About the Authors
The editing team is a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous engineers and educators who are academics or practitioners. We all have worked together in various capacities or have common ambitions for educating all Australians in both the technology developed in this country and humanitarian approaches to future engineering.
Cat Kutay is an Yugambeh Senior Lecturer in IT at Charles Darwin University (CDU). She has been working in Indigenous Technology for over 34 years and teaching at university as casual then permanent for 17 years, and at TAFE for about 3 years before that. She published in Engineering Education, Artificial Intelligence and Gaming, Sustainability modelling, Ethics and Human Computer Interaction. In 2022 she published with Elyssebeth Leigh, Kaya Prpic and Lyndon Ormond-Parker and others the first academic book on Indigenous Engineering for an Enduring Culture. She has received Teaching citations and awards in 2019 and 2020 for introducing Indigenous knowledge into a Transdisciplinary course and Mathematics; and in 2022 received the VC’s award for teaching. As an electrical and software engineer who has worked many years in remote communities in the NT and NSW, she has broad expertise in engineering in this context, see https://researchers.cdu.edu.au/en/persons/cat-kutay
Jayne Boase is Ngarrindjeri and Bungandidj (Boandik) descent through her father and his mother. She works with Program Directors and Course Coordinators embedding Aboriginal content in undergraduate programs for Univeristy of South Australia STEM. Alongside of this and together with Professor Delene Weber, she developed and deliver the award winning Fire and Culture course.
From 2017 through to 2020 she worked for UniSA as a sessional academic providing lectures and tutorials across a range of subjects including Diversity, Women in the Workforce, and particularly Aboriginal Context, teaching into several STEM programs as well tutoring in Professional and Technical Communication with UniSA Creative. Throughout this time she also worked for COTA SA as Director of ZestFest delivering their annual festival for modern ageing.
David Payne is a Yuin gurandji and European/Australian man. He has worked with the Yuin community building bark east coast nawi, woy or bermagui/permagua tied-bark canoes for over a decade, developing a strong connection to elders and community in the process. He is also a self-taught yacht and vessel designer with over 100 designs in his portfolio, and has worked for professional naval architects including his well-known uncle Alan Payne. For over three decades he also worked for the Australian National Maritime Museum as a consultant and then as Curator of Historic Vessels until retiring in 2020.
Timothy Boye has been teaching at University of Technology Sydney for 4 years with a cohort of about 1000 students over the year doing the Engineers Without Borders (EWB) Challenge based design projects. He has been a practicing software engineering for 4 years. He has published 15 papers on Equity and Inclusion, focusing on disability issues, and has an H index of 2. He co-authored a chapter in Indigenous Engineering for an Enduring Culture published last year, describing the EWB projects run at UTS and he received both in 2020 and 2021 a UTS Teaching and Learning Citation and Team Award. Timothy brings a software engineering and inclusivity perspective to the book, see https://profiles.uts.edu.au/Timothy.Boye.
kate harriden is a yinaa wirdyuri/wiradyuri women and currently Research Fellow in Indigenous water in the Monash Sustainable Development Institute at Monash University. Living up the wiradyuri as freshwater people moniker, she has been doing freshwater research for many years, including household water use, challenging the concept of storm water and examining stream functioning. kate has also been testing water quality in creeks on Ngunnawal country for more than 20 years, as a citizen scientist with waterwatch. During her PhD research, kate developed expertise in First Nations design, particularly water country design principles, and now presents lectures in this field to university students in undergraduate and postgraduate courses. In recent years kate has become increasingly involved in research about the impact of aqua nullius (the systemic disregard of First Nations water rights in the settler-state legal and water systems) on First Nations water rights and Indigenous sciences, as well as the customary water rights of First Nations women. kate is aware that expertise is not held solely by ‘experts’ and actively works to decolonise the academy, in part to give space for the expertise of First Nations people.
Sai Rupa Devarapu is an engineer and researcher who works with EWB to develop the Challenge there. She has been teaching for a year in engineering and 1 year in practice in the consulting industry and has also volunteered with overseas EWB organisations. At present the Challenge material that she supplies to universities are two projects, one based in an Aboriginal community and the other option overseas. She is passionate about the intersection of technology and social impact. She has an interest in socio-economic, political and philosophical events and explores the best way to integrate them towards creating a positive and lasting impact to underprivileged and underrepresented communities. Now based in Melbourne, Sai has a Bachelors degree in aerospace engineering and a Masters degree in Sustainable Manufacturing Engineering. Her Cross-cultural learning experience could potentially be of great value to this project which when combined with her Engineering qualifications of the team, could contribute to this ebook. https://ewb.org.au/team-showcase/sai-rupa-dev/
Peter McArdle brings 15 years’ experience in international humanitarian action across the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific to the role of Chief Engineer at EWB. With one foot in engineering and the other in social science, his work has included climate and environment policy, water and sanitation, public health, emergency operations, and the protection of infrastructure in armed conflict with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, NGOs, and social enterprise. For his work preparing for and responding to global crises, Peter was Awarded the International Service Medal for ‘exemplary service’ by Australian Red Cross. Constantly curious, and intrigued by balancing diverse perspectives and knowledge, complexity, and creative problem solving, Peter holds a Bachelor of Engineering (Civil), a Master of Peace and Conflict Studies, and a PhD in Sociology exploring the social impacts of community conflict and resilience in the face of water scarcity. Peter occasionally teaches environmental politics, peace and conflict studies, and humanitarian engineering at the University of Sydney, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Technology Sydney.
Susi Bertei is an engineering lecturer at CDU who has been teaching the first-year Design and Communication unit for 10 years, focusing on the EWB Challenge as a vehicle for working on Indigenous projects, hence this eBook will be invaluable for her students. Importantly she has many international students in the course and if the projects that are supported move back overseas, she would like to keep the Indigenous content. Hence, she can advise on how to make the content relevant to this cohort even if they are not working with projects on the country of the material we provide. Her students have often received awards at EWB Challenge Showcases and her course is a core course for our technology students at CDU. She also brings her skill in engineering design and report editing that is a fundamental part of the courses in which this textbook will be embedded, see https://www.cdu.edu.au/staff/susi-bertei.
Elyssebeth Leigh co-edited in 2022 the book titled Indigenous Engineering for an Enduring Culture and has been a educator in contexts ranging from business and government entities to high school and tertiary settings. Her expertise as an educator and researcher draws on years of experience with learners who are encountering new and intricate contexts where understanding and appreciating their own expertise is an essential component of their future success. She brings both a wealth of knowledge about adult and young adult learners as well as principles of good practice to ensure each individual has the best possible chance of achieving their goals. Dr Leigh has published in the areas of learning design, adult learning, simulations and games for learning and sharing of knowledge about Indigenous engineering. https://uts.academia.edu/ElyssebethLeigh
We also acknowledge Tara Burton, the Open Education Librarian at Charles Darwin University with expertise in open data and referencing who has provided consistent editing and licencing of the material included in this volume. We appreciate her tolerance of the chaos in producing this open text.
