Faculty of Engineering 3

Honorary Doctorate

Adjunct Professor Peter Howes

Adjunct Professor Peter Howes is a distinguished leader in workforce analytics and planning. Over a career spanning more than 50 years, he has shaped the field of human resources metrics, founding and leading InfoHRM from 1982 to 2010, and continuing to influence the global HR landscape through executive and advisory roles. Alongside his incredible career, Peter has all the while been an advisor, mentor, advocate, and cherished friend of QUT.

His connection with QUT began in 1969 as a part-time student at the Queensland Institute of Technology. After graduation in 1972, Peter commenced lecturing part time within the Department of Management, and in 1976 joined the Department on a full-time basis until he resigned in 1981 to establish his own consulting and technology firm.

Since then, Peter has maintained an enduring relationship with the university. He chaired the School of Management Advisory Committee, and for nine years, from 2016 to 2025, served on key governance committees, including Risk and Audit Committee; Finance and Planning Committee; Planning and Resources Committee; Governance, Nominations and Remuneration Committee; and QUT Council. He was Deputy Chancellor from 2021 to 2023. In this role, he provided wise counsel to the Vice-Chancellor and our current and former Chancellors.

In 2010, Peter and his wife, Mrs Heather Howes, generously established the Howes Family Scholarship through the QUT Learning Potential Fund. Since then, their support has provided nearly 90 life-changing scholarships to students in financial need. In addition, Peter and Heather have sponsored and championed the Learning Potential Fund Dinner for more than a decade, building a legacy of generosity in support of our students.

In 1973 Peter was awarded the inaugural Malcolm Moore Medallion for "the student who has performed at a consistent high standard within the QUT Bachelor of Management degree". Thirty years later, in 2003, he was awarded the Outstanding Alumni Award from the QUT Faculty of Business. Today, we are honoured to recognise Peter again at this ceremony.

Adjunct Professor Howes is a Life Fellow of the Australian Human Resources Institute (FAHRI) and Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management (FAIM).

He holds a Master of Business Administration (Management) from The University of Queensland (1977), and a Bachelor of Business (Management) from Queensland Institute of Technology (1972).

In recognition of his distinguished service to QUT and the community, QUT Council has awarded Adjunct Professor Peter Howes Doctor of the University.

Doctor of Philosophy

Bhatia, Pranjal

Thesis Title

Adaptive Flight Formation Using Control Barrier Functions

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Luis Mejias Alvarez (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor Aaron McFadyen (Associate Supervisor)
• Dr Sayan Basu Roy (External Supervisor)
• Dr Sujit Baliyarasimhuni (External Supervisor)

Citation

Coordinating teams of autonomous robots presents significant challenges, particularly due to the risks of collisions and communication loss. This research introduces innovative, decentralized safety algorithms that offer mathematical guarantees, enabling robots to collaborate on complex tasks, such as formation flying, while maintaining connectivity and avoiding crashes.
These algorithms function as dynamic virtual barriers, continuously ensuring safety. The thesis explores and compares various strategies for managing multiple safety constraints, emphasizing the prioritization of collision avoidance over formation precision. Their effectiveness is demonstrated through simulations and physical robots.

Chapman, Nicolas

Thesis Title

Adapting Vision-Language Models for Robotic Object Detection

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Christopher Lehnert (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor William Browne (Associate Supervisor)
• Dr Feras Dayoub (External Supervisor)

Citation

Language-image pre-training using internet-scale data has produced Vision-Language Models (VLMs) that can detect objects described with natural language. However, a domain shift remains between the captioned images used to train a VLM and the complex data streams collected by a robot. As such, existing VLMs are likely to underperform in robotic deployment environments. In response, this thesis proposes practical approaches to adapting a pre-trained VLM for use in robotic object detection. The aim is to address challenges faced by robotic systems that are ignored by existing adaptation strategies, while ensuring that performance is improved for diverse natural language concepts.

Erskine, Jordan

Thesis Title

Utilising Cooperation and Exploration Techniques to Solve Complex, Multi-Stage Reinforcement Learning Tasks

Supervisors

• Dr Christopher Lehnert (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor Niko Suenderhauf (Associate Supervisor)
• Distinguished Emeritus Professor Peter Corke (Mentoring Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis explores how to teach machines to solve complex problems by breaking them into smaller, manageable steps. It combines this approach with learning from expert examples, allowing machines to solve tasks more efficiently. The methods were tested in areas like maze navigation and robotic object manipulation, where machines were taught to work through tasks in a smart, cooperative way. These techniques helped the robots learn faster and perform better than existing approaches.

