Our Research Team

Yongze Song leads a Geospatial Analysis and AI team, maintaining strong industry networks and delivering industry-driven research projects about sustainable infrastructure management using emerging technologies. He developed more than 16 new geospatial methods and 8 R software packages with over 120,000 downloads for understanding geographical and spatial data. He published 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, including 7 highly-cited papers. He is a recipient of more than ten awards at international and national levels, such as the Geospatial World 50 Rising Stars, the Global Top 10 Young Scientist Award, World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University, and the Australian National Location Data First Prize. He is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation (Q1), and GIScience & Remote Sensing (Q1).

Dr Shengping (Stephanie) Li is a Lecturer at Curtin University. Before this, she was awarded a CSIRO Early Research Career fellowship and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at CSIRO, contributing to the “Towards Net Zero” project in Australia. She received her PhD degree at the University of Melbourne. Dr. Li’s research covers Sustainable Construction, Decarbonisation of the Built Environment, Building Energy Efficiency, Material Flow Analysis, and Life Cycle Assessment. Her involvement extends to nine research projects funded by a variety of institutions across International Energy Agency, Australia, Singapore, and China. Dr. Li has served as a scientific and organizing committee member at international conferences and has been invited to present her research at international conferences. Moreover, she is a member of Engineers Australia, the International Society for Industrial Ecology, and Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Faz Ikram has accumulated more than 17 years of experience in the financial services and capital markets industry and has held leadership positions in well-established financial institutions in Malaysia and Japan specializing in construction and building materials. He has drafted policy papers, parliamentary briefings and research notes for Transit Oriented Development, trackless trams, high speed railway, and last mile connection for Ministry of Federal Territories, Ministry of International Trade & Investment and Ministry of Works in Malaysia within the role of a Senior Aide to Minister and Associate Director/Senior Analyst. Prior to assuming the role as PhD candidate in Curtin University, he was the Group Finance Director of JT Technology Asia Pacific and Junex Asia in Tokyo. He is a Fellow Chartered Management Accountant of Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, United Kingdom, Certified Practising Accountant of CPA Australia and Chartered Member of Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport of United Kingdom.

Peter Newman is the Professor of Sustainability at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Peter is an academic who has written 20 books and over 350 papers on sustainable cities with a global reputation and has worked to deliver his ideas in all levels of government. Peter has worked in local government as an elected councillor in Fremantle, in Western Australia’s state government as an advisor to three Premiers and in the Australian Government on the Board of Infrastructure Australia and the Prime Minister’s Cities Reference Group. He is the Co-ordinating Lead Author for the UN’s IPCC on Transport. In 2014 he was awarded an Order of Australia for his contributions to urban design and sustainable transport particularly for his work in saving and rebuilding Perth’s rail system. In 2018/19 he was the WA Scientist of the Year. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Springer journal Sustainable Earth.

Hugh Finn is a Lecturer in the Curtin Law School where he currently lectures in Constitutional Law, Administrative Law, and Environmental Law and Policy. Hugh’s research interests are in  legal and policy frameworks for climate change and wildlife conservation, environmental law and policy, and animal law. Hugh has worked previously as a wildlife biologist, and has conducted field research with marine mammals and black cockatoos. Hugh was the chairperson of the Environmental Defender’s Office of Western Australia (Inc) in 2019 and 2020.

Angelina is an Environmental, Social, Governance (ESG) Leader who is a PhD candidate exploring net zero precinct certification pathways for different urban fabrics in Australia to complement experience implementing ESG programs and projects, and an in-depth understanding of industry best practices and global regulatory environments. Angelina designed and established the ESG strategy, function and team structure for the Crown Resorts Group, and managed their ESG compliance obligations. These included National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting, NABERS ratings, Climate Active reporting, Green Star reporting, single use plastic bans in WA, Victoria & NSW, the Australian Packaging Covenant and Modern Slavery reporting requirements. Angelina is a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand has more than 20 years of experience in tax across various jurisdictions around the world.

