WHO'S WHO www.engineeringnews.co.nz 23 Linda Bulk Aeronavics co-founder Linda Bulk says the company - a designer and manufacturer of professional aerial robotics solutions - is focused on a long-term product development road map, which will eventuate in fully autonomous vehicles that collect data. She highlights that the industry has been characterised by a huge amount of growth, with new products entering the market at low prices. This has resulted in Aeronavics confirming its position as a high-quality innovative industrial manufacturer so as to differentiate itself and success- Nigel Sharplin Nigel Sharplin is a strong advocate of design and innovation in business. He has been using ‘Design Thinking’ as a revolutionary new product creation process since 2005 for many leading international technology companies. Sharplin founded InFact - an award-winning design consultancy - in 1998. The company specialises in commercialising hi-tech product and bringing customer need, technical and marketing strategy, intellectual property requirements and specialised manufacturing together to provide a critical resource for early stage companies. He has directed numerous projects, the best of which have achieved inter- Paul Raethel Allied Industrial Engineering (AIE) founder and owner Paul Raethel - with several decades of engineering experience behind him - is a force to be reckoned with according to industry players. He founded the company some 23 years ago and since then has never faltered in his drive and determination to serve the companies that underpin all that AIE executes. He is known for being equally comfortable in the boardroom as on the shop floor with machinists and fabricators or discussing design. Raethel completed a fitting and turning apprenticeship straight out of school and that set his career path running engineering machine shops before seizing the opportunity to launch AIE. In the face of his success Raethel has always remained humble. “I’m only one guy in this organisation - we are a team,” he exclaims. “For all the successes we've had, it’s the team that's delivered!” Nick Gillespie Nick Gillespie is a structural practice leader at Mott MacDonald. Based in Mott MacDonald’s 100-plus office in Auckland, Gillespie leads a 20-strong specialist structural team that delivers major projects across sectors such as transportation, buildings, maritime and water in New Zealand. With more than 20 years’ experience in the construction industry, he has a strong background in structural engineering gained across a wide range of projects. This has seen him hold instrumental roles on globally renowned developments including Auckland International Airport; the new Doha International Airport in Qatar; Parc 1 in Seoul, Korea; Battersea Power Station redevelopment in London, the UK; Greenwich Peninsula Masterplan in Greenwich, UK; Headquarters and Knowledge Centre of the Urban Planning Council in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates; and King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Centre in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He joined Mott MacDonald from the Meinhardt Group, where he led the company’s civil and structural business in the UK for five years. During this time Gillespie led a number of the company’s major tall buildings, aviation, masterplanning, and residential schemes as well as mixed-use, renovation, and restoration developments. Gillespie has the combination of far-reaching vision, management experience, and in-depth technical understanding that is critical to successfully meeting the needs of clients and colleagues alike. His significant international experience in structural engineering provides further global knowledge and expertise to Mott MacDonald’s clients in the region. fully compete in a fiercely competitive market. In line with this, Aeronavics is open to investors with distribution networks that it could use to bring its products further to market. national design awards. Many are also successful technology exports including the Invacare-Shark powered wheelchair drive system, a new Pretronas outdoor payment system and Qualcomm inductive power transfer technology. He has launched two startup To date the company has been selling directly to customers in North America, South America, APAC, Europe and New Zealand. In 2008 Bulk and co-founder Rob Brouwer were introduced to aerial robotics technology. They found this technology so inspiring that they focused on further maturing and professionalising it, which led to the establishment of Aeronavics (formerly Droidworx) in 2010. Prior to co-founding Aeronavics, Bulk worked in ICT before establishing her first company offering team building and personal development programmes. companies Fibre-gen and Eyewitness through the global financial crisis and is raising capital to convert research based IP into high value products. Currently he is working with Industrial Research to bring new laser scanning diagnostics research to market. Prior to consulting Sharplin was a mechanical design manager at Fisher & Paykel leading the Smart Drive team responsible for design management. In addition he has worked with Better By Design since 2008 as a member of one of the design coaching teams specialising in customer-led strategy development for innovation, technology, social responsibility and sustainability focused organisations. Mengjie Zhang Professor Mengjie Zhang’s research centres on developing evolutionary computation (EC) and machine learning methods to solve real-world problems in the areas of engineering, manufacturing and biology. Zhang’s current research projects involve the use and development of EC and machine learning techniques for computer vision and image processing tasks, biometric problem solving, evolving computer programmes with loop and recursive structures, and job shop scheduling (JSS). His work includes optimising the placement of sensors in wireless networks, developing computer vision applications for edge detection, segmentation and object recognition, and developing algorithms to create more effective production scheduling and personnel rostering. A professor of computer science at Victoria University of Wellington, Zhang heads the interdisciplinary evolutionary computation research group and, since 2007, has been listed as one of the top ten international genetic programming researchers by the GP bibliography. A senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Zhang has helped organise the special session of evolutionary computer vision at the IEEE congress on evolutionary computation since 2005. He has published over 200 academic papers for international journals and conferences, and served as an associate editor or editorial board member for five international journals.
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