Moving house is never easy. Packing up your most precious possessions is stressful at the best of times.
Now imagine what it would be like if you were moving machines weighing several tonnes and made up of metal, glass and delicate optical fibres.
That was the tricky task faced by the team at Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) when they moved into their new custom-built building – shared with the Macquarie University School of Engineering – late last year.
Preparation began months in advance and a specialist company was engaged to move the machines being used to solve some of the universe's greatest mysteries. Once everything was unpacked, experts from the manufacturers were brought in to recalibrate all the equipment to their exact specifications.
"Everyone was nervous," admits AAO Director Professor Richard McDermid in what must be a slight understatement. "It was a fair bit of work."
For the first time in its history, and after years of working in an adapted office space, the AAO is now based in the heart of the Macquarie University campus. The new Engineering Innovation building, with its striking glass exterior, can be found on Wally's Walk.
The Engineering Innovation building marks a new era of engineering at Macquarie.
"This remarkable new building reflects Macquarie University's unwavering commitment to fostering innovation, creativity, and collaboration at the highest level," says Vice-Chancellor Professor S Bruce Dowton. "Every aspect of this space has been thoughtfully designed to inspire and empower the engineers of tomorrow."
The AAO is cohabiting and collaborating with the School of Engineering, an opportunity that Dean of Engineering, Professor Gordon Wyeth, is excited about.
"The AAO are one of the most advanced engineering organisations in the country," he says. "They build amazing technology that's right at the cutting edge with international renown. That resonates very strongly with Macquarie engineering – we're right at the cutting edge of what's going on, while still producing the engineers needed for our economy."
Between them, these two departments are solving problems and answering questions spanning not just the globe but the galaxy – and beyond.
Solving global challenges
There's no denying that climate change is one of the biggest problems facing our planet. But while it's often the bad news that makes headlines, there is positive progress being made.
"It's engineers who are building the technologies that can transition us away from things that are producing carbon into the atmosphere," Wyeth says. "These technologies will still allow us to get on with all of our lives – possibly in even better ways than before."
At Macquarie, researchers are developing new ways to integrate renewable energy with the existing power grid – from solar energy technologies to a thermochemical system that can turn solid waste into hydrogen and carbon-based products.
"Our mandate in training engineers is solving complex engineering problems, and what that means is the ability to solve problems that haven't been solved before," Wyeth explains.
"You can't just look up the procedure for solving the climate crisis in a book, you have to invent and create stuff."
The topping out ceremony for the Engineering Innovation building in 2024
That ability to create and be creative is a skill that Macquarie educators strive to foster in engineering students.
"There's this misconception that engineering is all about hard maths," Wyeth says. "But really the maths is a useful tool to solve creative problems. It's a language you learn to be able to do cool things.
The new Engineering Innovation Building has been designed with this in mind – there are spaces for students to meet and brainstorm new ideas as well as spaces for engineers to team up and build those ideas.
The Engineering Innovation building has been designed to foster collaboration and creativity
"We teach students how to knock your mind out of the usual rut," Wyeth says. "We give them open-ended problems with some social context and ask them what their solution is. Then they've got to come up with the idea and see if they can turn it into reality."
Answering cosmological questions
Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered if we Earthlings are alone in this vast universe?
This is just one of the big astrophysical (and existential) questions the AAO is helping to answer through the building of extremely complex instruments. These innovative instruments are used to power some of the world's biggest telescopes, and are helping us gain an understanding of other planets.
"The larger the telescope, the more light it can gather, the more sensitive it is and the further it can see, with better resolution," McDermid says.
"The telescopes and observatories that we build instruments for have been getting bigger, which means the instruments that catch the light also have to get bigger."
This growth is one of the reasons the engineers at the AAO needed a larger space to complete their work. The new building provides dedicated spaces for every stage of the production process, from designing and prototyping through to building, testing and assembling. There is even a cryogenics lab for creating low-temperature environments and a thermal vacuum chamber for testing equipment in space-like conditions. The opportunity to share these facilities with industry, as well as existing partners, is one the AAO is keen to explore.
One of the instruments currently in development is a spectrograph, which breaks light up into many different colours. Every star has a light-based fingerprint or barcode, which can tell us more about its chemistry. But this barcode can shift based on how a planet is orbiting around a star. This shift – or wobble – is what the spectrograph can measure.
Since the Big Bang, the universe has been expanding at an accelerated rate. But have you ever wondered what that actually looks like?
Recording what's happening across different galaxies at the same time and logging hundreds of these observations is one way scientists are answering this question. Astronomers point optical fibres at different points in the sky and collect light from these points to produce a single image – this is known as multi-object spectroscopy. AAO is a pioneer of this groundbreaking technology and recently delivered an instrument vital to this process to the 4Most telescope in Chile.
The AAO has built pivotal technology for the 4Most telescope. Photo: European Southern Observatory (ESO) / Babak Tafreshi
"We've got 2,400 fibres that have to be configured in a matter of seconds, it has to be able to move with extremely high precision," McDermid says. "The fibres are close together like spines, it's called The Echidna.
"AAO came up with a completely novel way of doing that and developed the technology from scratch. It's going to be gathering millions of spectra, of stars, of galaxies, all kinds of interesting things."
The student experience
For students at Macquarie, the new building isn't just a place to attend classes. It's a space of learning, experimenting, collaborating and building their careers as engineers. Outside the classroom, the MQ Speed team has competed at the World Human Powered Speed Challenge and has two women's world-records. Another student team is working on a robotic interplanetary rover for a competition.
MQ Speed are world record holders. Photo: Facebook
"We're trying to make engineering intrinsically enjoyable," Wyeth says. "Everything you do while you're at Macquarie, you can connect with what it's like to work as an engineer. You're living the dream of solving big problems and working in teams."
McDermid is also hopeful students from the School of Engineering will take an interest in the AAO's work. The plan is to have an internship program up and running for students with stars in their eyes.
"Students have so much energy, they're always buzzing with ideas and super curious. That kind of challenging and questioning is a really healthy part of how we come up with ideas," he says.
"My hope is that, even while they might be exploring basic concepts, they can look through the window of a workshop and see a state-of-the-art machine coming together that's going to find planets all around the stars or discover what dark energy is."
"It is more than just a physical structure," says Professor Dowton of the new building. "It is a purpose-built ecosystem that encourages curiosity, nurtures bold ideas, and facilitates transformative learning.
"Here, our students will have the opportunity to unlock their potential, harness their creativity, and emerge as leaders ready to make a meaningful impact on the world."
