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UQ most awarded at Australian Awards for University Teaching

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Three University of Queensland lecturers who made a compelling crime film to engage students in their psychology course have been named the Australian University Teachers of the Year.

The creative approach by Professor Blake McKimmie, Professor Barbara Masser and Professor Mark Horswill transformed their students’ learning experience, resulting in improved class attendance, quiz scores and knowledge retention.

UQ received more awards at the ceremony than any other university in the country, further consolidating its position as the most-rewarded Australian university for teaching excellence.

“Good teaching is about the right balance between student engagement, student learning and student satisfaction. For me, the reason to come to university is to not only learn, but to love learning,” Professor McKimmie said.

“Our aim was to send a clear signal that we wanted students in the Psychology of Criminal Justice program in class – and we decided to do something that would be meaningful to them.

“Instead of just sitting there listening to us, it’s actually our students participating and applying the knowledge.”

The course is based around a crime drama that starts with a murder, and then follows the investigation before ending with the trial, motivating students to apply their newly acquired knowledge through immersive class activities.

“Instead of just sitting there listening to us, it’s actually our students participating and applying the knowledge,” Professor McKimmie said.

“It is wonderful to work at a University that values and supports innovative teaching. We worked with edX, which provides free global access to online courses, to develop our on-campus and online active learning resources.”

Along with this top award, UQ’s Dr Kay Colthorpe received an Award for Teaching Excellence in the area of Biological Sciences, Health and Related Studies , for pioneering “meta-learning” assessment tasks, which prompt students in biological sciences, health and related subjects to become self-reflective and independent learners.

UQ also received the following awards:

Awards for programs that enhance learning – Indigenous Health Education and Workforce Development team

Dr Leanne Coombe, Dr Emma Crawford, Adjunct Associate Professor Alison Nelson, Associate Professor Jodie Copley, Condy Canuto, Associate Professor Jon Willis, Dr Anne Hill, Adjunct Associate Lecturer Renee Brown, Dr Lisa Fitzgerald, Professor Murray Phillips – the Faculties of Health and Behavioural Sciences and Medicine partnered with academic staff from the UQ Poche Centre for Indigenous Health, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit and IUIH, to develop and deliver culturally-safe and strengths-based curricula in medicine, nursing, allied health and public health university education programs.

Image: Renee Brown, Alison Nelson and Dr Leanne Coombe from UQ’s Indigenous Health Education and Workforce Development team.

Awards for programs that enhance learning – Getting Students SET for the future

Rhea Jain, Carlene Kirvan, John Walsh, Ashil Ranpara, Ryan Webb, Ken Lai, Jo Williams, Debbie Hathaway, Linda McConnell, Jacqueline Niblett – the Faculty of Business, Economics and Law’s Student Employability Team offers a service specialising in the delivery of employability programs to students.

Citations for outstanding contributions to student learning

Dr Christopher Leonardi – for promoting “experience-based” learning of mining engineering, without digging up the classroom floor, through the use of virtual reality technology and industry best-practice.

Dr Lynda Shevellar – for developing community in the Community Development classroom: Supporting diverse, non-traditional, and international students through community-centred learning approaches.

Dr Paul Harpur – for outstanding leadership in translating disability strategy into a vision of ability equality and core university business.

Associate Professor Rowland Cobbold – for engaging students in the classroom through Dialogue Education and leading large-scale curriculum change in Veterinary Public Health for over 15 years.

Details of all the winners of the 2019 Australian Awards for University Teaching are here. Watch a video on the Psychology of Criminal Justice program here:

 

Dramatic win for UQ’s Australian Teachers of the Year from The University of Queensland on Vimeo.

‘Significant step’ in COVID-19 vaccine quest

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A University of Queensland team has met a key milestone in their fast-tracked research to develop a vaccine for the coronavirus, COVID-19.

In just three weeks, the team of researchers has created their first vaccine candidate in the laboratory and will move immediately into further development before formal pre-clinical testing.

The proof-of-concept milestone comes after the project’s announcement on 24 January as part of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) rapid response program.

UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj AC said the team has shown considerable progress in line with the highly accelerated time frame of the rapid response program, and the long hours in the lab have paid off with this achievement.

“There is still extensive testing to ensure that the vaccine candidate is safe and creates an effective immune response, but the technology and the dedication of these researchers means the first hurdle has been passed,” Professor Høj said.

The work in the lab shows the feasibility of using UQ’s ‘molecular clamp’ technology to engineer a vaccine candidate that could be more readily recognised by the immune system, triggering a protective immune response.

The next stage is to produce this on a larger scale needed for additional testing, to determine its effectiveness against the virus.

Researchers said the early research had gone ‘as expected’ and the material created had the properties which allowed the team to proceed with vaccine development.

The group continues to work to a much-accelerated timetable to keep on track for investigational clinical testing after the middle of the year.

UQ is one of only three programs globally, and the only one in Australia, initiated by the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), leveraging ‘rapid response’ platforms in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Images, captions, B-roll video and a 24 January 2020 press announcement are available via Dropbox.

MEDIA: UQ Communications, communications@uq.edu.au, +61 429 056 139.

 

Harnessing artificial intelligence to control diabetes

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University of Queensland alumnus Dr Nigel Greenwood has been globally recognised for building the world’s first genuinely machine-intelligent artificial pancreas.

The leader of Team MachineGenes, and founder of its member AI startups, is now one of the world’s 10 semifinalists in a global challenge to build AI applications to address critical global issues.

The team is one of 683 worldwide who entered the IBM Watson AI XPRIZE competition in 2016. It’s now the only team left that is based outside North America and Europe. The top 10 semifinalists will compete at TED HQ in New York in February 2020, with the hope of winning the US$3 million prize in the finals in April.

