WTBE Profiles

Associate Professor Mary Hardie has been a registered architect for more than 30 years since graduating from UNSW in 1979. She has worked in Design and Construct building companies as well as in architectural design practices. She has a particular interest in sustainable construction and in construction innovation. The implementation of Passive Solar Design principles along with green or vegetated roofs, compressed earth block structures and rainwater storage systems for housing developments have all been areas where she has been actively involved. In 2011 she completed a PhD researching technical innovation delivery by small and medium Australian construction enterprises.

Dr Sepani Senaratne joined Western Sydney University in December 2012. She is currently a Senior Lecturer and the Academic Course Advisor in the Construction Management (honours) programme at WSU. Sepani started her academic career in 1999 at University of Moratuwa, immediately after obtaining a first class in B.Sc (honours) in Quantity Surveying from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. She obtained her PhD in construction project management from the School of the Built Environment, University of Salford, United Kingdom in 2005. Sepani is a voting member of Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors and a Fellow of High Education Academy.

Sepani is an active researcher and has widely published (120+ publications) in leading journals and conferences in the Built Environment. Sepani’s work is internationally recognised by several research awards. Her key research expertise is in knowledge management and project management applications in construction projects and her current research interests and projects expand to sustainable construction, smart modern construction and cost management areas.

Dr. Zelinna Pablo is the Nominated Senior Research Fellow for the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project “Rethinking housing: Actor network analysis for digital collaboration.” Zelinna completed her PhD in Economics and Commerce at the University of Melbourne under an Australian Postgraduate Award and her Executive Master at the University of Amsterdam with distinction, under a full scholarship from the European Union. Her main field of study organisation and management theory. Her research, which focuses on the use of qualitative techniques to examine complex interactions between people, organisations and technology, is highly multidisciplinary, and she has successfully published in diverse fields like organisation studies, construction management, political science, governance and information technology.

Before joining Western Sydney University in 2017, Zelinna was the Postdoctoral Research Fellow on an ARC Linkage project that focused on examining collaborative practices in supply chains using innovative prefabrication techniques. She also lectured for eight semesters at the University of Melbourne, where she handled intensive graduate school courses as well as large undergraduate classes of more than 1000 students, and was three-time recipient of the Dean’s award for excellence in teaching. Before moving to Australia permanently in 2015, she was a full-time faculty member for 12 years at De La Salle University Manila, Philippines, where she also served as Associate Dean for Computer Studies, received awards for outstanding teaching and established the Doctorate in Information Technology program.

Urša Komac is the Director of Academic Program in Architecture, Senior Lecturer at Western Sydney University and a registered architect in her home country Slovenia. She holds a BA in architecture and MSc in landscape architecture from the University of Ljubljana and a PhD from Barcelona School of architecture where she was a Marie Curie Fellow. Prior to her appointment at Western Sydney University, she was Assistant Professor at the University of Canberra, where she was teaching design studios together with history of architecture. She has over 20 years of working experience as an educator and architect in Australia, Spain, the USA and Slovenia. Her research interests are architecture and the city, public space, heritage and architectural education.

From 2015-17 she was a CI on an OLT teaching grant, administered by RMIT, exploring new paths for a PhD in architecture. In 2018 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Tokyo University of Arts, Department of Architecture and Barcelona School of Architecture, where she was exploring connections between academia and practice.

She has published a book on architect Bogdan Bogdanović, which has been translated into German. Her forthcoming co-authored book, entitled The Architecture of Public Space is under contract with Springer. She received the Piranesi Award for the Rest Areas for the Bicycle Paths in the Slovene Karst. Her Observation Points in Škocjanski zatok were recently selected for the 9th International Biennial of Landscape Architecture and nominated for the Mies van der Rohe Award in 2017.

Associate Professor Zhang is the Western Sydney University Research Theme Champion on Environment and Sustainability and the Academic Course Advisor for Civil and Construction Engineering in School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics. She joined in Western Sydney University as an Associate Professor in Civil Engineering in Jan. 2019. Before that she worked in the University of New South Wales for 15 years staying 11 years in UNSW, Canberra since 2007 as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and then Associate Professor. She received her PhD on Structural Engineering from the University of Hong Kong in 2001.

Dr. Zhang has strong expertise on construction and building materials and structural engineering. She has been working on novel and green cement, green cementitious composites by using industry wastes and high-performance fibre reinforced cementitious composite aiming to achieve durable, resilient and sustainable infrastructures. She has a strong expertise on numerical modelling and analysis and in addition to using the experimental technique she also uses advanced numerical modelling technique to calibrate the mechanical behaviour of materials and model the structural behaviour including under extreme loading conditions such as impact/blast/fatigue/fire loadings. Since 1998, she has published over 220 peer-reviewed scholarly research papers including more than 80 research papers in top international journals in her research areas. She was awarded research grant of over $2.5 millions from various schemes including Australian Research Council (ARC), Australia Defence and government. She was awarded one ARC Discovery Project and one ARC LIEF project in 2019. She is a chief investigator (CI) of the ARC research hub for Nanoscience-based Construction Material Manufacturing which was awarded an ARC funding of $5 million and she has two projects under the hub and has been leading one on green cement working with her industrial partner.

