Disruption across science, technology and society

Prof Canning originated the vision of desktop optical fibre and waveguide manufacture for everyday consumers, a new area of research aiming to allow everyone from farmers to frustrated city folk to potentially bypass costly corporate connectivity by making and installing their own optical fibres. Combined with the original ideas on smartphone and other wearable instruments, Prof Canning sees a future that is ubiquitous and potentially free of any entity-owned infrastructure as well as the next great green challenge: junk in space. Low earth orbital satellites that move across territorial domains raise regulatory and security challenges. Previously considered impossible, now slowly but surely researchers around the world are working in this space looking beyond immediate industry needs to a future that will transform the world.

In a world where poorly designed modern buildings, transport, and hospitals force us all to have common vaccines such as the flu and now Covid-19, Prof Canning identified liveability engineering as the next great frontier in social and technology research. Accompanying this has been universities establishing related smart sensing and smart building environment research programs. Today, we see an equivalent “great copper crisis” that shook hospitals the world over, saving money replacing anti-bacterial and anti-viral copper with stainless steel, helping to create the growing scourge of superbugs. Stainless steel was shown by our own CSIRO to extend the lifetime of the coronavirus early on and yet we continue to ignore it. What this reminds us is that educated vision is rare and acting on it is even rarer, reflecting on the need to evolve current standards of education and training as well teaching basic civility, integrity, and service across our organisations.

Some of Prof Canning's recent publications, working with a diverse range of colleagues and students locally and globally, can be found below. We go beyond servicing the industry's immediate needs to see the future. Reach out to explore opportunities, from investment to research to start-ups and consultancies.