Dr Greenwood’s team is demonstrating the diabetes applications of his technology, using evolutionary machine learning and advanced AI to recommend the best insulin dosage to help people control their blood glucose.

“We’ve been using our technology to data mine the individual medical histories of people with diabetes,” Dr Greenwood said.

“Some with ‘brittle’ or highly unstable diabetes have a continuous glucose monitor strapped to their body day and night, and regularly check their blood glucose levels directly by pricking their fingers.

“They have insulin pumps and estimate the carbohydrates in their meals. Instead of forcing people to try and make sense of all this by themselves, all of these data sources are used by Neuromathix software to come up with the best insulin dosing decision.”

The three AI startups that comprise Team MachineGenes are Evolving Machine Intelligence (EMI), Diabetes Neuromathix and Turbine MachineGenes. EMI does pure research into new forms of AI and evolutionary machine learning. Diabetes Neuromathix applies this new technology to helping people with Type 1 diabetes, including those with ‘brittle’ diabetes, while Turbine MachineGenes applies the same technology and techniques to aviation engines.

Turbine MachineGenes was incubated by UQ’s ilab Accelerator program in 2014 and 2015, and remains at the University’s incubator situated at Long Pocket.

UQ has been supporting Dr Greenwood’s recent work, which first began with his studies under renowned mathematician and UQ Reader, Dr Janislaw M Skowronski, 30 years ago.

Last year, UQ and Advance Queensland sponsored Team MachineGenes’ attendance at the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit and the world’s top AI conference, NeurIPS 2019.

What does Neuromathix do with the information?

Real people’s medical histories go first to a high-performance computer.

Here, the best models of Type 1 diabetes from the medical literature are literally forced to evolve by the software until they match the medical histories. The result? Personalised models tailored for that person.

Dr Greenwood’s software passes these models to a tablet computer or similar—that the patient carries around.

Then two AIs, running on the tablet computer, sort through the personalised models and the available information that’s coming in real time and argue in terms of designing an insulin strategy.
One of them, the Prime, tries to design the best strategy it can. The other, the Adversary, tries to make bad things happen. The resulting conflict leads to an insulin strategy being synthesised. Then the person has the final say on the important aspects of this strategy, such as what level of insulin dose they’re happy with, and if necessary can tell the AIs to go back to the drawing board and try again.

“The two AIs churn out a really safe, robust, tested insulin strategy effectively in real time that no human endocrinologist could match,” Dr Greenwood said.

“It will allow for better and more accurate treatment than we’ve ever seen.”

What will Team MachineGenes do if they win the ultimate prize in April?

Winning the XPRIZE competition would enable Dr Greenwood and team to do two things: run a clinical trial out of Westmead Hospital, Sydney, and also continue to develop next-generation machine learning and consequent AI, using a completely different paradigm than the current “gold standard” of neural networks.

“Running a clinical trial would be a massive game changer as that is the final piece in the puzzle,” Dr Greenwood said.

Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global Engagement and Entrepreneurship) Dr Jessica Gallagher said Team MachineGenes could be the next ‘moonshot’ that uses UQ’s entrepreneurial and research ecosystems to accelerate personalised medicine.

“Dr Greenwood’s decades-long work is now on the brink of making a huge impact for those hundreds of millions of people trying to live well with diabetes,” Dr Gallagher said.

Media: Evolving Machine Intelligence Dr Nigel Greenwood, nigel@machinegenes.com, 0410 477 049.

UQ responds to coronavirus outbreak

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The University of Queensland has been asked to develop a vaccine for the recent coronavirus outbreak at unprecedented speed, using new technology.

The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) has requested the University use its recently developed rapid response technology to develop a new vaccine, which could be available worldwide in as little as six months.

UQ Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Peter Høj AC said the fluidity of the current outbreak represented a significant challenge to the international community.

“There is a lot that is still unknown regarding how easily the virus is able to be transmitted between humans,” he said.

“Working with CEPI, The University of Queensland is using its vaccine technology to respond to this global health challenge.”

Head of University’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences, Professor Paul Young said The University of Queensland had novel technology for the rapid generation of new vaccines from the knowledge of a virus’s genetic sequence information.

“The team hopes to develop a vaccine over the next six months, which may be used to help contain this outbreak,” he said.

“The vaccine would be distributed to first responders, helping to contain the virus from spreading around the world.”

Dr Keith Chappell describes the Vaccine Pipeline from The University of Queensland in 2019.

Dr Keith Chappell, from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences and the Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology said the key to the speedy development of this potential vaccine was the ‘molecular clamp’ technology, invented by UQ scientists and patented by UniQuest.

“The University of Queensland’s molecular clamp technology provides stability to the viral protein that is the primary target for our immune defence,” he said.

“The technology has been designed as a platform approach to generate vaccines against a range of human and animal viruses and has shown promising results in the laboratory targeting viruses such as influenza, Ebola, Nipah and MERS coronavirus.”

Media: UQ communication, communications@uq.edu.au, +61 73365 1120; Tom Matthews, tom.matthews@uq.edu.au, +61 468 746 070; Dominic Jarvis, dominic.jarvis@uq.edu.au, +61 413 334 924.

Rehoming native bee colonies at UQ

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UQ is a hive of activity – even when students aren’t on campus.

Stingless native bees pollinate many native plants across the St Lucia campus, and large hives can be found in urban cavities, such as in sides of buildings, valve pits and water meters.

UQ’s Property and Facilities division have teamed up with UQ’s School of Biological Sciences to rehome native bees in educational display hives to be used for teaching and research purposes.

Watch the video now to see how UQ’s native bees are safely rehomed on campus.

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