2017 Joint Lecture with the Australian Academy of Technology & Engineering

Professor Gordon G. Wallace AO

Executive Director, ARC Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science
Director, Australian National Fabrication Facility, Materials Node
The University of Woollongong

3D printing has changed the way we think about making things. This is changing many areas of manufacturing, but the most profound impact is in bioengineering.

The ability to create structures from the ground up using a vast inventory of materials including structural biopolymers, proteins and even living cells enables us to tailor the arrangements for the task at hand. Mechanical properties, bioactivity and electroactive materials can be distributed with precision in 3 dimensions. This is enabling us to tackle challenges such as cartilage and corneal regeneration, 3D printed ears for microtia patients, models that help us understand what underpins an individuals sleep apnoea and printed structures for wound healing.

The ability to do this in a low footprint area, with simple hardware, puts the ability to create back in the hands of the creative!

About the Speaker:

Professor Gordon G. Wallace AO is the Executive Research Director of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Electromaterials Science and Director of the Australian National Fabrication Facility, Materials Node.

Based at the University of Woollongong in New South Wales, Professor Wallace is involved in the design and discovery of new materials for use in Energy and Health. In the Health area this involves using new materials to develop biocommunications from the molecular to skeletal domains in order to improve human performance. In the Energy area this involves use of new materials to transform and to store energy, including novel wearable and implantable energy systems for the use in Medical technologies.

He is committed to fundamental research and the translation of fundamental discoveries into practical applications. He is a passionate communicator, dedicated to explaining scientific advances to all in the community from the lay person to the specialist.

He was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Australia 26 January 2017. He received Wollongong’s award for Innovation in 2017 and served as Wollongong’s Australia Day Ambassador. He received the Eureka Prize for Leadership in Science and Innovation in 2016. He was appointed to the Prime Ministers Knowledge Nation 100 in 2015.

Gordon is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (ATSE), Institute of Physics, and Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI). He is a corresponding member of the Academy of Science in Bologna.

He has published more than 850 refereed publications that have attracted in excess of 30,000 citations; a monograph (3^rd Edition published in 2009) on Conductive Electroactive Polymers: Intelligent Polymer Systems and co-authored a monograph on Organic Bionics (published 2012). He has recently co-authored an eBook on 3D BioPrinting He led the presentation of a MOOC on 3D Bioprinting on the FutureLearn platform. Gordon has supervised almost 100 PhD students to completion and has mentored more than 50 research fellows.

He completed his undergraduate (1979) and PhD (1983) degrees at Deakin University and was awarded a DSc from Deakin University in 2000. He was appointed as a Professor at the University of Wollongong in 1990. He was awarded an ARC Professorial Fellowship in 2002; an ARC Federation Fellowship in 2006 and ARC Laureate Fellowship in 2011.