her MPE in Software Engineering. Her thesis title was `The Security of Things: Comparing Lightweight Cryptography Algorithms for use in Securing Internet of Things Devices'. She now works as an Analyst Programmer for the Telethon Kids Institute.
Tom Smoker started a PhD in computer science at UWA in 2018 following completion of his Masters in Software Engineering. Tom was part of the SHL’s original Siri for Maintenance project. He was an active participant in hackathons and was a member of the 2016 Unearthed Hackathon team. Tom suspended his PhD and moved to the US to co-found on a start up called WhyHow.AI.
Luke Devenish completed the MPE Mechanical stream. His MPE project assessed the viability of commercial off the shelf accelerometer dataloggers to monitor the background vibrations and changes in seismic velocity of a tailings embankment in the lead up to a static liquefaction failure. Luke joined the graduate program at BHP and is still working at BHP as a Project Engineer.
Aiden Ziegelaar completed the MPE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. In his thesis he developed a low power, high range, wireless micro-controller and MEMS sensor combination for remote vibration monitoring for his MPE project. He was one of the cofoudners of ThinkHUB.IO. He started working as a software engineer for the start up Warpforge. A paper on his thesis was published in the peer review IFAC conference 'Sensing System for low cost coniditon monitoring of remote assets'.
2018
Viktor Fidanovski completed the MPE in Electrical and Electronics Engineering . His thesis was on the 'Design of an intrinsically safe wireless MES unit'. Viktor joined Conoco Phillips as a Graduate Engineering, then Santos and now works for Mitsui E&P.
Heaton Rhodes completed the MPE in Mechanical Engineering, with SHL. His thesis title was 'Mounting Methods for MEMS based vibration sensor systems' He joined Jacobs as a Grad Mech Engineer and now works for the CBH group.
Zach Heyes completed his Masters in the Mechanical Engineering stream. His background in chemistry and engineering proved effective when conducting material investigation on the UV degradation of Nylon 12. He has also had industry experience in intermodal and heavy haul rail obtained when working for Aurizon and BHP. Zach was part of the SHL team in the 2018 Perth Unearthed Hackathon. Zach is now a Reliability Engineer at BHP's Nickel West Kwinana refinery.
Ryan Malone worked with the lab as a second year Bachelor of Philosophy (Hons) student studying Electrical Engineering and Mathematics & Statistics. Ryan investigated the potential of wireless load cell technology being used for failure detection. He was a member of the SHL team at the 2018 Perth Unearthed Hackathon. Ryan is now with Azure Consulting.
Yiyang Gao completed his MPE in electrical engineering with a thesis that focussed on cognitive computing. His thesis involved developing a pipeline for NLP of maintenance records and used clustering methods to identify concepts that might aid in ontology development. Yiyang is now a software engineer with FLSmith.
2017
Deion Bonser joined the BHP graduate program as a mechanical engineer and is now residential at the Olympic Dam site in South Australia. A paper based on his MPE thesis (and coauthored with Alastair, Melinda and Lyndon While, title is 'Optimizing fixed-interval maintenance periods for mobile asset sub-systems operating in remote locations') was presented at the European PHM conference in June 2018. Deion is now a reliability engineer with BHP's Olympic Dam operation.
Alastair Chin joined the Rio Tinto graduate program after completing a mechanical engineering degree with a second major in computer science. He was responsible for the development of SHL's Data-Oracle site for identifying data quality issues in csv files. He worked on BHP rail data for his MPE thesis and co-authored the conference paper mentioned above. Alastair is now a reliability engineer with Rio Tinto.
Stephanie Lye joined the Shell graduate program as a mechanical engineer and is now working in Queensland. We celebrate Steph's crossing the coding divide from Excel to real code during 2017 and the UWA IT group are grateful for her MPE thesis work to improve the reliability and life cycle costing of the large scale desktop computer installations they manage in the labs here at UWA. Stephanie is now a reliability engineer with Shell.
Shrena Shah joined the Woodside graduate program as a mechanical engineer after a busy year setting up the SHL's ongoing UV testing for 3d printed vs conventional materials testing program for her MPE project. She will be very happy if she never does another Instrom test for the rest of her life.
Praveen Sundaram was an SHL Research Engineer for over 18 months. As one of the last to graduate with a UWA mechatronics degree, his background gave him the ability to do both the CAD and electronics design work that so many of our projects need. As a stalwart of the UWA FSAE car team he bought a passion for all things mobile and fast as well as the organisational skills to coordinate our squash court bookings. He was part of the SHL Hackathon team for the global Shield-X competition. Praveen is now a mechatronics engineer at Blue Ocean Seismic Services.
2016
Ajmal (Abdul) Aziz did his MPE project sponsored by BHP on cognitive computing and then joined the BHP graduate program. He worked on two EE design projects with the SHL. The first was to develop an Accelerated Life Test rig (along with Tom M. , Rohan and others) and the second was to develop a MEMS-IoT mine pit lake water quality monitoring system. He was part of the Young Innovators award winning team for the 2016 Hackathon and the 2016 BHP MineHack. Abdul spent 4 years at BHP before completing an MPhil in Data Science at Cambridge University.
