Uploaded April 2025 | Updated September 2026, 5 hours ago
1330th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture of the Royal Society of NSW — 2 April 2025
"Engineering the Future"
Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte FRS FRSE FAA FIEEE
NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer
State Government of New South Wales
https://www.royalsoc.org.au/events/1330th-ogm-and-open-lecture/
The presentation commences at 01:36
Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade FRSN, President, Royal Society of NSW
00:01:36 Presentation: Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte
00:43:14 Audience Q&A: moderated by Emeritus Professor Christina Slade
01:07:52 Vote of Thanks: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade
01:09:27 Meeting Close
Hugh Durrant-Whyte has worked as an engineer in academia, industry and government for over forty years during which time he has witnessed and been an active participant in great change – driven primarily by the growing power of information and communication technologies. He believes that the next forty years of engineering will deliver even more profound change for humanity through the intersection of four technology domains – Digital, Biology, Materials, and Energy:
The digital and information age is still in its infancy. The positive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to enable more productive lives, to make better decisions and to undertake tasks not yet possible, is just beginning. While mindful of the perils, Australia stands to benefit substantially from these developments – from increased and bespoke manufacturing activity, through smarter defence, to managing fragile ecosystems. New physics, in quantum, photonics and organics, will also drive unprecedented advances in information technology hardware, from computing to sensing and communications.
The revolution in biology in the last two decades rivals that of the early information age. Biology is increasingly an engineering discipline as it becomes more concerned with design, computation and manufacturing. Engineering is already at the heart of new and developing biology industries from RNA to synthetic meats. Engineering thinking is also driving new directions in biology: the use of computational AI in protein structure prediction; understanding life as a complex web of protein nano-machines; and the use of tools from synthetic biology and gene editing to create new proteins and organisms. I believe that as biology becomes an engineering technology, its impact will surpass even that of the information age.
Materials science has changed beyond all recognition from forty years ago: what was once mainly about metal forming and finishing, is now about nano-structures and internal architectures, meta-materials and additive manufacturing, and about carbon and novel organics. This has been driven by a new understanding of materials at the atomic scale, by additive manufacturing technologies, and by the increasing use of novel chemistries – both organic and inorganic. Materials science is increasingly the key to progress across many engineering disciplines: from modern aerostructures and buildings, through energy storage and transmission, to silicon and compound semiconductors for sensing and computing.
The existential threat of climate change has brought a huge focus on new ways of producing, storing and managing energy. Renewable energy, in particular, is seeing unprecedented innovation and investment in all areas: from harnessing solar and wind generation of energy, to storage in batteries and hydrogen derivatives, to new methods of managing decentralised electricity grids. This, in turn, is driving a revolution in foundational technologies of electrical engineering, materials chemistry and computation. Global investment is also unprecedented and with this provides an opportunity for Australia to create a significant national industry in the coming decades.
This talk will discuss this future vision of engineering.
1330th Ordinary General Meeting and Open Lecture of the Royal Society of NSW — 2 April 2025
"Engineering the Future"
Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte FRS FRSE FAA FIEEE
NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer
State Government of New South Wales
https://www.royalsoc.org.au/events/1330th-ogm-and-open-lecture/
The presentation commences at 01:36
Timing Marks:
00:00:00 Introduction: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade FRSN, President, Royal Society of NSW
00:01:36 Presentation: Professor Hugh Durrant-Whyte
00:43:14 Audience Q&A: moderated by Emeritus Professor Christina Slade
01:07:52 Vote of Thanks: Emeritus Professor Christina Slade
01:09:27 Meeting Close
Hugh Durrant-Whyte has worked as an engineer in academia, industry and government for over forty years during which time he has witnessed and been an active participant in great change – driven primarily by the growing power of information and communication technologies. He believes that the next forty years of engineering will deliver even more profound change for humanity through the intersection of four technology domains – Digital, Biology, Materials, and Energy:
The digital and information age is still in its infancy. The positive potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to enable more productive lives, to make better decisions and to undertake tasks not yet possible, is just beginning. While mindful of the perils, Australia stands to benefit substantially from these developments – from increased and bespoke manufacturing activity, through smarter defence, to managing fragile ecosystems. New physics, in quantum, photonics and organics, will also drive unprecedented advances in information technology hardware, from computing to sensing and communications.
The revolution in biology in the last two decades rivals that of the early information age. Biology is increasingly an engineering discipline as it becomes more concerned with design, computation and manufacturing. Engineering is already at the heart of new and developing biology industries from RNA to synthetic meats. Engineering thinking is also driving new directions in biology: the use of computational AI in protein structure prediction; understanding life as a complex web of protein nano-machines; and the use of tools from synthetic biology and gene editing to create new proteins and organisms. I believe that as biology becomes an engineering technology, its impact will surpass even that of the information age.
Materials science has changed beyond all recognition from forty years ago: what was once mainly about metal forming and finishing, is now about nano-structures and internal architectures, meta-materials and additive manufacturing, and about carbon and novel organics. This has been driven by a new understanding of materials at the atomic scale, by additive manufacturing technologies, and by the increasing use of novel chemistries – both organic and inorganic. Materials science is increasingly the key to progress across many engineering disciplines: from modern aerostructures and buildings, through energy storage and transmission, to silicon and compound semiconductors for sensing and computing.
The existential threat of climate change has brought a huge focus on new ways of producing, storing and managing energy. Renewable energy, in particular, is seeing unprecedented innovation and investment in all areas: from harnessing solar and wind generation of energy, to storage in batteries and hydrogen derivatives, to new methods of managing decentralised electricity grids. This, in turn, is driving a revolution in foundational technologies of electrical engineering, materials chemistry and computation. Global investment is also unprecedented and with this provides an opportunity for Australia to create a significant national industry in the coming decades.
This talk will discuss this future vision of engineering.