Dr Shou received the Ph.D. degree in construction management from Curtin University, Australia in 2018. She worked as a research fellow at Curtin University for one year. Her research interests are in value stream mapping, lean construction, Building Information Modelling and simulation, exploring the application of digital lean to improve construction and operation performance across building, infrastructure and oil and gas industries. She is now a lecturer of Construction Economics at Western Sydney University.

Professor Vivian W. Y. Tam is the Associate Dean (International) at School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, Western Sydney University, Australia. She was nominated to the College of Expert, Australian Research Council (ARC), Australian Government. She received her Ph.D. in sustainable construction from the Department of Building and Construction at City University of Hong Kong in 2005. Her research interests are in the areas of environmental management in construction and sustainable development. She is currently the Editor of Construction and Building Materials and International Journal of Construction Management. She has published over 3 books, 21 book chapters, 248 referred journal articles and 151 referred conference articles. She has been awarded forty-one research grants (totalling over $8 million), including two ARC Discovery Projects, one ARC Linkage Project and an ARC Research Hub.

Karen Yevenes joined Western Sydney University in 1999 as a Lecturer in Industrial Design. Karen holds a Bachelor of Industrial Design (First Class Honours) from the University of Canberra.

Karen had vast industry experience in product design prior to her career in academia, working in street furniture design, 3D modelling, animation and graphics. She has undertaken partnerships with CSIRO, Cochlear and ResMed, as well as community-based projects such as the Smart Cities and the Aging Population project with Penrith City Council. Karen’s current students are developing a range of life saving devices in collaboration with Surf Life Saving NSW.

Karen teaches throughout the Industrial Design course, including design studio, materials and manufacturing, coursework units and honours research supervision. Transportation design has been a highlight for Karen, the electric scooter and electric vehicle projects were both challenging and fun, as staff and students were designing, problem-solving, and making the vehicles alongside each other.

Karen’s research interests and expertise include Design Philosophy, Design History, the Psychology of Products, Product Semantics, and Design for Aging Populations; she has published works in areas of Ecofeminism, Academic Literacy and collaborative learning.

Qualifications

Graduate Certificate in Design, University of Technology Sydney, 2014

Bachelor of Industrial Design-(First Class Honours), University of Canberra, 1997

Bachelor of Education (Visual Arts), Australian Catholic University, 1993

Jo Evans is the Collections Editor for SCEM. She has embraced various positions in the Library at the University since doing her placement at Hawkesbury campus in 2017, including Information Services Librarian, Loans Coordinator and Metadata Coordinator. Amongst other things, she has worked collaboratively on projects to create and embed items that scaffold students’ academic learning to help them progress successfully through university.

Jo gained a joint honour Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Criminology in the UK, with subsidiary subjects Computer Science and Japanese. She attained a Bachelor of Teaching (Primary) at Western Sydney University’s Bankstown campus, and went on to complete additional Reading Recovery Teacher training over a two year period whilst occupying that role across two schools. She also accomplished a great deal of professional learning to support students with disability and additional needs whilst committed to the role of Learning and Support Teacher. Jo diverted from primary education to undertake a Master of Information Studies via distance education through Charles Sturt University.

Jo is spending the next two years curating an open access collection of Lean Construction and Business Information Modelling (BIM) resources for the LIEF Project with Kerry London. The aim of this project is to support policy makers and practitioners in gaining easy access to these resources to impact more widespread adoption of Lean and BIM processes and technologies that have been proven to work in order to cut costs; reduce waste; improve communication and collaboration; lessen errors, omissions and the need for rework; reducing overall project duration, and above all else, increasing safety on the work site.

Adjunct Professor Gabrielle Wallace joined WSU in 2018. Prior to September 2018 she held senior executive roles in the NSW Government as Director Building Professionals Board (BPB) and Director SafeWork NSW WHS Roadmap 2022 Coordination and was a member of Board of the BPB. Prof Wallace is a member of AICD and WSU’s Postgraduate Construction Management Committee and has sat on various NSW government and industry committees associated with her roles. In addition to being a regulatory and policy specialist, Prof Wallace has led statutory review, strategic and operational policy development and implementation, governance and risk reform, organisational transformation, customer service improvement, and fostered stakeholder engagement, leadership and collaboration at senior levels. She has addressed various industry conferences and holds a sound understand of government processes at state and local levels. Prior to entering state government, Prof Wallace completed her PhD in political economy and held roles as a senior building surveyor and university lecturer.