June news items

6th June - SRDC funding to investigate innovative products from sugar cane waste

Southern Cross University's Dr Malcolm Clark and Southern Cross GeoScience's Dr Jeff Parr have been awarded $193,000 of Sugar Research & Development Corporation funding to investigate innovative products from sugar cane fly ash. In particular, they will be investigating the production of zeolites for industrial applications such as detergents and water filtration, as well as the production of geopolymers as chemically resistant alternatives to concrete. This project is also supported with an additional $45,000 of funding from a local small enterprise, Australian Biorefining.

17th June - Wakool field trip

This week Dr Michael Cheetham and Trent McIntyre conducted a field study in the Wakool Region. Wide spread flooding in the Wakool and Murray Rivers in January 2011 had a significant impact on the region. Field work involved sampling for sulfidic sediments in the Wakool River and surveying to assess channel change and sediment scour as a result of the flooding.The trip followed up previous work completed in the Wakool Region as part of a previous MDBA consultancy, assessing the distribution and hazard of sulfidic sediments.

22nd June - Centre Directors visit Vietnam to establish research project

Centre Directors, Prof Leigh Sullivan and Prof Richard Bush visited Prof Vo Thi Guong of Can Tho University in Vietnam in June to initiate a research collaboration looking at metal and metalloid mobility in the soils of the Mekong delta. During a week-long field trip to many of the provinces in the Mekong Delta soil samples were selected from a wide variety of soil types for collaborative experiments examining reductive dissolution processes.

27th June - Dr Vanessa Wong leaves GeoScience

During June, Dr Vanessa Wong left Southern Cross GeoScience to further her career at Monash University in Melbourne. In her three years at GeoScience, Vanessa explored biogeochemical processes on the coastal floodplains of the Northern Rivers, in particular on the Richmond floodplain. Her work identified the causes of the 2008 fish kill in the Richmond River estuary, an issue of high importance to the local community. Vanessa will continue her involvement with Southern Cross GeoScience as an Adjunct Fellow. Southern Cross GeoSciences wishes Vanessa all the best for the future.

Updated: 11 March 2013