Gleeson, Jordan

Thesis Title

Risk Averse and Regulation Compliant Collision Avoidance for Autonomous Surface Vessels

Supervisors

• Professor Matthew Dunbabin (Principal Supervisor)
• Dr Deb Gale (External Supervisor)
• Professor Jason Ford (Mentoring Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis presents novel solutions for combining maritime collision regulations with the safe autonomous navigation of robotic marine vessels. A comparative analysis of existing regulation-compliant collision avoidance methods for autonomous systems was conducted, leading to the development of new programmatic regulation compliance evaluation techniques. These were integrated into a novel reactive collision avoidance method that considered a combination of the regulation compliance against the level of collision risk for a planned trajectory. The solutions were validated through simulated and real-world experiments using autonomous surface and human-operated vessels in complex, non-trivial scenarios, demonstrating their suitability for future marine vessels.

Knights, Joshua

Thesis Title

Bridging Domain Gaps in 3D Scene Understanding

Supervisors

• Professor Clinton Fookes (Principal Supervisor)
• Emeritus Professor Subramanian Sridharan (Associate Supervisor)
• Adjunct Professor Peyman Moghadam (External Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis is an exploration of methods to address the impacts of domain shifts on learning-based approaches for 3D scene understanding, with a particular focus on the tasks of 3D place recognition and re-localisation.  It introduced several novel methods for continual learning, test-time adaptation and cross-modal place recognition, as well as new benchmark datasets for place recognition and semantic segmentation in unstructured natural environments.

Le, Tran

Thesis Title

Spectral and Energy Efficient Resource Allocation in OFDMA Femtocell Heterogeneous Networks

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Dhammika Jayalath (Principal Supervisor)
• Dr Jacob Coetzee (Associate Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis presents novel resource allocation algorithms for energy and power efficient transmissions in future mobile wireless networks. Algorithms presented in thesis incorporate a combination of practical conditions: mixed services, rate fairness, the density of deployment of femtocells and non-linear power consumption.  The resource allocation problem of sparse and dense deployment of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access based heterogeneous femtocell networks is solved by optimising spectral efficiency, energy efficiency and spectral and energy efficiency trade-off respectively. In general, this research proposes several resource allocation algorithms that are practical, efficient and lower in computational complexity.

Ruetz, Fabio

Thesis Title

Welcome to the Jungle: Traversability Estimation for Autonomous Ground Vehicles in Densely Vegetated Environments

Supervisors

• Associate Professor Thierry Peynot (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor Niko Suenderhauf (Associate Supervisor)
• Dr Emili Hernandez (External Supervisor)
• Dr Paulo Borges (External Supervisor)
• Dr Nicholas Lawrance (External Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis focuses on autonomous ground vehicle navigation in densely vegetated environments by developing strategies that enable robots to push through vegetation and learn from interaction in real-time. It introduces a novel 3D probabilistic representation that fuses LiDAR scans, camera images, and robot experience for improved environmental modelling. Several methods, including ForestTrav, were proposed and published, enabling real-time terrain evaluation in dense vegetation. Additionally, an adaptive terrain assessment method allows robots to learn from interactions and quickly adapt to new environments. This work advances robotic navigation in unstructured, vegetated environments - to boldly go where no robot has gone before.

Yuan, Dong

Thesis Title

Ground-to-Aerial Cross-View Image Matching for Robot Localisation

Supervisors

• Dr Frederic Maire (Principal Supervisor)
• Professor Michael Milford (Associate Supervisor)
• Dr Feras Dayoub (External Supervisor)

Citation

This thesis advances cross-view robot localization by teaching ground robots to locate themselves on satellite maps using only cameras, and by extending from single images to video sequences. It introduces transformer-based attention models that strengthen correspondences between ground and aerial views and achieve state-of-the-art accuracy with robust, near-real-time performance. The work enables reliable navigation when GPS is unreliable, benefiting search-and-rescue, infrastructure inspection, and smart cities. Results have been published in WACV and IROS, and the accompanying code and tools are open-sourced to support future research.

