Professor Ivan Cole – Director of Enhanced Capability Platform for Advanced Manufacturing and Fabrication.

Researcher Leader in Computational Design of Materials,Corrosion Science and Nano-sensing . Extensive experience in Research Leadership and deficated to transferring techology to industry and society

http://www.rmit.edu.au/research

RMIT University

E:ivan.cole@rmit.edu.au

Summary of Research Experience

Nearly thirty yearsexperience and an internationally recognized leader in the fieldoflife prediction , prognostics and design ofengineered structures specializing in Computational Materials Modeling(incl. geographical information systems) , impact of and adaptation to climate change,Sensor Systems , Corrosion Science and Protective Coatings. Outputs include IT systems for damage prognostics, IT systems to predict flood damage and design guides to minimize such damage, protective coatings for metals and innovative of nano sensors. I have lead major projects in intelligent vehicle heath monitoring for aerospace applications, development of new coatings for galvanized steel and aluminum and the relation between building design/climate and component life, as well as the development of performance-based guidance standards and codes for durable buildings. I have made a significant contribution to the application of building and material science to the conservation of cultural artifacts. An extensive publication records with over 190 papers, as well as having been the chair and keynote speaker of international organizations and conferences in these areas.

The Title of Topic: Nano-Dots, Distributed Sensing and Responsive materials

Prof Cole will report on research to develop nano sensors for chemical and spatial sensing.The nano-sensing has been based on semi-conductor, carbon and grapheme dots functionalised with a variety of ligands in order to detect heavy metals and other chemical species and chemical parameters.This work will be outlined together with the strength and limitations of the various approachs. Prof Cole team has been heavily involved in developing practical sensors from such nano –dots. This commercialization effort has led to a wide range of challenges including dot stability, batch to batch variation, selectivity and specificity of the dots when sensing in real word solutions. The issues and possible solutions will be highlighted. The paper will also discuss the use of Nano-dots to track local chemical and indirectly electrochemical activity at the interface of surfaces and moisture films of fluids

Having developed cheap sensors based on nano-dots they have the possibility of forming the back bone of information rich sensor network. The principles and the problems and possibilities that such a network could provide will be highlighted particular as applied to measurement of water quality and structural health monitoring of aircraft and complex engineered objects. The advantages of such novel distributed sensor networks compared to the current systems will be highlighted.

Lastly the paper will discuss future work that will be focussed on going past nano-dots as simply a detector but making dots a key element in a responsive material where the dot triggers a local response in a caged structure.