POSTED to EE&T ALUMNI

21 OCTOBER 2024

Sections: Officials --- Presented Awards --- Closing Speech --- Meet & Greet --- ElecEng Stories --- 75 Years of Engg Comments: Social Likes – Peter Vickery – Neil Simpson A recap of the yearly Alumni Awards presented at UNSW last Wednesday, 16th October 2024. Speeches also acknowledged the 75th Anniversary of UNSW.

Also, at the evening function, some Alumni found old friends and made new ones. I came across two ElecEng graduates from the early 1970's who new the younger researchers and academics of my time through the course.

== OFFICIALS ==

a) ATTILA BRUNGS

Vice-Chancellor and President, UNSW Sydney b) MARAGRET BEAZLEY

Governor of NSW

c) COURTNEY HOUSSOS

Memeber of Legislative Council

d) ZINE KAYE

Alumni Awards Chair

== PRESENTED AWARDS ==

#1 - Arts & Culture

SEB CHAN

#2 - Professional Development

KIRSTIN FERGUSON, via recorded acceptance in France

#3 - Research and Teaching Achievement a) - YAO MAY WONG

b) - JESSIE CHRISTIANSEN

#4 - Social Impact and Service

KIERAN HYNES

#5 - Young Alumni

CHANEL CONTOS, via recorded acceptance in England

#6 - Exceptional Alumni Achievement

ALEXIS GEORGE

For Official UNSW Photos, click/tap https://unsw35.pixieset.com/unswalumniawards2024/.

For full titles on blue screens, click/tap https://eeexplorer.info/1_Unsw24Awds.

== CLOSING SPEECH ==

DAVID GONSKI

Chancellor, UNSW Sydney

== MEET & GREET ==

At the start of the evening, I came across some graduates from ElecEng - Dean Julien Epps and Kaveh Fanian, the chair of the EE&T Alumni Ctee.

Also, two ElecEng graduates from the very early 1970's mentioned they had the same 75th birthday earlier this year.

Neil Simpson finished in '73 and David Morphett '72. Both cadets through the Electricity Commission (Elcom) at the time.

== ELEC_ENG STORIES ==

a) Neil mentioned the connection between Stuart Wenham (protoge) and Martin Green.

b) David mentioned an aim of some students was to 'destroy' the AC, DC and Induction motors in the labs downstairs with improper connections. He wasn't successful. The motors came out of the trams at the time and had to be robust.

c) Both Neil and David recalled how a classmate managed to stump Professor Blatt with proving that "one plus one was equal to three" using the Fortran punch cards on the IBM-360 at the time.

The clever student found a mode to change it into printing text instead of being a 'calculating machine'.

For my first year, we had the gold coloured "Basic Fortran IV Programming" book by John M. Blatt as a text. I'll share more when I "open a canned story" about the School's PDP 11/70 growth spurt.

== 75 Years of UNSW ENGG ==

If you haven't seen any of the 75 stories posted on the Engg news-events page, click on https://www.unsw.edu.au/engineering/news-events/engineering-75-stories.

== COMMENTS - - SOCIAL LIKES ==

On LI EEnT:

Arvind Chakrapani, Jinhong Yuan, Kaveh Fanian On LI own:

Adwaith Sanjeeve, Gagan Singh Khosla, Luke Welfare, Philip Mallon, Somansh Agrawal, Tracey Washington-Lacy On FB Elsoc-Alumni:

Hidden by FB - new rules?

== COMMENT - - PETER VICKERY (email) ==

Peter commented, "I arrived late at the awards night last week, and I am sorry I didn’t spot you afterwards. I liked the Governor’s speech and the relevance of the UNSW origin story in the technological betterment of Australia, which remains relevant today."

== COMMENT - - NEIL SIMPSON (email) ==

To adjust my draft before it was launched, Neil, on our left in the photo, commented with:

- need to mention that the evening was about the annual Alumni Awards which coincided with 75th anniversary of UNSW. (I would have liked to hear everyone sing "Happy Birthday".)

- several Alumni award categories with recipients gave well thought out addresses.

- great to see both the Chancellor and Vice Chancellor attending. Both added weight to the occasion and gave insightful and thought provoking comments/history.

- the evening gave opportunity to catch up with old acquaintances and meet new people etc.

// Posted to EEnT Alumni (LI), Elsoc-Alumni (FB) and own LI space --- 21 & 28 OCT 2024

// Ctee: Kaveh Fanian MAICD, Luke Welfare, Edmund Li, Shakthi Nathan Saravanan, Vijay Srihari

// Previous Ctee: Gagan Singh Khosla, Somansh Agrawal, Simon Buchwald, Matthew Rowe

// Heads: Dean Julien Epps; EEnT Prof. Jinhong Yuan Post - EEAlm 241021.docx

Robert Smith