Undergraduate

Bachelor of Engineering (Electrical)

• ETCHES, Cameron Thomas

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems)

• CYRIAC, Jithin

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical)

• BARLOW, Taj Peter

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics)

• BARTON, Isaac

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Third Class Honours

• CHEN, Zenan
• COPPENS, Christopher Paul

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Third Class Honours

• ERBACHER, Christian Benjamin William

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Third Class Honours

• JIA, Wenlai
• JONES, Ethan Christopher
• PETERS, Ned Loxton

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – Second Class Honours – Division B

• LARNACH, Nathan William
• MCCALLUM, Jordan
• MCGRATH, Bradley Jason

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division B

• AZIZ, Daniel John
• CAMERON, Alister James
• GODFREY, Alex Shonea
• GRIGOREV, Aleksei
• HOSWELL, Lucy Kate
• KEWA, Samuel
• LAM, Jonathan Michael
• NELSON, Amelia Charlotte
• NEMETALLAH, Mark Christopher Mina
• NGUYEN, Thanh Quy
• TONSING, Rudich
• UY, Aaron Shih
• YU, Tat Hin Keith
• ZHANG, Liusen
• ZHOU, Xingyu

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B

• ALGHAMDI, Khaled Yousef M
• BOLAND, Rhody Joseph
• BROWN, Avery William
• CHEN, Lin Shane
• HAMILTON, Xavier Keith Worthington
• HARVEY, William George
• HENBURY, Michael Glen
• HOBBS, Jayden Matthew
• LEJEUNE, Gabriel Xavier
• MCVIE, Sophie Rose
• NEDERHOF, Luc
• TAYLOR, Joshua Anthony
• TURNER, Joseph Ian
• VIEN, Hieu Trung
• WALSH, Alec Gordon

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• BROWN, Daniel Lochlin
• KEOGH-PEEL, Sebastian
• NEILL, Matt William

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• SHAW, Andrew Cameron

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• CARPER, Annabelle Louise
• COCKAYNE, Evelyn Hugh
• JAROUJ, Amjad George
• LANER, Heath Edward
• LINCOLN, Bridie Grace
• MCGINLEY, Cassandra Lee
• RITCHIE, Robbie
• STARK, Hayden James
• SWEENEY, Quinn Clauscen
• VERCHES, Daniel

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• ALIBRAHIM, Musab Ahmed I
• BARBER, Josh Leon
• BUSST, Joshua David
• DI BARTOLO, Samuel
• LLOYD, Nicholas John
• NGUYEN, Huu Khang
• PALLAS, Eloise Ava
• ROWLAND, Mitchell Kevin
• SKELTON, Adam David
• SWEET, Sophia Lara
• THOMAS, Jacob J
• YOUNG, Alex
• YOUNG, James Matthew

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours

• BARLOW, Zachariah Terry
• CUMBERLAND, Brianna Dawn
• HOOPER, Joseph Edward Michael
• KEH, Kai Cheng
• KIZHAKKEBHAGATHU, Eric Joseph
• LOHMANN, Mitchell John
• NGUYEN, Mary Lan Ngoc
• PHAM, Charlie
• SMITH, Samuel Brandon
• TIEU, Jason

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours

• RAJAKUMAR, Yuvarrajkumar

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Renewable Power) – First Class Honours

• JOHNSTON, Emma Grace

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours

• ABDI, Muad
• ALDHEM, Fares
• BELSON, Marco Lewis
• CARPENTER, Claire Augusta
• CHAWLA, Anshdeep Singh
• GUNAWAN, Eka Karen Novitasari
• GURUNG, Adarsh
• JERAM, Sohan
• JOINER, Ben Zackari
• MEIKLE, Austin Robert
• PETIE, Kai Alexander
• PLANT, Eloise Georgia
• RUDKOWSKI, Dylan Tomasz
• STARK, Harrison Peter
• STEPHAN, Ned
• ZHOU, Nicholas Wing Hin

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours

• HUGHES, Genevieve Mary

Bachelor of Business (International Business)/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B

• WUNSCH, George Arthur

Bachelor of Business (Management)/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• MATTHEWS, Alexander Liam

Bachelor of Business (Economics) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• KEMP, Joel Spargo

Bachelor of Business (International Business) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• RANDALL, Kimberley Jayne

Bachelor of Business (Management) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• HLABANGANA, Sindiso Daniel

Bachelor of Business (Economics) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours

• GOODWIN, Nicholas Daniel

Bachelor of Business (Economics) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours

• OLASHENI-AKIB, Oluwanifemi Daniel

Bachelor of Business (Finance) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours

• SMALL, Emerson Jack

Bachelor of Business (Management) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours

