User:Professor Michael Wilson/sandbox

Michael Wilson is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Western Sydney and CEO of MUSCA He was a  Project Leader in the ARC Australian Centre of Excellence for Functional Nanomaterials from 2002 -2010. In 2007/8 he was part of the New Zealand Government Investment Process Team of the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology. He has recently held a number of consultancies on climate policym space exploration and  alternative fuels and has been active in preparing submissions for oil from algae scale up plants. Until the end of February 2009 he was a  Theme Leader  in  the CSIRO Energy Flagship covering alternative fuels including those from algae and battery energy storage. He is an ARC Reader and referee for other funding bodies. He is, or has been a referee for 27 International Research Journals and Editorial Board of three journla.

Administration Wilson was an Executive Dean of the College of Health and Science, University of Western Sydney (UWS) from 2001-2007. This encompassed, Science, Engineering, Computing and Information Technology, Agriculture, Equine Studies, Environment, Horticulture, Medicine, Complementary Medicine and Nursing. He was Provost of the Hawkesbury Campus which involved significant local representation and liaison. He was also a member of the Vice Chancellors Advisory Committee. As Executive Dean UWS, he was responsible for Strategic Plans for the College, budgets up to $65M, and over 600 staff and undertook significant restructuring for financial viability in difficult times. He has supervised to completion 19 PhDs, marked 38 PhDs, 2 Habitat Thesis (Germany), and 2 DSc’s. He has been a Member of the Australian Prime Ministers working party on Crime and Science.

As a Head of Department at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) (1991-1995)  he was responsible for up to 51 staff, a budget of $5M (only some non discretionary). He was also a member of  the University Research Management Committee and, Director of the Research Centre in Materials Science  with 8 executive staff, and a $5M budget at UTS. Prior to that he was a research manager  in CSIRO Petroleum and Energy Technology   where he supervised up to 18 staff with a $2M budget.

He has held academic positions at the University of Utah ( Research Fellow), Canterbury University (Lecturer), University of New South Wales ( Senior Lecturer ) and Auckland University (Junior Lecturer). He has also spent time at the United States Geological Survey, Reston as a Research Fellow. He has worked at May and Bakers Limited (UK) in antibiotic production.

Teaching He has set up and administered a number of new degrees in Forensic Science, Gene Science, Nanotechnology and Animal Science. His face to face teaching has been primarily in Chemistry, particularly first year, with outstanding University best student evaluations in consecutive years. He has performed advanced teaching in Environmental Chemistry, Physical and Organic Chemistry, Geochemistry and Soil Science. He has coordinated first year Chemistry teaching.

Research He obtained a PhD in 1974 and a DSc in 1988 from Auckland University. His areas of research include nanocarbons as energy storage devices, nanocomposites of artificial bone, organic geochemistry of soils and coal, nanotechnological applications to synthetic fuels, the organic geochemistry of petroleum formation, petroleum refining and coal utilization,  forensic science of drugs, molecular structure of complementary medicines and delivery and more recently biofuels. He is author of the monograph “The Applications of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance to Geochemistry and Soil Science" and co author of a second book, “Nanotechnology" which has been a CRC Press best seller. He is on the editorial board of the journals Energy and Fuels, and a past editor of Solid State NMR and  Organic Geochemistry. He has published over three hundred and eighty publications in international journals including seven papers in Nature. He has obtained  over $13M in grant funding which has gone directly to the organization he has worked for and approximately the same amount in collaborations leading to funding elsewhere. Significant discoveries are: 1. The development of high resolution solid state NMR in soil science- a new technique now used universally across a whole discipline 2. The development of high resolution solid state NMR in the analysis of short range order in materials which do not give X-ray diffraction spectra. 3. The development of NMR in analysis of coals-the structure of coals particularly quantitation of structural groups by dipolar dephasing. 4. The development of methods of preparing fullerenes and nanotubes- the new form of carbon after graphite and diamond prepared from industrially cheap materials such as coal. 5. The development of methods of analysis of organics in Bayer liquors- saving money for Australia 5th biggest export by understanding poisons in the process. 6. The development of methods of coal liquefaction, oil shale utilization and new routes to liquid fuels. 7. The development of methods of methane utilisation- better ways of using methane than burning.

Industrial and Commercialisation Experience He has set up a company for exploiting extracting organic matter characterizing it and selling it as a speciality chemical. He has been involved in producing a continuous reactor for fullerene production with the Kyushi National Institute Japan. He has been involved in testing and commercialising cross linked smectites as cracking catalysts with Exxon and the production of Elastomeric Nanocomposites for High Quality Gravure Printing  with Kirk industries. He worked with Dynamic Lifter in the production of a new product incorporating brown coal and also in producing a nanocoated slow release fertilizers  with Quinphos limited. He has recently consulted on biofuels, liquid fuels from coal and recycle oils. He has produced 36 Major Reports to industry. Lists of Research Papers are on Google scholar and Researchgate.