Professor in Engineering appointed

Dr Dale Carnegie has been appointed as Professor in Engineering—a new Chair and a strategic initiative for the Faculty of Engineering.

Pro Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Engineering, Professor David Bibby, says Dr Carnegie—with expertise in mechatronics and computer systems engineering—was an outstanding candidate among applications received after an international recruitment drive.

"Dale's research within the School of Chemical & Physical Sciences is highly innovative and quite novel for the University when he first introduced it in 2005,” Professor Bibby says.

Professor Carnegie was previously an Associate Professor in the School of Chemical & Physical Sciences and programme director for the MSc in Electronic and Computer Systems Engineering. The new Chair in Engineering will be initially located in the School.

Mechatronics—a field of engineering that utilises electronics and software to intelligently control mechanical devices—and the wider field of Computer Systems Engineering is one of the four engineering streams offered at Victoria.

Specific to Victoria’s Computer Systems Engineering stream and Dr Carnegie’s own research is the close collaboration with the School of Design and the Artificial Intelligence Group in Computer Science. The graduates of this programme will be uniquely equipped not only with the tools of traditional mechatronics but will also be able to design aesthetically attractive, intelligent devices that can effectively learn from their mistakes and adapt to changing circumstances.

Dr Carnegie’s research interests include the design of autonomous mobile robotics, sensor systems, embedded systems, and digital electronics. Current projects include investigating the effect of emotions on the control system of a humanoid robotic security guard and the design of a hierarchical heterogeneous robotic system to locate victims trapped under building rubble that may have resulted from an earthquake or bomb attack. The latter project is one of New Zealand’s largest collaborative mechatronics endeavours, and includes researchers from the Universities of Canterbury and Waikato, the Manukau Institute of Technology, and with pending involvement from both Auckland and Massey Universities.