Finkel Scholarships allow students to pursue their research ambitions

Aashish Jain, Adam Risborg, Dr Alan Finkel, Dr Elizabeth Finkel, Sarah Clark

On the 11^th of August 2009, three outstanding engineering graduates celebrated their success as successful recipients of the Finkel PhD scholarships.

Monash University Chancellor, Dr Alan Finkel and Dr Elizabeth Finkel wished to support PhD research by providing financial support to enable three outstanding graduate scholars to pursue research in the Faculty of Engineering. Funding for the award is provided by the A&E Finkel Foundation.

Dr Finkel is an engineering alumnus and is the first alumnus to be appointed as Chancellor to Monash University. Dr Finkel received his Bachelor of Engineering in 1976 and Doctorate in Electrical Engineering from Monash University in 1981. After graduating he served for two years as a neuroscience research fellow at the John Curtin School of Medical Research, located at the Australian National University.

The Engineering faculty is grateful to Dr Alan Finkel and Dr Elizabeth Finkel for establishing the Finkel Scholarship to make it possible for undergraduate students to stay on and pursue their research dreams.

The selection panel chaired by the Associate Dean of Research (Training), Associate Professor Chris Davies, awarded the following students for their academic merit, aptitude for research and excellence in their performance as an honours engineering student.

·         Adam Risborg (Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)

·         Aashish Jain (Department of Chemical Engineering)

·         Sarah Ann Clark (Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering)

The Faculty looks forward to following the success of these high achieving students as they continue to pursue their research aspirations.

Finkel Scholarship Awardees Project Details

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Adam's doctoral studies will focus on investigating complex dynamic systems, specifically turbulence and chaos. Adam will simulate and analyse turbulent and chaotic fluid flows in a range of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering problems. In addition to physical applications, it has been recently shown that turbulence and chaos models can be extended into other fields of research, notably econophysics, which aims to draw complex analogies between engineering, physics and economics. Thus Adam's research will subsequently be used to model the effects of various turbulent and chaotic phenomena on international financial markets in which there are macro and microeconomic forces affecting the flow of market information. Adam's research is co-supervised by Julio Soria from Monash University, and Dr Jaime Bulbeck from ANZ Investment bank.

Regarding his work, Aashish said, “My PhD thesis involves the study of materials that give cells theirelastic properties. A cell’s elastic properties are largely determined by the intracellular cytoskeleton. The unique properties of the cytoskeleton stem from the fact that it is a cross-linked network (or gel) of proteins called F-actin, which are semiflexible polymers. Semiflexible polymers have a certain stiffness that makes bending them energetically unfavourable, and they are to a large extent inextensible. I will investigate theoretically and computationally the behaviour of solutions of semiflexible polymers, both as single filaments and as an entangled ensemble. Such a study will help us understand the nature of the connection between molecular characteristics of semiflexible polymers and macroscopic properties of networks of such polymers, and ultimately lead to insight into the origin of the elastic properties of a cell. 

Sarah is studying the “Fluctuating hydrodynamics in confined suspensions of swimming bacteria”. As explained by Sarah, a synopsis of her research is,” In recent years there has been increasing interest in the dynamics of suspensions of swimming micro-organisms. These systems have many degrees of freedom, and can lead to complex non linear behaviour. There is evidence to show that in both bulk and confined suspensions coherent dynamics patterns can emerge at length scales well beyond that of a single cell. This is a result of the combinations of the ability of a bacterium to make its own decisions and multi-body hydrodynamics interactions due to the fluid medium. In confined suspensions such as thin films dramatic self-organization into ordered arrangements have even been observed.