Ashwin D'Cruz worked as an SHL Research Engineer for over 18 months before being accepted to Cambridge University where he completed a Masters degree in Machine Learning, Speech and Language Technology. A poster on his thesis was presented at NIPS. He is now working in London developing deep learning applications for Calipsa. He was part of the Young Innovators award winning teams for the 2015 and 2016 Hackathons and the 2016 BHP MineHack. Ashwin completed an MPhil in Machine Learning at Cambridge University and is now Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Calipsa in London.
Neil (Zhihua) Jia joined the Deloitte graduate program after taking a joint engineering and business degree. Zhihua (Neal) did a virtual reality project for his MPE and managed to combine his studies with running a successful tutoring business south of the river. Neil is now an Engineering Information Management Specialist at BHP.
Rohan Mehra did his MPE project sponsored by BHP on scheduling and then joined the Woodside graduate program. He was instrumental in the development of the Accelerated Life Test rig (along with Tom M., Abdul and others), and helped lots with various electronic build projects. He was also part of the Young Innovators award winning team for the 2016 Hackathon and the 2016 BHP MineHack. He remains unbeaten on the squash court. Rohan joined Woodside on graduation and is not the LNG45 Systems Engineer based in Karratha.
Kaiden McCarthy rebuilt the drone motor test rig and did an enormous number of start-stop tests as part of his MPE project. Kaiden is now the WA Regional Installations/ Maintenance Support Engineer at Air Liquide.
Tom McKeon did his MPE project sponsored by BHP and then joined BHP as a data scientist. He worked on two EE design projects with the SHL. The first was to develop an Accelerated Life Test rig (along with Abdul, Rohan and others) and the second was to develop a MEMS-IoT mine pit lake water quality monitoring system. He was part of the Young Innovators award winning team for the 2016 BHP MineHack. Tom joined BHP on graduation and is now a Specialist Developer.
Alex Stephens joined BHP after completing his MPE project on building a reflective distance sensor for a translating and rotating context. He managed to combine practical mechanical and electronic skills. Between graduation and joining BHP he travelled around Australia and brought us back some amazing photographs. Alex joined BHP on graduation and is now a Specialist in Modeling and Analysis.
2015
Alex Clegg continued his love of travel on graduation and is now based in Marseilles working with Chris Breidahl and the venture capital company xponova. He build SHL's first drone motor accelerated life test rig for his MPE project. Alex works in venture capital and is now the digital project manager for CMA CGM based in Marseille (France).
Michael Bartle was the mechanical engineering part of the accelerated life UV-humidity-temperature test rig working with 6 electrical engineers for his MPE project. Michael is now a Maintenance Superintendant at Roy Hill.
Sahil Khubchandani worked as a Research Engineer with the SHL and also an uber-tutor for GENG5507. He also did his MPE project with the Lab and produced an IEEE journal publication (Characterizing the performance of LED reflective distance sensors). He then took part in the graduate engineering program at Western Power and now has the role of Secondary Systems Technician.
Tom Henderson built the first SHL web site as part of his MPE project on communicating engineering research and is the one responsible for us getting the uwa.engineering domain name. He joined Ernst & Young but remains in touch with the innovation community developing tethered drones. Tom joined EY on graduation and is now a Senior Manager in their consulting group.
Linden Blair and Chris were the SHL's first research engineers. They built the motor test rig subsequently used by Sahil and Alex for their MPE projects. Linden joined Woodside but is still active in the innovation space as one of the founders of WearHawk. WearHawk won the 2017 MineHack competition and the company is now based in the SHL. Linden joined Woodside on graduation and is now the Heardware Lead and Installation Engineer on the Pyxis Project.
Chris McFarlane was one of the SHL's first research engineers and left us to join the dark side (consulting). He worked for Bain for 6 years and transitioned from there to VP, Strategy and Operations at PYC Therapeutics. He is now the Head of Innovation at South 32.
Callum Webb has donated a lot of time to the SHL for the Prognostics Data Library. He was also part of the winning MineHack 2016 team and a founder or WearHawk. He did his MPE project with BHP and then joined the graduate program. He was lured over to the east coast to work as a data scientist for APRA the Australian Prudential Regulator right as the Banking Royal Commission started. He is now part of the SHL diaspora in the UK and is the Principal Data Scientist at BibliU.
Lachlan Astfalck graduated with BEng Hons (1st class) in 2014 and completed his PhD studies with the ARC ITRH for Offshore Structures in 2019. He provided accessible advice on statistics, and helped lift the lid on Bayesian statistical concepts for those in the SHL who are interested. As an undergraduate he won a number of prizes and competitions and was the valedictorian of his graduating class. Lachlan completed his PhD in statistics with the ARC for Offshore Structures before moving to the University of Leeds. He is now back in WA and associated with the new ARC TIDE centre at UWA.
For more information
For more information please we still retain our System Health Laboratory email : [email protected]
Awards
The SHL team won the following awards
- CORE Innovation Hub Community Legend Award 2018
- UWA IQ Champion Award Finalist 2018
- Unearthed Hackathon Young Innovators Prizes 2015, 2016, & 2017
- BHP MineHack Young Innovators Prize 2017