158th Annual General Meeting
and
1330th Ordinary General Meeting

Date: Wednesday, 2 April 2024
Time: AGM: 6.00–6.30 pm; OGM: 6.30–8.00 pm AEDT
Venue: (*) Michael Crouch Room, Mitchell Building, State Library of NSW, Shakespeare Place, Sydney
Registration: Please register by 2.00 pm AEDT on Tuesday, 1 April 2025
Entry: Members, $20; Non-members, $30; Students, $0
Drinks: A cash bar will operate from 5.30 pm
All are welcome, although only full voting members of the Society may attend the AGM

(*) PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF VENUE FOR THIS MEETING

Please click here to register for both the AGM and OGM

This notice provides information about the:

• 158th Annual General Meeting and Council Elections
• 1320th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture

Annual General Meeting

Rule 4(c) of the Society’s Rules requires that an Annual General Meeting (AGM) be held in April of each year.

The Agenda for this meeting is now available.

Business of the Annual General Meeting

The formal business of the Annual General Meeting, including the election of Council Members, will be conducted via an electronic ballot in accordance with Rule 18.

Members, Fellows, and Distinguished Fellows, who are financial at the commencement of the ballot, will receive an email from the Society’s Election Coordinator via the electronic balloting company, Election Buddy. This email will include a unique ballot link that provides a random, secret access key for each voter. Voter anonymity is assured by ballot settings which ensure that voter choices cannot be linked to any voter.

The ballot will run from  12.00 noon AEDT on Monday, 10 March  to 12.00 noon AEDT on Monday, 31 March  and will address:

• Procedural Business:
  • Confirmation that the Minutes of the 157th Annual General Meeting be accepted as a true record
  • Confirmation that the Annual Report of Council and the Financial Report for the year ending 31 December 2024  be received (*)
  • Confirmation of the proposed Auditors for 2025 
• Election of Office-bearers and Council members.

(*) Please note that the electronic ballot allows members to comment on the Annual Report and Financial Statements. There will be an opportunity to discuss these documents at the AGM, at which feedback from the electronic ballot will be reported.

The results of the electronic ballot will be announced at the Annual General Meeting on 2 April 2025 and will be posted on the Society’s website on the following day.

The Ordinary General Meeting will commence immediately following the conclusion of the Annual General Meeting.

Election of Office-Bearers and Ordinary Members of Council

Listed below are the nominations for the 2025–2026 Council received by the Secretary by 5.00 pm AEDT on Friday, 28 February 2025.

For those Office-bearer and Councillor roles for which there are more nominees than available positions, an election is required.

For roles in which there are the same number of nominees as there are available positions, these candidates will be declared elected at the AGM without the need for a ballot.

In all cases, candidates have been invited to provide an optional statement outlining how their expertise and experience fit them for these roles and will benefit the Society. These statements are available through the links below and included for information on the electronic ballot form.

Ordinary General Meeting

The 1330^th Ordinary General Meeting will follow the Annual General Meeting and includes a presentation by Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte FRS FREng FIEEE Hon FIEAust, the NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer.

The Agenda for this meeting is now available.

“Engineering the Future”

Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte FRS FREng FAA FIEE HonFIEAust

NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer

Date: Wednesday, 2 April 2025
Time: Ordinary General Meeting: 6.30–8.00 pm AEDT
Venue: Michael Crouch Room, Mitchell Building, State Library of NSW, Shakespeare Place, Sydney
Registration: Please register by 2.00 pm on 1 April 2025
Entry: Members, $20; Non-members, $30; Students, $0
Drinks:  A cash bar will operate from 5.30 pm
All are welcome

The presentation will be preceded by the 158th Annual General Meeting and the 1330th Ordinary General Meeting of the Society. 

Please click here to register for both the AGM and OGM

Summary:  I have worked as an engineer in academia, industry and government for over forty years during which time I have witnessed and been an active participant in great change – driven primarily by the growing power of information and communication technologies. I believe that the next forty years of engineering will deliver even more profound change for humanity through the intersection of four technology domains – Digital, Biology, Materials and Energy:

• The digital and information age is still in its infancy. The positive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to enable more productive lives, to make better decisions and to undertake tasks not yet possible, is just beginning. While mindful of the perils, Australia stands to benefit substantially from these developments – from increased and bespoke manufacturing activity, through smarter defence, to managing fragile ecosystems. New physics, in quantum, photonics and organics, will also drive unprecedented advances in information technology hardware, from computing to sensing and communications.
• The revolution in biology in the last two decades rivals that of the early information age. Biology is increasingly an engineering discipline as it becomes more concerned with design, computation and manufacturing. Engineering is already at the heart of new and developing biology industries from RNA to synthetic meats. Engineering thinking is also driving new directions in biology: the use of computational AI in protein structure prediction; understanding life as a complex web of protein nano-machines; and the use of tools from synthetic biology and gene editing to create new proteins and organisms. I believe that as biology becomes an engineering technology, its impact will surpass even that of the information age.
• Materials science has changed beyond all recognition from forty years ago: what was once mainly about metal forming and finishing, is now about nano-structures and internal architectures, meta-materials and additive manufacturing, and about carbon and novel organics. This has been driven by a new understanding of materials at the atomic scale, by additive manufacturing technologies, and by the increasing use of novel chemistries – both organic and inorganic. Materials science is increasingly the key to progress across many engineering disciplines: from modern aerostructures and buildings, through energy storage and transmission, to silicon and compound semiconductors for sensing and computing.
• The existential threat of climate change has brought a huge focus on new ways of producing, storing and managing energy. Renewable energy, in particular, is seeing unprecedented innovation and investment in all areas: from harnessing solar and wind generation of energy, to storage in batteries and hydrogen derivatives, to new methods of managing decentralised electricity grids. This, in turn, is driving a revolution in foundational technologies of electrical engineering, materials chemistry and computation. Global investment is also unprecedented and with this provides an opportunity for Australia to create a significant national industry in the coming decades.

This talk will discuss this future vision of engineering.

Hugh Durrant-Whyte is the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer and Natural Resources Commissioner.

Previously from:

• 2016–18, Hugh was Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence
• 2014–16 and 2002-2010, he was a Professor and ARC Federation Fellow at the University of Sydney
• 2010–2014, he was CEO of National ICT Australia (NICTA)
• 1995–2010, he was Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Autonomous Systems and of the Australian Centre for Field Robotics (ACFR).

Hugh is a world-leading authority on machine learning and robotics and their applications in areas that include cargo handling, mining and defence. He has published over 300 research papers, graduated over 70 PhD students, and has won numerous awards and prizes for his work, including being named 2010 NSW Scientist of the Year and 2008 Engineers Australia NSW Engineer of the Year.

In his career, he has worked with many major companies and has co-founded three successful start-up companies. He is particularly well known for his work with Patrick in delivering the automated container terminals in Brisbane and Port Botany, and for his work with Rio Tinto in pioneering and delivering the automated “Mine of the Future”. He is an honorary Fellow of Engineers Australia, a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.

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