• ROGERS, Isaac John Cleary

Bachelor of Business (Management) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours

• PADBURY, Daniel Joseph

Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design)/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• SCHOFIELD, Kye Goda

Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A

• GREWAL, Dashampreet

Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design) – with Distinction/Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours

• BEST, Ryan Harrison
• STEPHEN, Guy Charles
• WALLEN, Ethan Jack

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Information Technology (Information Systems)

• JOSEPH, Allen

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science)

• AHUJA, Anhad Pal Singh
• BARTLETT, Thomas Emmet

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science)

• TOLSTOFF, Alexander Renato

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Information Systems)

• VAZ, Rachel Beryl

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science)

• HARVEY, Connor Francis Edward

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• BEIKOFF, Matthew Gregory
• OLSEN, Ryan George

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• BOLTON, Declan John James
• DYER, Jenna Cailee-Ann

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• GRUBB, Jayden Dominic

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• OVERS, Cody Peter
• OVERS, Jake
• ROE, Joshua Stuart

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science)

• MCGUIRE, Liam Shaun

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Information Systems)

• PERIN, Tatjana

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• ETHERIDGE, Nicholas Dennis
• KUORONNY, Ricky
• PEDERSON, Riley John
• PHILLIPS, Hannah Rachel

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• JANGRA, Anhad
• USSHER, Jaden Wil

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• PATEL, Vedanshi Shailesh
• WARDLE, Lachlan Anthony

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Information Technology (Computer Science) – with Distinction

• BRIMBLECOMBE, Marcus
• RITCHIE, Jamieson Rae
• TAN, Chazka Selwyn Wah Kin

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Third Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics)

• YANG, Yang

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Mathematics (Operations Research) – with Distinction

• CONWAY-SCHULTS, Noah John

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics) – with Distinction

• PAREDEZ PAREDES, Alejandra

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics) – with Distinction

• JANAWALKAR, Tarang
• JOY, Divya

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Operations Research) – with Distinction

• DRUMMOND, Reuben Elliot

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Statistics) – with Distinction

• STRONG, Oliver Russell

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics) – with Distinction

• MALT, Dominic Samuel

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Operations Research) – with Distinction

• COLBERT, Catherine Antonia

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Statistics) – with Distinction

• HAY, Aidan Mark

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics) – with Distinction

• RANDOLPH, Lachlan James
• ROSS, Elliott

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Mathematics (Applied and Computational Mathematics) – with Distinction

• CLARK, Jasper

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Science (Physics)

• O'SULLIVAN, Nicholas David

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Science (Chemistry)

• FANTIN, Primo Camilo Brooks

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Science (Physics)

• BAUTISTA, Kenneth Ignacio

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical) – Second Class Honours – Division B/Bachelor of Science (Physics) – with Distinction

• GREY, Lawson Fitzroy
• ORRO, Samuel Isaac Walter

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Computer and Software Systems) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Science (Physics) – with Distinction

• SCELLS, Angela Jane

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Science (Physics) – with Distinction

• FORSTER, Anna Jane

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Mechatronics) – Second Class Honours – Division A/Bachelor of Science (Physics) – with Distinction

• BEYRER, Luis Stuart

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Science (Chemistry)

• WARWICK, Anna Elizabeth

Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) (Electrical and Aerospace) – First Class Honours/Bachelor of Science (Physics) – with Distinction

• PICKEN, Brendan Thomas Geoffrey

QUT Medal recipients

The QUT Medal is an award made in recognition of academic excellence. To qualify for consideration for the award, a student must have demonstrated exceptional academic excellence throughout the entire bachelor degree program and have passed all subjects at a uniformly high standard.

In 2025, the QUT Medals are awarded to:

• Claire Augusta Carpenter
• Daniel Joseph Padbury
• Reuben Elliot Drummond
• Sebastian Robert Diss
• Tarang Janawalkar

Postgraduate

Graduate Certificate in Renewable Power

• TRAN, The Trung

Master of Professional Engineering (Electrical with Management)

• PATEL, Divya Jayantibhai
• RENJY, Tanisha Maria
• VINCENT, Bindu

Master of Professional Engineering (Electrical with Management) – with Distinction

• CHODEN, Sangay

Master of Professional Engineering (Electrical) – with Distinction

• ADRIANO, Marc Eugene Gregory
• ZHAI, Yiwen

Master of Philosophy

• ASTIN-WALMSLEY, Kieren