QUT warmly congratulates Emeritus Professor Tom Cochrane, a former Deputy Vice-Chancellor, on his Australia Day Honours award as a Member in the General Division of the Order of Australia (AM).
The award was made in recognition of Professor Cochrane's significant service to library and information management, particularly to copyright law, and to education through electronic learning initiatives.
Professor Cochrane, who is now an adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law, was formerly Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Technology, Information and Learning Support) at QUT until retiring from that position at the end of 2013.
In his current QUT role, he remains co-leader of the Creative Commons project for which QUT is the institutional partner for Australia. This project, together with other open access initiatives locally based at QUT, signals Professor Cochrane's long-standing commitment to access to knowledge, and to research output worldwide.
Under Professor Cochrane's leadership, QUT has become a global leader in the push for open access to its research outputs and was the world's first university to mandate open public access to its entire scholarly work in 2003.
QUT's open access repository, QUT ePrints, is currently ranked as the top repository in Australia and 10th amongst all institutional repositories in the world.
Similarly, QUT has partnered with not-for-profit organisation Cambia on The Lens - a free web resource containing patent information for inventions from almost 100 million documents in 90 countries, making the world of patents, science and technology vastly more accessible.
In 2013, QUT conferred on Professor Cochrane the award of Emeritus Professor in recognition of his scholarly contributions, particularly in the areas of copyright reform and open access.
Professor Cochrane was also awarded the inaugural QUT Distinguished Service Medal for his outstanding contribution to the development of QUT (and QIT, earlier) over 30 years.
Beyond QUT, Professor Cochrane holds the role of Director of the Australian Digital Alliance and is on the board of several organisations including the Queensland Museum, Knowledge Unlatched (UK), Enabling Open Scholarship (Europe) and the T J Ryan Foundation.
He has previously held external appointments with Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation, the Publications Board of CSIRO, the Advisory Committee of the Australian Law Reform Commission 2012-2013, and the Book Industry Collaborative Council Scholarly Book Publishing Expert Reference Group.
In other honours with QUT connections, former QUT Pro-Vice-Chancellor and later Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Sydney, Professor Janice Reid was appointed Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).
Professor Reid was recognised "for eminent service to the tertiary education sector through executive roles, as an advocate for equitable access to educational opportunities, particularly for Indigenous, refugee and lower socio-economic communities, and to health, medical and health care research and cultural bodies".
Other people connected to QUT who were recognised in this year's honours were:
The Honourable Justice Roslyn Atkinson AO (Former Staff member)
Professor Adrian Pagan AO (Former Staff member)
Dr Peter Ho AM (Donor - Alumnus)
Dr Christina Steffen AM (Alumnus)
Captain Richard Fitzgerald AM, RAN (Alumnus)
Captain Guy Holthouse AM, RAN (Alumnus)
Professor John Aaskov OAM (Former Staff member)
Mrs Beverley Giles OAM (Former Staff member)
Mr Clive Johnson OAM (Alumnus)
Miss Susan Muddiman OAM (Former Staff member)
Ms Valerie Rose OAM (Alumnus)
Mr Peter Skewes OAM (Alumnus)
Mr John Forster PSM (Alumnus)
Mr Rhys Thomas PSM (Alumnus)
Mr Dale Pointon APM (Alumnus).
Media contact: Rose Trapnell, QUT Media team leader, 07 3138 2361, 0407 585 901, rose.trapnell@qut.edu.au
