Awards for engineering with real-world impact

Professional Engineer of the Year (Sydney): Associate Professor Jiao Jiao Li

Associate Professor Jiao Jiao Li is on a mission to bring biomedical innovations into the real world and improve people’s lives.

The leading biomedical engineer has won a swag of national awards for her research. Now she has been recognised for her real-world impact by winning Professional Engineer of the Year (Sydney) award from Engineers Australia, the only academic researcher nominated from a field of industry professionals.

“As a biomedical engineer, I’ve had the privilege of developing technologies that improve the way we treat complex diseases,” she said.

“For example, I’m harnessing stem cells to produce nanoscale therapeutics for osteoarthritis and helping tackle a crippling disease that affects more than 600 million people across the globe.”

Associate Professor Li is also known for her advocacy work, both for the engineering profession and STEM more broadly, with a passion for getting science and engineering into the community.

“Alongside engineering innovation, I am grateful to have helped define what engineering can mean and where it can have impact,” she said.

Neville Thiele Eminence Award: Distinguished Professor Karu Esselle

Distinguished Professor Karu Esselle is a pioneer in electromagnetic antenna and radiofrequency engineering in Australia.

His lifetime of achievement has been recognised with the 2026 Neville Thiele Eminence Award, named in honour of a pioneer of local radio engineering.

Professor Esselle has had a distinguished career advancing new technologies and has received many national and international awards for his work. 

His achievement have included has developed Meta-steering, a novel antenna beam steering method that has been adopted worldwide by industry, government and academia. 

Project of the Year (Sydney): Sustainable Soil Sensing Solution for Precision Agriculture

A partnership between the UTS Radiofrequency Communications Lab and Japanese multinational NTT also received an outstanding recognition citation in the Project of the Year category.

The Sustainable Soil Sensing Solution for Precision Agriculture project has developed a world-first technology for accurately detecting the composition of farming soils.

It was the only university nomination for the award, that was won by the Sydney Fish Markets.