As Director of Curtin Institute for Energy Transition, Peta brings over thirty years of experience working in senior management and research including having established and led the Science into Society Group (SISG) within CSIRO’s Division of Earth Science and Resource Engineering. Well known for her expertise in the energy field, communication and stakeholder engagement and technology assessment. She has been researching public attitudes to climate and energy technologies for the past decade and grew up on a farm in the south west of WA where her love of nature grew from a young age.

Dean bridges the gap between research and the market, specialising in digital disruption across sectors as diverse as transport, telecommunications, media, health and transport. He co-founded telecommunications vendor QPSX and directed the CSIRO Lab which earlier created fast Wi-Fi. He also co-founded the Smart Services Cooperative Research Centre and was appointed Director Infrastructure, Transport and Logistics at National ICT Australia (now CSIRO Data 61). Dean later joined Telstra as Chief Technology Officer for Products, working across many parts of Telstra with a special interest in future transport technologies and was also appointed Chief Transport Strategist.

Dr Himanshu Agrawal serves as a Senior Lecturer at School of Electrical Engineering, Computing, and Mathematical Science, Curtin University specialising in networking and security. He earned his PhD from RMIT University, and has focused his career dedicated to advancing knowledge in networking, Internet of Things (IoT), applied AI/ML, Simulation and Modelling and Privacy Preservation.

Dr Agrawal’s academic journey included a Visiting Associate Professorship at IoT Lab, Swinburne University of Technology (2019-2020) collaborating on a CRC-P with Prof. Dimitrios Georgakopoulos. Since joining Curtin in 2020, he has been recognised as a multi-disciplinary research investigator, contributing to research grants totalling to $3.5 million including significant projects like RACE 2030-NZP ($2.8 M) and Healthy Connections($607K). His research work is cited over 1000 times (Google Scholar, h-index 18) in more than 60 papers alongside a patent (Grant-Pending) for ‘Drown Support System’. He also serves as an editorial board member with MDPI and Frontiers in IoT journals.

Aditi joins the project after 13 years in the energy industry working electricity market design, policy and regulation. Prior to that, she worked in public health and social research for 8 years in India.  She has a Master in Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University, USA and a Master in Economics from Delhi University, India.  

Aditi was attracted to the idea of trialling full grid integration for consumer energy resources to support net-zero strategies at a precinct scale and amplifying the learnings to grid scale. The partnership between academia and industry was an important factor for me as I am keen to leverage my industry knowledge and network to increase collaboration with academia.

Margaret has been working as a sustainability consultant, manager, policy adviser, lecturer and researcher for over 20 years in the private and public sectors. She has led and been involved in sustainability projects in areas such as corporate sustainability, urban land use and transport planning, infrastructure, regenerative agriculture, symbiotic and biological nitrogen fixation, sustainability and SMEs, climate change policy, greenhouse gas emissions reporting, behaviour change, water policy, energy policy, active transport, environmental regulation, low carbon living, waste, and economics.

Margaret designs and facilitates participatory processes that enable people to solve problems collaboratively. She has been a sustainability lecturer and researcher at Western Australian universities since 1998.

Annolies Truman (BA, DipEd, MATS, MCouns) is a counsellor, educator and environmentalist with a long history in sustainability and person-centred engagement. She has worked as a Waste Reduction Officer at South Sydney Council, facilitated community education in sustainability and taught permaculture to high school students and adults. Annolies has worked with First Nations, CALD and other diverse populations. She has managed teams in educational and health-care settings. She has designed and delivered a staff wellbeing program in a tertiary hospital. As part of her counselling practice, Annolies runs eco-distress workshops and offers group and individual counselling for people grappling with the ecological crisis and supervision for those working in the area. Annolies is involved in community environmental initiatives, including Nannine Common community garden and Beacon Net Zero. She is researching NZP governance, drawing on lived experience and concepts of user engagement and energy democracy.